In this months newsletter we look at the changes to Academic Librarian attachments to the Schools, new collaborative projects within the team and a refresher on our e-book collection.
Academic Librarian changes
The team of Academic Librarians, and Assistant Academic Librarians work closely with the Schools to support a range of teaching, learning and research needs. The recent changes to the composition of all Schools has led to the fragmentation of support offered by the Academic Librarians and so change is necessary to streamline and improve how the team supports each School.
The new alignment is as follows
School of Computing, Engineering and Digital Technologies
School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Law
School of Health and Life Sciences
Teesside University International Business School
School of Arts and Creative Industries
The changes came into effect in February but there will be a transitionary period whilst online material is updated, and teaching and other commitments are fulfilled.
Collaborative projects undertaken by the Learning and Skills Development (LSD) Team in Student and Library Services (SLS)
As part of our commitment to providing support for learning, teaching and research activities the LSD team work in collaboration with many colleagues across the University. Here are some current examples.
SHLS Essay Writing Skills optional module
Two of our Academic Librarians, Iain Baird and Clare Snowdon and our Head of Learning Development, Sue Myer worked with Helen Tidy, PL (Learning and Teaching) in SHLS to put together this optional module. This joint venture is one of the activities that has arisen from the University’s Learning and Teaching Retention Project. In Semester 1 it was offered to all new undergraduate students to introduce them to some key academic skills, and it gave them the opportunity to then practice those skills by writing a formative 500 word essay. Students who chose to submit an essay were given feedback on two areas for improvement and two positives.
The following sessions were delivered via Teams over four consecutive weeks:
- Finding quality information
- Academic writing
- Structuring assignments
- Referencing and citations
Recordings of the sessions were made available to students who were unable to attend the live sessions. There were formative quizzes at the end of each session. Having trialled the module in Semester 1 it was offered to all new undergraduate and postgraduate SHLS students in Semester 2 with approximately 650 students signing up in total.
Support for SCEDT international students
There is currently a lot of information that is useful to international students in many different places on the University website. After a request from some of the Academics in SCEDT to help support international students, Academic Librarian Sharron Woolley approached Dominic Dunn (PL International SCEDT). They decided to create 3 gateway pages help international students navigate through all the information that is available to support them:
- Facilities and resources in SCEDT
- Life at Teesside
- Studies and learning
When completed the pages will be available on the SCEDT Unity site.
PASS (Peer Assisted Study Sessions)
PASS is an internationally recognised scheme whereby volunteer students are trained to mentor and guide students in lower years to support their learning through study sessions. It has been running at Teesside since 2014, currently in 14 courses/modules. The PASS Team in SLS work in collaboration with academics to find suitable modules for it to run in. Once established, a named academic for each course/module meets regularly with a PASS Supervisor and the student PASS leaders. These meetings offer support to the Leaders and allow the academics to get real time feedback on issues the students are facing with the course. If you are interested in finding out more about how we can introduce PASS into your course/module, please see our PASS page: https://libguides.tees.ac.uk/pass or email pass@tees.ac.uk
SSHL student internship
Academic Librarian Fran Porritt approached Ben Lamb (SSHL Research Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Media) to explore collaborative options to help promote the SLS Book Group. The result was using the SSHL school wide level 5 employability module to find a student intern who produced marketing and publicity materials, including a newsletter. This student continues to work with Fran despite having finished the module.
The success of this partnership led to continued engagement with the module and the current student intern is working to gather feedback and co-produce a small selection of study skills materials.
Workshops in March
Our popular informal academic skills workshops continue in Semester 2. There is a blended programme of on campus sessions (booking required) and online sessions (no booking needed).
Please promote the workshops to your students. If you think a whole cohort would benefit from attending a session, please contact your Academic Librarian to arrange for a bespoke session to be delivered to them.
For more information see:
E-books
Continuing our feature on resources available from Student and Library Services. This month we are focusing on our e-book collection.
Teesside University Library subscribes to a range of e-book collections. These are searchable via Discovery, but can also be accessed individually from the e-books collections page.
Our largest collection is Ebook Central, which is a collection of over 210,000 books and other authoritative content to which we have full-text access. It covers multiple subject areas. Here is a short overview video.
E-books have the benefit of being available 24/7 both on and off campus. Here is a short video explaining how you can add e-books to your reading lists.
Further information on all aspects of browsing and accessing the e-book collection at Teesside can be found here in the E-books@Tees guide.
Credits:
Created with images by Pexels - "fountain pen note notebook" • crystal710 - "event venue auditorium meeting" • DariuszSankowski - "paper heart symbol" • Pexels - "kindle ereader tablet"