Friday 11 November 2011

Research and Information Literacy Skills

We have finally finished our new Research and Information Literacy Skills tab/site on our VLE.  We had planned to do it over the summer holidays but it kept on being 'squeezed' by other activities and tasks.
The need for a specific area on the VLE was highlighted last year for a few reasons.  We have always had information available on the LRC site on Blackboard and via the LRC wiki but it was general and needed reorganising and promoting to make it more accessible.
We have always done 'follow up' sessions which are basically additional sessions after induction sessions to cover searching, accessing e-books / online databases, referencing, bibliographies etc. but we wanted to look at creating and delivering dedicated materials and resources.
Also last year after the IQER inspection I discussed with our HE Director the possibility of delivering sessions which were specific to HE learners and used the new resources we were creating.  He was enthusiastic about the idea and suggested that it would be good for staff and students. 
We split the work up between our Library Services Manager, our Senior Librarian, our e-Learning Manager and me. We decided what we wanted to provide then each person put it together how they thought best and then we tidied it up to make it consistent.  Each section is 4 or 5 pages of text and images.  We will add more as we go along but wanted to get the structure and the basics there to start with. 
The tab is now being tested by the rest of the department and will then go live to all students and staff next week.  As it is aimed at HE students we are going to create a Prezi to highlight the resources with practical examples of using them - how and where to search and what to do with the results.  This will have to be in January as we literally have no time to spend on it at the moment although we are delivering follow up sessions on demand at the moment.  A January start for the presentation will work as we are getting another IQER inspection in February so it will fit in well with that in the Spring term.
It will look similar to this (although it's not live just yet).



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