The Research Help Your Way workshop helps students with any of their interests and research needs. The event takes place twice a week on Mondays and Fridays from 1pm to 2pm at the Vasche Library.
No prior registration is required. When you walk in, you use your phone to scan a code on the screen which leads you to a short survey where you get to pick a topic of your choice.
The topic with the majority of votes gets picked by the instructor, who then presents on that topic for the next 10 minutes.
These topics vary from learning citation style APA or MLA, exploring the Library Catalog or database, and even learning how to overcome research anxiety, and enhancing searching techniques.
After the presentation, the instructor’s goal is to set a comfortable atmosphere for the students. Their next goal is to approach the students to obtain an good idea of what the students need help with in that session.
The workshop consists of three members Kevin Augustine (Research/Instruction Librarian), Manny Valenzuela (Senior, English), and Emily Radza (Graduate Student). All three serve as tutors for students who decided to participate.
Augustine is in charge of presenting the topics to students. These are topics which he has gathered the information about from his past projects with his colleagues.
“The lecture topics come from my observation in my research project with Professor Jacqueline Hollcraft,” said Augustine.
Augustine continued by saying that this research project helped him get exposed to first-year composition students’ development in learning skills.
He then took aspects of lesson plans and topics and repackaged them into what he said were “approachable workshop lectures.”
“When we first started doing this we aimed for first-year comp since topics derived from that,” said Augustine.
Augustine then said they decided to completely strip that idea off and instead make the workshop available for everyone to join.
Emily Radza (Graduate Student) shares, “I learn something every day. I may not realize that even though I’ve heard something a million times there are still things I don’t know.”
Radza emphasizes that her favorite topic out of the six that the workshop provides is research.
“Research is my favorite topic to help people with. Giving them the confidence to go home and do it themselves after learning how to do it right, and then it’s so much easier for them after that,” Radza said.
When Manny Valenzuela (Senior, English) was asked what is his primary motivation for assisting students he replied, “Seeing them not feel lost, seeing them like kind of open up more about what they’re writing, feeling more confident.”
Valenzuela shared his own insight into how having this workshop in his earlier years of college would have been useful.
“My first semester here I didn’t know anything about the library, and writing center, so definitely felt very lost and wished I knew of that,” said Valenzuela.
Although there are other workshops that take place, Augustine says that those workshops don’t supply students with enriched helpful tools as The Research Help Your Way workshop has done.
According to Augustine, this workshop gives students hands-on support, which is something that he has yet to see from other workshops hosted by other librarians.
Radza and Valenzuela have both recommended the research workshop to friends and other students.
“Last semester I was a part of those workshops for freshmen, and I would tell them about it, and some of them would bring their papers, and I would show them how to navigate through it,” said Valenzuela.
To find the best dates that fit you, check the workshop availability schedule.
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