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Overview
Librarians work with faculty and instructors in every discipline to support information literacy skills development at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Studies show that information literacy instruction is most effective when it is integrated into a course with a specific assignment to complete, so our instruction program emphasizes close integration with faculty and assignments.
Librarians do this through in-person instruction that is customized for a specific course and/or through online instructional materials via the creation of Camino modules, web-based tutorials, and research guides that students can navigate on their own. Online materials can be completed in preparation for an in-class workshop, as review, or as a stand-alone module.
In-Person Instruction
Faculty and instructors can invite a librarian to teach one or more sessions in their classrooms or in one of the several computer lab classrooms in the Library’s Learning Commons. Faculty and instructors can also request instruction in the Library’s Archives & Special Collections Reading Room.
Librarians can support research and applied topics in your courses, from accessing scholarly literature, to finding data on social issues or industries, to exploring news and algorithmic bias. Example class topics include:
- Developing a topic
- Basic to advanced search
- Analyzing source perspective
- Finding and evaluating data
- Finding and using primary sources
- Critical evaluation of sources
- Attribution and organization
Librarians work with instructors to ensure each session is tailored to the subject of the course, the specific assignment, and the needs of students. Librarians can also help instructors design effective research assignments that scaffold skills across the quarter and address specific learning outcomes.
Where possible, we encourage and support a flipped classroom approach to our instruction – leveraging Camino, tutorials, and other pre-work – so we can use in-class time for discussion, sense making, and critiquing.
Online Instructional Materials
We can design asynchronous, online learning materials in the form of specialized assignment guides, Camino modules, videos, or self-paced tutorials. You and your librarian might decide on a purely asynchronous approach or, where possible, a flipped classroom approach leveraging asynchronous materials as session pre-work.
When using stand-alone online materials without an in-class workshop, assigning a grade or participation points will greatly increase the likelihood that students will engage with the materials. Librarians are often able to provide you with a copy of student responses.
Explore our online learning options below.
Online Instruction Options
We can build customized guides for your course assignments. We use these guides as a support for a library workshop or as stand-alone materials that you can link to from your Camino course. Guides support student learning because students can revisit materials as often as needed. Guides may be a blend of structured activities with a curated set of resources related to a specific course or topic.
Some examples include:
- Business: MGMT 80 Global and Cultural Environment of Business
- Public Health: PHSC 1: Introduction to Public Health
- Sociology-Religious Studies: RSOC 51 Religion in America
We also build customized modules for your course and send them directly to you in Camino. A module could complement a synchronous workshop (e.g. as pre-work or post-work) or serve as an entirely asynchronous workshop with asynchronous activities. At its simplest, a module can contain a welcome video from your librarian and a link to one of our specialized research guides.
Consider giving a librarian a role in Camino that allows them to give feedback to students or participate in a discussion forum. There are many options; reach out to your librarian to discuss.
We also build web-based self-paced tutorials that reside outside of Camino, hosted on a library platform. You can make these low stakes activities (pass/fail) or graded assignments. Some of the tutorials we have built in the past include:
- Searching for Archival Resources
- Web of Science and Literature Searching
- Introduction to Journal Impact Factors
- Using PubMed to Find Articles on Interventions
- Getting the Most Out of PsycINFO
What do you want to ensure your students can do or know? Consider collaborating with your subject librarian on a tutorial like one of these.
Schedule a Library Session
We teach hundreds of sessions each year. To ensure that your students receive information literacy instruction at the needed time in the quarter, please contact a librarian as far in advance as possible (minimum 2 weeks). You can review our library instruction guidelines for more detail.
For a course in your specific discipline, contact the subject librarian for your discipline.
For Critical Thinking & Writing (CTW) courses, consult our list of faculty-librarian partnerships, or contact Jennifer Pesek, Undergraduate Learning Librarian.
For Archives & Special Collections instruction, contact Monica Keane, Archives & Special Collections Librarian.
While we employ a subject-librarian model, our instruction librarians each have a unique subject expertise, teaching style, and instructional philosophy. If you would like to learn more about which librarian might be the best match for your particular course, please contact the Head of Instruction and Assessment, Rachel Wishkoski, to schedule a consultation.