Learning & teaching: useful resources
Below is a collection of useful reports, websites, blogposts etc. relevant to the library technology used to support learning and teaching:
Campaign to investigate the academic ebook market
Also known as EbookSOS, this group was organised by a group of university librarians to raise awareness of the perceived unfair pricing and restrictive access models of ebooks and etextbooks.
Background reading on the etextbook market and issues
From the EbookSOS campaign website above.
Farewell discovery – hello curation and engagement
UKSG Conference 12-14 April 2021 (Group A Breakout session No. 8 ).
Over the last 20 years or so, universities have made considerable investments in library centric discovery services. Nevertheless, for some students, especially undergraduates, discovery has become largely irrelevant. They simply log on to their learning management system to find ready prepared links to the print and electronic resources they need that week for their course or module. This is typically because the learning system is linked to a library managed reading/resource list solution. Reading/resource list solutions are essentially ‘curation’ tools. By curation I mean selecting, refining and arranging to add value. The content of a reading list is curated primarily by academics who select the best resources and list them.
The next step is helping students engage with the content. This has become increasingly important in a ‘flipped classroom’ environment where COVID has accelerated the trend to an online learning environment. We are now seeing the rise of specific solutions to better enable engagement with content. They typically encourage group ‘community’ interaction with students who are asked to analyse the content and engage with the reading itself. This UKSG presentation describes and analyses this important trend towards the better curation of, and engagement with content. It encourage librarians to work more closely with university teaching and learning staff and technologists to adopt approaches and solutions that help students better engage with content which, in turn will lead to better learning outcomes.
Wonkhe. [blog] 28 March 2021.
“In the time since a small group of academic librarians launched the #ebooksos campaign with an Open Letter asking for an investigation into the academic ebook publishing industry, we have faced some questioning of our actions. In spite of the letter having attracted, at the time of writing, signatures from over 3800 librarians, lecturers, students, heads of services, university senior managers and two vice chancellors, indicating that the cost and availability of ebooks is a significant concern across the sector, there have still been suggestions that perhaps we could sit down and discuss the issues with the publishers instead.
However, these issues are not new. The pandemic has brought the lack of availability of ebooks for institutional access, and the astronomical prices and restrictive licences under which those which are available can be procured, into sharp focus, but librarians have been dealing with this situation for a long time. Dialogue with publishers has been attempted, but it went nowhere useful. The investigation route was not a knee-jerk reaction to being unable to obtain the resources that we need for our students; it was the only option that those of us who set up the campaign could see remaining.”
E-Textbooks – scandal or market imperative?
Anderson, J., Ayris, P., White, B. (2021) LSE Impact. 17.03.21
UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship (2021) On Monday 15th March 2021, the UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship hosted a webinar in conjunction with Copyright4Knowledge that aimed to examine the acute difficulties for higher education and public libraries caused by publishers’ pricing and licensing practices and discuss some possible solutions.
Meeting the Reading List Challenge: reading list
A reading list of useful articles on reading lists and reading list software from the Meeting the Reading List Challenge website (Loughborough University)
Digital-first and student success with Talis Aspire at Northumbria University Natalie Naik. 14 October 2019
The library at Northumbria University and Talis have worked in partnership to develop library analytics for student success. The university has been working with the Civitas Learning student success analytics solution. Blog post The blog links to a more in depth white paper:-
“At Northumbria University, an institutional Educational Analytics project in partnership with Civitas Learning required sources of data from across the university to supply a custom predictive model designed to generate actionable insight and facilitate intervention. Given academic libraries are multidisciplinary resources used by all students and that sector research has previously demonstrated the relationship between library use and student success we felt we had a clear value proposition to offer to our University’s Educational Analytics project and in so doing, a chance to make a new contribution to student success.”
It highlights the central role for Library centric reading list solutions (Northumbria use Talis Aspire:
“Through our long-term partnership with faculty, our reading list service had achieved a critical mass of content and had become a key online destination for students, attracting a wide range of student learning activity in one place”.
Presentation at UKSG Conference . April 2018
A focus on measurement and assessment of teaching and learning outcomes has become entrenched in policy and the strategies of academic institutions. In the UK this trend has crystallised in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). Librarians are increasingly managing course specific resources that up to now had been the province of the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) or digital textbook platforms. This session looks at the impacts on content and licensing, e-textbooks and the potential merging of library and educational technology.
Creating effective and interesting reading lists
Edyta Krol University of West London Coffee Break Tips [blog] 2017
“Some recommendations, which can help make RL more interesting and effective in terms of developing students’ learning”