New from Seneca Libraries! Embedded Subject Guides in Blackboard Course Pages | Academic Newsletter | Seneca Polytechnic

by Emily Dracup, Seneca Libraries

in the December 2018 issue

If you want your students to use Seneca Libraries’ resources in their research assignments, then consider embedding a library subject guide in your Blackboard course page. Subject guides contain recommended resources curated by your subject librarians. Think of subject guides as a direct line to trusted academic resources that can help your students who are tempted or overwhelmed by the plethora of unreliable sources generally found online.

Research on the topic of embedding library resources within the learning management system (LMS) has found a variety of benefits. Western University integrated subject guides into its LMS for targeted courses and found a strong correlation between the integration and an increase in visits to the subject guides. Page counts for guides connected to the LMS more than doubled, while page counts for guides not connected to the LMS experienced a slight decline (Isard, Seale, & Sloan, 2016). When Penn State integrated subject guides in all course pages, it attributed nearly a quarter of the increase in guide visits to embedding the subject guides within the LMS (Clossen, 2018). These increased visits to subject guides mean that students are increasingly exposed to the preferred academic resources available to them.

Student responses to various library-LMS integrations have been promising. Comments from Western University students suggested that they found it convenient and useful for assignments (Isard, Seale, & Sloan, 2016). In a Penn State survey of students issued in one of the pilot classes for the integration project, 88% indicated that they would want guides to be included in their future LMS (Clossen & Klimczyk, 2018). An early pilot of subject guide integration into Blackboard courses at Seneca has solicited similarly positive feedback from participating faculty – “This is excellent” and “Of course I will do this, this is fantastic!”

By enabling the Library Resources tool in your Blackboard course page, ‘Library Resources’ will display as a menu item. When students click on this menu item, the recommended subject guide for their program will be featured within the Blackboard frame.

This means fewer clicks for students to find recommended resources on their subject area.

Are you interested in enabling the Library Resources tool in your course? Send us an email at librarians@senecacollege.ca to let us know which course you are teaching and we will assign your course code to the appropriate subject guide. After that, there are just a few quick steps for you to follow:

1. Click on the + sign to create a new menu item and select “Tool Link.”
2. Name your Tool Link “Library Resources” and select the Type “Library Resources.”
3. Checkmark “Available to Users” and click Submit.

Questions? Let us know at librarians@senecacollege.ca!

References

View the December 2018 issue of the Academic Newsletter.