A part of the library's mission is to provide resources and support for faculty teaching and educational initiatives. Library staff are available to assist faculty with course development and management as well as assessment.
As you prepare for classes, consider using Open Education Resources (OER).
OER are learning objects that have a copyright license which allows for the resources to be freely used and revised without permission. They can range from full, peer-reviewed textbooks to worksheets and lesson plans. These educational resources can help you by providing tools to use in your class. They can also help your students because they could be used to replace high-cost materials.
Want to learn more? Check out the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition OER Fact Sheet.
Interested in adopting OER for your class? Visit some of these popular OER repositories:
Questions? Contact Faith Rusk at faith.rusk@udc.edu.
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a great tool for teaching because it provides scholarly information for students and faculty in a cost-conscious manner.
The DOAJ's mission is to increase the visibility, accessibility, reputation, usage and impact of quality, peer-reviewed, open access scholarly research journals globally, regardless of discipline, geography or language. DOAJ will work with editors, publishers and journal owners to help them understand the value of best practice publishing and standards and apply those to their own operations. DOAJ is committed to being 100% independent and maintaining all of its services and metadata as free to use or reuse for everyone.
Visit the DOAJ here.
The mission of the Center for the Advancement of Learning (CAL) is to promote effective and innovative instruction and course design across all colleges and campuses. CAL supports the advancement of evidence-based teaching practices that promote learning and the professional development of all members of UDC’s teaching community.
You can learn more about CAL on their website.
To request a consultation session with CAL, please complete the consultation request form.
CAL also provides a special collection of books focused on teaching and learning. These items are available for circulation to faculty. You can learn more about the collection in this video. A current list of titles is available in the document below.
The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) intersects teaching and research practices and places student learning at the center of its efforts. SoTL researchers identify a line of inquiry, gather/analyze relevant data, and share findings/conclusions with peers—to encourage peer evaluation, revisions of their research, and refined practices for student learning. Collegiality is key to SoTL research, as are deep levels of learner engagement.
CAL uses SoTL research and practice to inform faculty/staff consultations, course design activities, campus-wide professional development workshops on quality classroom practices, and campus-wide engagement in digital learning practices. CAL focuses on traditional, online, and hybrid modalities throughout these efforts.
CAL encourages faculty who are interested in engaging in SoTL practices or in learning from existing SoTL research to explore the scholarship of teaching and learning guide.
Blackboard is UDC’s learning management system (LMS). It is available for faculty, students, and staff. For academic purposes, it is primarily used to facilitate instruction, manage courses (traditional, online, and hybrid), administer assessments, collaborate with students or colleagues using Web 2.0 media and applications, facilitate organizations, and manage assignments. It is a rich and powerful tool. To view UDC’s Blackboard policy, click here.
You can learn more about using Blackboard here.
The library is happy to provide information about it's resources and services for any of your Blackboard courses. This can include embedding guides and librarians into the course itself.
The UDC Library can place materials related to your course in a special location with restricted circulation rules. These may be items that the library already owns or may be supplied by you. Instructors are welcome to donate materials to the library after the course ends.
The purpose of reserves is provide access to material required by or needed in classes.
You can read more about reserves and fill out the reserves form here.
The library encourages all faculty to add information about the library to their syllabus. We offer the following sample language for you to use. You may use the language in its entirety or adapt the language to suit your needs.
Our librarians are also available to offer draft language tailored specifically to your class. Contact us at ask@udc.libanswers.com to request individualized syllabus language.
Note: If you are using the language in the Long Version, our opening hours change during the summer session. You can always see our current hours here.
In this course, you are encouraged to use the library’s resources and services. The library provides access to books, articles, videos, and other materials. Librarians can help you find resources, help with search strategies, identify the best resources, develop citations, and more.
The library is located in Building 39, Level B and is open Monday through Friday (8am to 11pm) and Saturday (8am to 6:30pm). At the library, you can use computers; print ($.10/page), copy($.10/page), and scan; check out books; and receive research assistance.
Librarians are available by email (ask@udc.libanswers.com), phone (202-274-5104), online chat, and in-person. You can request an individual appointment online at udc.libcal.com/appointments/.
More information about the library and access to online resources is available at udc.libguides.com.
In this course, you are encouraged to use the library’s resources and services. The library provides access to books, articles, videos, and other materials. Librarians can help you find resources, help with search strategies, identify the best resources, develop citations, and more. Help is available via email, phone, online chat, in-person, or by appointment. You can learn more about the library at udc.libguides.com.
Textbooks used in this course are available at the library on Course Reserve. These items may be checked out for two hours at a time. You may read, photocopy, and scan these items. Course Reserves are located at the Circulation Desk. To check out these items, bring your student ID to the Circulation Desk and provide the item’s call number and title. You can also search for Course Reserves in the library’s online catalog.
[Note: If you are using items on reserve, we recommend listing the particular items here (with their call number) to make it easier for students to access the material.]
Depending on your course, you may want to include some or all of the following information in your syllabus.
Sample language for each of these items can be found in the tabs above.
Not all students arrive on campus with experience in library work or academic research. You may want to provide them access to our “crash course” in using the library.
Sample Text:
If you don’t know where to start your research, the library has an online guide to help you get started: https://udc.libguides.com/libraryorientation
The library provides curated guides with recommended resources and tools in numerous subject areas. We also provide Help guides which walk students through how to find articles, books, citing sources, and evaluating sources. In some instances, we can also create specific course related guides. It can be helpful to direct students to guides which may be relevant to your course. All of our guides can be found here.
Sample Text:
To help jumpstart your research, you might want to check out these online library guides: [Provide links to specific guides.]
We offer access to over 200 databases. Not all databases will be relevant for your course. You can recommend students look at specific databases which are most useful to the assignments in your course.
Sample Text:
The following library databases will be most relevant for the assignments in this course. You can access all of these through the library at: https://udc.libguides.com/az.php [List recommended databases by name.]
The library is creating video tutorials to help students navigate the library’s resources and tools. You can direct students to our YouTube account or to specific tutorials.
Sample Text:
Check-out the library’s YouTube page for video tutorials that walk you through how to access and use library resources and services: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRqEVm42k971Jy4_fOb9bkQ
Successful course development and teaching require careful consideration and planning. An important part of this process is selecting material. Material selection informs not only what students will learn but also how faculty can teach. During course development, it is important to consider the following factors when selecting material:
In addition to these core factors of course development, it is important to include the following factors for evaluation:
