We Can Do It: Collaborating with Women\u27s and Gender Studies Faculty to Develop Student Research Skills

In Spring 2016 and Fall 2017, 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. 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 historical feminist figures. The learning objectives of the assignment asked students to look beyond the mere facts of a figure’s life and analyze the figure’s place along the feminist continuum and/or within the greater context of the patriarchal structure. This presentation will detail the partnership, which provided a unique opportunity to teach students how to think critically and work collaboratively, as they built websites that served as pathfinders for other researchers looking for scholarly information about overlooked feminist icons. The final projects highlighted students’ abilities to incorporate technology into a significant assignment, utilize diverse library resources, and connect with the research process in a creative way