Instruction for Mines Online

What is Information Literacy Instruction?

Information literacy is a set of competencies designed to prepare the 21st century student for our information overloaded world. Through our instruction services, students learn to: research effectively and competently, evaluate the quality of the information they find and synthesize a variety of sources into a coherent whole.

What is it Based on?

All of our instruction services are based on the Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education and the goals and learning outcomes for each course.

For Fully or Partially Online Courses, We Offer

Canvas Discussion Boards and Modules

An instruction librarian can embed in your Canvas course to support the research needs of your students throughout the course.  We can facilitate a discussion board for questions that come up as students are conducting research and completing assignments.  We can also design modules, assignments and even quizzes specific to your learning objectives and course content.

Virtual Instruction Sessions

Utilizing active learning when possible, our sessions can range from 15 minutes to a full class session or more. Sessions are tailored to your specific assignments and learning objectives.

For fully online courses we can design sessions that are delivered synchronously or asynchronously via Zoom and Canvas.  Sessions can offered multiple times or recorded, in a large group or smaller ones, to best suit the needs of you and your students.

Research Guides and Tutorials

We have designed a range of guides for subjects and courses across the Mines curriculum. We also have a growing collection of video and click-through tutorials on foundational research skills. Not finding a guide or tutorial to fit your needs? Contact us.

Assignment Consultation

We can work with you to design assignments or formative assessments to help students explore information literacy concepts. Some of our past assignments have included: quizzes in Canvas, scavenger hunts and worksheets to help students focus topics or explore research materials.

We can also help you evaluate current research assignments from a research skills perspective to ensure students have access to the support and materials necessary to complete the prompt.

Book a Librarian Virtual Meetings

For fully online courses we can offer individual research consultations with students via Zoom.  Consultations are typically 20 to 30 minutes long, synchronous meetings.  They can be assigned as a course assignment or offered for students to voluntarily complete.  We can help them with topic selection and refinement for assignments, finding resources and evaluating the information they find.

Special Topics

Some of the specialized topics we have covered in the past include:

• Finding Statistical information
• Using government information
• Patents and grey literature
• Maps
• Historic mines
• Using primary sources and archival materials