Presented at LILAC 2022

1. Teaching how to structure
literature reviews via 1990s movies
Kirsty Thomson
Academic Support and Liaison Librarian
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh
Email: k.s.thomson@hw.ac.uk
Twitter: @kirsty_thomson

2. Outline
• Context.
• Practical and discussion.
• Reflections on my
experiences.
• Questions.

3. Why?
• “One-shot” teaching for most subjects.
• Main focus of classes is finding good quality literature.
• “… now you can use these good quality papers in your assignment …”
• Questions from students showed they were anxious about what to do
next.
• “… but how do I turn these PDFs into a literature review?”

4. How did I tackle this gap?
• Wanted a practical exercise:
• widely-accepted that students learn more doing things (and reflecting on what they
are doing), compared to passively listening to lectures (e.g. Bonwell and Eison,
1991).
• “it appeared that once the instructor solved the problem, the student soon forgot
how the problem was solved” (Romanow, Napier and Cline, 2020, p. 228).
• Did not want to ask them to do pre-reading, or use class time reading
papers.
• Also wanted something fun and informal – continually trying to change
students’ perceptions of libraries/librarians.
• Idea of using films adapted from a LILAC session (Deutsch and West, 2018).

5. What did I do?
1. Got students to work in groups, summarizing films and identifying
their themes.
2. Showed students how to convert their themes into a literature
review structure.
3. Pointed out that creating own summaries whilst reading makes
writing assignments easier.

6. Who have I been doing this with?
Students
• UG honours - SCQF 10 (EQF
level 6).
• UG masters, PG masters -
SCQF 11 (EQF level 7).
• Majority from English-
speaking or European
countries.
Subject areas
• Brewing and Distilling.
• Chemistry.
• Chemical Engineering.
• Engineering apprentices.
• Marine Science.
• Renewable Energy.

7. Slides from classes

13. Practical

15. Summaries and themes from students

16. Structuring a literature review with students

17. My experiences
of teaching this class

18. Choosing films
• Make sure you have overlapping themes.
• Older films seem to work well.
• my theories:
• students like being able to make fun of something.
• criticising these films feels safe.
• no consequences if they are “wrong” – not science/engineering questions.
• Titanic, Jurassic Park, Romeo and Juliet combination effective.
• almost everyone is aware of the plot of Titanic and Jurassic Park.
• usually at least one person in each group has either done Romeo and Juliet at
school, or has an awareness of the plot.

19. More recent films
• Tried a class with Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, and Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone.
• Not nearly as successful.
• were students reluctant to share their opinions about films from their
childhood?
• fear of appearing uncool by revealing knowledge about something they now
considered childish (or felt they should consider childish)?
• Only tried this once so might have just been this cohort, or the small class size.

20. Face-to-face, online, hybrid
• Have done this successfully with face-to-face, online, and hybrid
classes.
• In hybrid classes, it can be more difficult to give equal balance to
online participants in the discussion.
• easier when there’s a lecturer following the chat, who can be the online
students’ voice.
• Don’t worry about classroom layout – students happy to move chairs,
lean round PCs, turn backwards in lecture theatre, etc.

21. Tips for class discussion (1)
• Ask for contributions rather than going round every group.
• Be selective about what you write on board.
• Keep turning discussion back to literature reviews:
• Jurassic Park has lots of sequels = citing references.
• Leonardo DiCaprio is in two of these films = key author in the field.
• When doing structure, make sure you point out that a “paper” can be
used in more than one section of their literature review.

22. Tips for class discussion (2)
• Many students don’t know than literature reviews should be more
than just summaries of articles, and that they are expected to
synthesise, critique, and explain (Shahsavar and Kourepaz, 2020).
• important to draw their attention to these additional requirements.
• e.g. use comments like “that bit of wood was totally big enough for both of
them” as examples of critical thinking.

23. Recap of what was I trying to achieve
• Academic learning outcomes:
• reflecting on reading (themes/summaries) makes it easier to write
literature reviews.
• literature reviews should be structured around themes.
• techniques for outlining their literature reviews.
• Secondary outcome:
• fun and informal activity to build rapport with students.

24. Did I succeed?
• (University policy on not doing unnecessary surveys.)
• Students quickly grasp the concept of identifying themes,
and spontaneously start looking for similarities and
differences between the films.
• Students enjoy the class.
• “I really liked Kirsty’s way of teaching the session – she made it
fun”.

25. Final thoughts
• No two classes will be the same, especially as students often describe films through the
lens of their own subjects.
• Important to emphasise journal article metaphors so that the session seems relevant.
• Students will make a lot of jokes, but there is often relevant content in these:
• “Jurassic Park ended badly for humans, but not for dinosaurs” – differing interpretations of
results.
• “Romeo and Juliet would have been improved by dinosaurs” – is there evidence for this? is this an
unexplored area of research?
• Structure of class means it’s easy to keep control of discussion by moving on to the next
film/section.
• Students do not carry pens!

26. References
• Bonwell, C.C. and Eison, J.A. (1991) Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the
Classroom. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Reports No.1. Washington, DC: The George
Washington University, School of Education and Human Development.
• Deutsch, A. and West, B. (2018) Starting strong: engaging students with anticipatory
sets, LILAC Conference, Liverpool. 4-6 April. https://www.lilacconference.com/lilac-
archive/lilac-2018#papersandposters
• Romanow, D., Napier, N.P. and Cline, M.K. (2020) 'Using active learning, group
formation, and discussion to increase student learning: A business intelligence skills
analysis', Journal of Information Systems Education, 31(3), pp. 218-231.
• Shahsavar, Z. and Kourepaz, H. (2020) 'Postgraduate students’ difficulties in writing
their theses literature review', Cogent Education, 7(1), 1784620.

27. Kirsty Thomson
Academic Support and
Liaison Librarian
Heriot-Watt University
Email: k.s.thomson@hw.ac.uk
Telephone: 0131 451 8074
Twitter: @kirsty_thomson