• Abstract
• Presentation (21 pages)
• Paper (7 pages)

Many science and technology programmes do not require students to engage extensively with the primary literature of their subjects during the course of their undergraduate degrees. Massey University has a large postgraduate science offering at Masters and Doctoral levels, attracting students from all over the world. Advanced degree students, particularly at doctoral level, typically do not continue directly from undergraduate study and generally change institution (and country) at least once. As a result many begin their courses with knowledge discovery and management skills that are not equal to the task of an extensive literature review. Having coped well in the past they have an incomplete awareness of the new demands being placed on their information discovery and management skills.

The Searching for Science workshops were introduced in late 2014 to engage science and technology research students with the full range of resources and strategies needed for academic success. A flipped learning approach is used to deal with the technical nuts and bolts of information searching and the workshops themselves take a broader ideas-based approach grounded in an examination of science research documents. During the workshops, students examine and discuss scholarly publications and metadata in order to create a platform from which successful search techniques are constructed and implemented. This paper will background the need for and objectives of the programme, will give a brief overview of attendee demographics, will describe the programme in greater detail and will reflect on the student response and ongoing uptake.