Clarence Maybee, a doctoral student in the San José Gateway PhD program, has been awarded the QUT Higher Education Research Best Publication Higher Degree Student Award for his paper, “Learning to use information: Informed learning in the undergraduate classroom,” which was published in the June 2013 issue of Library & Information Science Research.

Maybee received a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) degree from the San José State University (SJSU) School of Information in 2005, and he is currently working on his doctorate under the supervision of SJSU Associate Professor Dr. Kristen Rebmann. The San José Gateway PhD program is offered in partnership between the SJSU School of Information and Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia. Six students have completed doctorate degrees in the international program to date.

Maybee is the lead author on the award-winning article, along with Rebmann and QUT faculty members Dr. Christine Bruce and Dr. Mandy Lupton. In the article, Maybee, Rebmann, Bruce, and Lupton discuss the use of informed learning, which is described as “a pedagogy that focuses on learning subject content through engaging with academic or professional information practices.”

The impressive achievement was highly gratifying for Maybee. “The award made me realize that all the hard work that went into trying to clearly communicate my research had paid off,” he explained. “It was also exciting to have my information literacy article acknowledged in a competition with not only information literacy research, but higher education research more generally.”

According to Georgia Smeal, manager of awards and grants at QUT, awards are based on the following criteria: “originality of the research; contribution to the field; strength of research methodology; [and] quality of the journal or conference.” Smeal stated that the article submitted by Maybee “scored very well against all criteria.”

Currently, Maybee works as an information literacy specialist at Purdue University Libraries in West Lafayette, Indiana. His research interests include how higher education teachers and students experience teaching and learning to use information and what constitutes effective pedagogy for information literacy instruction.