University faculty may request a special class session with instruction tailored to course objectives and students' needs. If so desired, you may complete and submit an online request form or contact one of following college librarians: Boris Teske, College of Applied & Natural Sciences Sue McFadden, College of Business Lynell Buckley, College of Education Kevin Cuccia, College of Engineering & Science Boris Teske, College of Liberal Arts

Effective Library Instruction in the Electronic Classroom

We know that your time with students is limited, so working together would help us to customize a class session, or more than one, that will benefit everyone involved.

To allow us to prepare a session which is tailored to your course and helpful to your students, please give us at least 2 weeks notice.

Students routinely tell us on the class evaluations that their learning experience with us would be more productive if they came with a topic in mind. A trip to the library may seem like a great starting point, but the library instruction session is more effective when it complements your instruction and meets your expectations for a particular research project or paper.

You might think in terms of targeting what you would prefer the class session to cover. Below is a list of common activities and an estimated amount of time it takes to undertake each one. Expect times to vary from instructor to instructor.

Estimates of Time Allotment

The Library Website (5 minutes) - acquaints students with locating and navigating the Library Website
The Library Catalog (15 minutes) - explains and demonstrates how to locate books, periodicals, and government documents
Indexes of general-interest articles (15 minutes) - explains and demonstrates how to retrieve listings of articles in scholarly journals, magazines, or newspapers using Academic Search Premier
Search strategy techniques (10 minutes) - demonstrates browsing by subject categories or searching by keywords using Boolean operators, truncation, and nesting
Indexes of specialized articles (20 minutes) - explains and demonstrates more advanced searching, for example, using controlled vocabulary and field tags, in discipline-specific databases such as Engineering Village, ERIC, Medline, MLA International Bibliography, or PsycINFO
Distinction between popular magazines and scholarly journals (10 minutes)

The Electronic Classroom affords your students opportunities for active learning during demonstrations and, time permitting, hands-on practice.

Please let us know if you would like us to address any resources or skills not mentioned here.