Beyond Data Literacy: Helping Nontraditional Students Get “Ready4Research”

The NavCal program at UC Berkeley does exciting work, assisting incoming nontraditional students in navigating the campus through a supportive, hands-on approach. “Non-traditional” includes low-income, first-generation college attendee, transfer and other students who may have challenges adjusting to a large, complex research university environment. A large majority of NavCal participants go on to gain acceptance into research fellowships and nationally-recognized graduate school pipeline programs.

The Library has a positive partnership with NavCal and a strong interest in campus-wide information and data literacy, so it made sense for the library to offer customized data literacy workshops for NavCal students… until an advisor said, “what they really need is to get broader training in getting ready to take on research assistant positions.” From this idea, Ready4Research was born: R4R is a 3-hour workshop to support students in learning about and getting ready to participate in research, as research assistants and researchers themselves, with data and data literacy embedded into the content.

Since its initial offering in Summer, 2021, Ready4Research has been offered each semester, to positive reviews and robust attendance. Aiming broadly at social sciences research, topics include: how research happens, what kinds of jobs research assistants do, what kind of data they may encounter, some approaches to analyzing and visualizing data, deciding what kinds of jobs to apply for, how to apply for them, how to develop their own research content to present and publish, tips from NavCal alumni, and more.

Attendees say that the exposure to the world of research at Berkeley (Cal) has opened their eyes to new possibilities for their academic careers. The workshop has also been revised for different formats and audiences, and ideas for further dissemination are in the works. This poster will outline the program, its development over time, and future plans for improvement.