Can we play? Building opportunities for student activism and engagement and why it matters. Ka-Ming Pang and Jo Norwood MA Information Studies University of Brighton
Can we play? Building opportunities for student activism and
engagement and why it matters.
Ka-Ming Pang and Jo NorwoodMA Information StudiesUniversity of Brighton
We live in challenging
times.
LIS students have a vested interest in the
profession.
They need totake the
opportunity to engage and be more active.
Advocacy and engagementat the University of Brighton
MA Information Studies.
Advocacy and activism
Engagement
What has been done to engage the class
Class survey on activism and engagement
Small data sample is not useful for formulating meaningful statistics.
Writing questionnaires is hard, but ooh look, written comments!
RESULTS!
We are not clones!
Via Flickr Commons: Adactio
Reasons for joining CILIP:
•Cheap for students.
•Good for employability.
•Keeps students up to date with library related information.
Reasons for not joining CILIP:
• Expensive for students.
• Doesn't benefit them as students.
• Perceived lack of political activity.
“CILIP is supposed to join information
workers together to have a collective
voice, but I haven’t seen evidence of that. I don’t see organised
political activity during the current crisis in
our industry, or anything of use.”
Two thirds of students are active. They were involved in:
•Read ins. •Letter writing.•Protests.•Leafleting.•Passing on information using social media.
Conclusions and Action Points
Building an effective communication strategy: Use as
many tools as possible!
CILIP needs to reach out to students:
•Connect earlier with students.
•Relate sessions to relevant events. •Promote their advocacy work better.
Political activity needs to be fed back into the class
Stronger networks = Stronger voice
Thanks for listening
Ka-Ming Pang (@AgentK23)
Jo Norwood (@DreamingEntity)