Teaching Mechanical Engineering students to suck eggs: a successful approach to teaching information skills

Mechanical engineering postgraduate students claim they have the necessary academic information skills to undertake a literature review, yet their research project supervisors repeatedly complain they do not. Observing these students in the computer laboratory confirms this observation: students often revert to their self-taught searching habits when confronted with an academic search.

Eighty postgraduate taught students registered on advanced mechanical engineering degree programmes take a 15-credit module run by a university information school and engineering faculty librarians. The primary aim is to challenge their searching habits and develop transferable skills to use in their research project, and beyond into employment.

Student feedback from the previous two years has been positive. The standard of student team presentations and final coursework was high. Students demonstrated that they had moved away from their naive ‘Google’ searching habits. Furthermore, the module demonstrates how faculty librarians and departments can productively work together.