Library Research Tutorial - FAQs for Faculty: Home

The Library Research Tutorial provides an overview of library research tools and services via Canvas. 

This online learning experience allows students to learn or refresh their information literacy skills at their own pace, outside of classroom time, and self-assess their skills and understanding of key concepts.

The Library Research Tutorial is comprised of six lessons addressing these research-related topics:

1. Steps of the Research Process
2. Searching the Catalog
3. Finding Articles (using library databases)
4. Locating Full Text and Using Interlibrary Loan
5. Searching the Web and Evaluating Sources
6. Citing Sources, Avoiding Plagiarism

The Library Research Tutorial is available in the Canvas Commons. Uncheck "Show Public Resources" or search for "Library Research Tutorial". There are 6 sections of content, plus a pretest. For best results, import the entire course into your desired course. You will then be able to remove any sections that don't meet your needs. Also make sure you adjust the points value of quizzes to match your grading scheme.

Please email Laurinda Weisse with any questions, problems or feedback. 

A large majority of enrolled students (79%) successfully pased all six quizzes in the Library Tutorial between Fall 2011 and Spring 2015.

2014-15 student responses to the Tutorial’s “usefulness” survey question (n=183).

The above figure illustrates most students reported strong agreement or agreement they had learned something useful in each of the Tutorial’s six lessons.

Students should correctly answer 75% of the questions in either the optional pretest or in all six quizzes to "pass" the tutorial. Students may take the optional pretest only once, but they may retake the six quizzes as many times as needed to earn a passing score. The pretest and quizzes are randomly drawn from a larger pool of questions.

Past experience has shown making the Tutorial a required assignment does yield greater participation, but student feedback has been very positive!

Student FAQs:

• What happens if a student is assigned the Library Research Tutorial in two different classes?
  Because the tutorial is embedded directly in each class, you will have to complete the Research Tutorial separately for each class. However, do look for and take the library pretest, as this will allow you to skip the other quizzes if you pass!
   
• How long does it take to complete the Tutorial?
  Many students report it takes about two hours to complete all six lessons and quizzes.  If a student passes the optional pretest, this time is considerably shortened.