We can do it: Collaborating with women\u27s and gender studies faculty to develop student research skills

In Spring 2016, two librarians and a faculty member in the department of Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) at Austin Peay State University teamed up for a class project, which served as a catalyst for integrating the ACRL Framework into WGS courses. In one section of an Introduction to Women\u27s and Gender studies course, students worked individually or in small groups to build a website that chronicled the life of a marginalized historical figure. With assistance from librarians, students located and utilized scholarly sources found in the library\u27s databases to create multifaceted websites that featured relevant biographical information about the figures and placed the figures within an historical context of the feminist movement, while also serving as pathfinders for other researchers looking for scholarly information about marginalized and/or overlooked feminist icons. The learning objectives of the assignment called students to look beyond the mere facts of a figure’s life and to analyze the figure’s place along the feminist continuum and/or within the greater context of the patriarchal structure surrounding them. This presentation will detail the partnership between faculty and librarians to teach students how to think critically and work collaboratively, resulting in a project that allowed students to incorporate technology into a significant assignment and connect with the research process in a creative way