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Archive for February, 2015

How ReadingLists@UCL can help you at exam time

By Sandra Bamborough, on 26 February 2015

Many UCL courses have an online reading list to guide you in your study. Reading lists are a tailored list of resources which may include links to full text readings, library books or TV clips, which you can access online anywhere, any time.

Your reading list is an essential tool to help you revise for your exams.  It might contain readings which you have read in preparation for class, and they are a quick and easy way for you to look back over them when doing your revision.  Many readings might be key texts which link out to full-text e-journal articles, or e-books.  Where books are in the library, you will see links to the library catalogue (Explore) so you can instantly check whether the book is on the shelf and place a reservation if it is on loan.

Where your tutors have written notes to guide you, or tags to show which resources are essential reading, these will also prove helpful as you go back over the resources you have used this year.   You can sort the list by importance and refer back to any of your own notes that you may have added (remember to sign in first!).  Perhaps most importantly, you can export the readings into a different citation format, invaluable when referencing your sources.

Access the reading lists for your courses directly through Moodle via a link in the ‘Library resources’ block (where you can also see any relevant Online Exam Papers).  Search the ReadingLists@UCL homepage by module code or title, or by your lecturer’s name if they have made this available. You can also browse by department or search Explore, the library catalogue.

You can find more information on the student information webpage for reading lists and if you need any help do please contact your Subject or Site Librarian!

Good luck!

Student engagement at UCLU Education Conference

By Sandra Bamborough, on 24 February 2015

This Saturday 21st February Hazel and I took the ReadingLists@UCL advocacy campaign

Photo Hazel & Sandra 2

into the student heartland of the UCLU Education Conference, held this year at the Institute of Child Health.

Our stall gave us the opportunity showcase the highlights and benefits of the online reading lists in a very visual manner that appealed to the attendees.

 

 

We showed students that online reading lists allowed them to view readings in different citation styles, or export the citations to Endnote, Reference Manager, Zotero etc. for use in their work; they could sort the resources on their list by ‘type’ or ‘importance’, for example to group all essential readings together.  In essence, they could make the list their own by adding private notes and a reading status for each item.

Photo Sandra & student

Many of the students were unaware of the online reading lists and when shown the benefits were very impressed and determined to ask their lecturers why their courses did not have one!   Some students actually discovered they did have a reading list – only they hadn’t been shown how to access it, and were delighted to find they could do so seamlessly from Moodle, as long as the course tutor or administrator had remembered to switch on the Library Resources block.

 

 

The Student Academic Representatives, or StARS as they are better known, were particularly impressed. They will be taking back the message that online reading lists are an essential part of the student learning experience at UCL and need to be more widely adopted by departments across UCL.

We reminded the students that ReadingLists@UCL are best for:

  • Revising from home
  • Clear guidance on essential / recommended readings
  • Distance learning courses
  • Many full text readings so no need to visit the library…
  • …but also, live links to the library catalogue to see if books are on the shelf right now! If not, just click through to reserve books
  • Making your own notes on each reading
  • Consistency across programmes

 

For information and FAQs for students, visit www.ucl.ac.uk/library/teaching-support/reading-lists/student

And the winners are…

By Sandra Bamborough, on 3 February 2015

Congratulations to the winners of our competition to win BoB treats!

BoB RL prize 20.1.15

You may recall a UCL Library tweet (@UCLLibraries) in which we said the first online reading lists with links to BoB (Box of Broadcasts) would win some BoB treats.   René Weis, Jonathan Kendall and Suzanne Jago were the creative academics to first use BoB in their teaching, and added links to their online reading lists.  As René even has two BoB entries in one list, he is arguably the number one user of BoB in reading lists at UCL!

BoB is a broadcast service that UCL subscribes to.  It allows educational use of TV and radio programmes:

  • Share a link to a programme with your students, add a link to an online reading list or even tweet it
  • Save clips from programmes and create playlists
  • Programmes can be viewed by any BoB users, which includes all registered students and staff at UCL (only inside the UK).
  • Using BoB in your teaching helps stay copyright compliant

 

To add a link to a BoB programme in your online reading list:

  • Log in to BoB using your UCL sign in and password
  • Navigate to the programme you wish to add to your reading list and click on its title
  • Press the reading lists button ‘Add to My Bookmarks’
  • Change Resource Type from ‘Webpage’ to ‘Audio-visual document’ and add new fields to enrich the data e.g. date, publisher, author
  • Click ‘Create & Add to List’ to add reading to a particular list and also your bookmarks OR click ‘Create’ to just save the resource in your bookmarks to add to your list at a future date
  • ‘Save draft’ or ‘Publish’ changes to your reading list. Saving a draft will mean that no one but you can see the changes.  To enable students to see the updates, use ‘Publish’.  This makes the changes available immediately.

 

By the way, in case you’re itching to know – the winning entries are:

http://readinglists.ucl.ac.uk/items/C88A7D92-AE64-2AB9-B773-F8F695C643A5
for Shakespeare Wallah – ENGL3002: Shakespeare
http://readinglists.ucl.ac.uk/items/7BA9F2D1-2D74-B6D5-6E4F-3FC9417FD995
for Macbeth – ENGL3002: Shakespeare
http://readinglists.ucl.ac.uk/items/06471272-C340-6F08-ECA8-56512046EFF5
for Mona Lisa – ENVS1019: Making Cities
http://readinglists.ucl.ac.uk/items/7E0443B2-9922-0EEA-AD1D-B6CAACB410C5
for Educating the East End – HCSCGS11: Professional and Clinical Studies I

 

Do get in touch if we can help further!