Library:Teaching Support for Student Research
Information Literacy Toolkit
| Developing a course and need some support in framing a research assignment? Have an assignment and want to improve the research output of your students? Uncertain about your students’ skills in academic research and how much support they need to complete their assignments? Need to know what tools are available that can improve student research output? |
The Information Literacy Toolkit was developed to enhance faculty and instructors’ understanding of first year students’ research levels and needs, and support the development of assignments that are focused on growing students’ research skills. While the resources in this Toolkit were created primarily for instructors working with first year students, they will likely be useful beyond just first year instruction, for anyone seeking to design effective research assignments. The resources in this Toolkit can be used together or in pieces, depending on your particular instruction and assignment design needs. There are resources here both for faculty and instructors, and for sharing with students.
Collaborate with Your Subject Librarian
| How much do your students know about locating scholarly journals at UBC Library? Do your students have a research project that requires finding and citing scholarly sources? Do your students even know how to identify a scholarly source? |
UBC librarians have successfully partnered with faculty in the development of integrated information workshops that meet the specific curricular and subject needs of the course. There are several ways to partner with a librarian in the development of your course assignments:
Workshop Level
Librarians can work with faculty to develop workshops that meet the objectives of your specific assignment or course requirements.
Research Design Level
Prior to the development of the assignment, librarians can collaborate with faculty on methods and approaches in developing research assignments to ensure the students have the skill sets necessary to perform successful academic research.
Program Level
Working with a librarian at the program level will yield a fully integrated approach to information and research literacies across an entire program of study. Program design incorporates....
Example: ASTU 150 (perhaps a link out, a pdf, a video?)
Students with no prior post-secondary education admitted to the Faculty of Arts are required to fulfill a writing and research requirement as well as science, language, and literature requirements. ASTU 150 is a required course for all arts students. The course introduces students to research culture that is shared by members of the academic community. Fundamental to this culture are the written conversations through which researchers make and disseminate knowledge. Students in ASTU 150 read scholarly journal articles representing at least three disciplines that all focus on aspects of a common topic. All students write their own research paper.
UBC Library provides a standardized, face-to-face session in the Library to every campus-based section of ASTU 150 in the Fall and Winter terms. The hands-on session covers various information literacy/Library research concepts including the information life cycle, effective searching in databases, the characteristics of scholarly and popular publications and the elements of a citation.
To collaborate with a librarian for your course or program, contact your Subject Librarian.
Finding Resources
| Are you looking for resources for your course readings? Do you need to direct your students to academic sources for their assignment? Are you developing an open course and need to find material you are allowed to use in your syllabus? |
UBC Library provides a variety of ways to support access to resources. Research Guides are collections of information sources (e.g. articles, books) and search tools (e.g. indexes, databases) in the Library that are useful for a specific subject area (e.g. Biology, Psychology, History). They're gathered together and organized by Subject Librarians to provide researchers ease of access to content specific to their area of study.
Course Guides are collections of information sources and search tools in the library that are developed for a specific course (e.g. ANTH 301 – Ethnography of Eurasia). Course Guides are created in partnership with a Subject Librarians and are geared to the requirements of assignments within the course. If you are interested in collaborating on a course guide, contact your Subject Librarian.
Embed Library Tutorials
| Developed a Connect course portal and/or teaching a distance education course and want to provide students with research tools necessary for the course in one online space? |
UBC Library develops online instructional content in a variety of formats (e.g. video, print, textual, etc.) and subject areas to support learning anytime, anywhere.
In addition to Subject Guides and Course Guides, UBC Library has created online tutorials on a variety of subjects that can be streamed directly into your course portal. The tutorials include: Finding articles; Formatting Citations; Evaluating Information Sources; and Finding Books in the Catalogue.
The Library Tutorials portal, UBC Teaching & Learning YouTube playlist, and UBC Learning Commons YouTube playlist, contain multimedia content that can be pulled directly into Connect, providing your students with a rich and supportive online learning environment. Use the following guides to learn how: