A research support framework for p ostgraduate students : WITS libraries’ UX strategy

Abstract

At the postgraduate level, success often depends on the ability, capacity and research support provided by librarians to promote a good foundation for a robust research culture to masters and doctoral students. This case study is user research or UX design intended to enhance postgraduate research support for first year postgraduate students at the Witwatersrand University. The study aims to seek information about research support services offered by research librarians, evaluate the categories of services offered and tools used, to measure the quality of services, and to establish the academic qualifications and information literacy skills of research librarians. Overall, the study’s objective is to benchmark the services offered by faculty research librarians at the WITS libraries against other international universities, particularly the University of Adelaide, University Library Research Support Framework. The study will use two survey questionnaires with close-ended questions. The first questionnaire will target a cross-faculty, cross-discipline group of postgraduate students, and the second one, will target research librarians. The study will gather data from these two groups, with the first group using a convenience sampling technique and the second group will be all inclusive participation. A descriptive analysis will then be used to explore the data and to describe the study variables in this UX research study. The study findings will be used to improve research productivity of postgraduate students and research support offered by librarians at the University. The data will also be informing the development of a Research Support Framework to enhance the research support framework for postgraduate students at WITS. The relevance of this study is its value aid to the UX research implementation at the university.