How we can embed into your topics

We have developed a suite of topics in FLO that form the cornerstone of our information literacy instruction. The topics are:

Passport to Canvas: familiarises students with the online learning environment

Library World: teaches students what academic information is and why they need to use it.

Systematic literature searching: guides students through the process of engaging with literature, searching systematically for literature, designing a project and comprehensive searches, collecting and managing resources, and reporting the search methodology. Ideal for any students (honours, masters, PhD) and researchers.

Searching with confidence: steps students through the process of searching for academic literature, from identifying keywords and searching databases, to evaluating what they find and how to use it.

The advantage of these topics is that students can work through them at their own pace and can revisit them as many times as they need to help with any trouble points they have. Each topic is modular and can be embedded as a whole or scaffolded throughout a semester.

Where we have identified discipline specific information literacy needs, we have developed quick and easy resources to help students. These are housed in our new Information Literacy Gateway on the library website.

The library has developed a suite of quick, resources to help students with specific aspects of information literacy and research skills. A mix of videos, PDFs and lessons in FLO, the skills library can be linked as a whole into topics in FLO, or individual resources can be linked where specific needs are identified. Students can also be directed to our Gateway page to access not just the skills library but our entire suite of online resources.

After students engage with the resources we can embed in FLO, they may still have some questions about their research. We can set up online Q&A sessions to answer their questions.

Our team can set up and monitor Q & A discussion boards for students to have their questions about their research answered by a librarian, but after they have engaged with our other embedded instructional resources first. The advantage of a discussion board over an Online Q&A is that the answers are in FLO for all students to see at any time, not just to those who can attend an Online Q&A.

If you would like a Q & A discussion board for your topic, please submit a ServiceOne "Embedding Library Skills" request.

If students in one class are having trouble with a certain aspect of information literacy, chances are students in other classes are too. When a problem is identified that can’t be addressed by our other resources, we can run drop in sessions in the new Commons space on level 2 of the Central Library or in the libraries at Sturt and Medical where needed.

These sessions are open to all students and will be designed to be quite short, targeted sessions to address specific issues. Staff and students can also suggest sessions to us that they would like to have run.

Our team has been busy coming up with new, innovative ways to deliver library and information literacy training. Being a small team means that sometimes we cannot accommodate some teaching requests from academics. To help with this, we have developed a self-service repository of activities that academics and tutors can deliver themselves in their classes, either in-person or online, synchronous or asynchronous.

The activities are quick (15-20 minutes) and contain all the resources and background information needed to deliver them. Our team is always at hand if there are any questions regarding the delivery of any activities, or if you are unsure what activities are best suited to your students.

Often the person best suited to identify student information literacy problems are the students’ tutors.

Sometimes, the best way, or even the only way to get information literacy instruction into a topic is in tutorials.

If this is the case, we can provide training to tutors and other teaching staff on how to deliver information literacy instruction to their students.

In collaboration with topic coordinators, we can also help develop assessments for students that focus on information literacy skills. Linking information literacy instruction directly to assessment is a great way to help get the message across to students.

We can also assist topic coordinators to explore the 'hidden curriculum' of assessment pieces, to help identify information literacy concepts and skills that students require to successfully complete their tasks. 

We have also designed assessments to complement our other online resources, where topic co-ordinators want to further assess their students understanding of our content.