Students, ever wondered how to stay on the right side of copyright while diving into your course readings? We’ve got just the thing for you and it’s way more fun than it sounds!

Save the Date:

Tuesday 25th November

Just outside the IoE Library
11am – 2pm

Colin the Copyright Nerd

Swing by for a morning  of copyright wisdom, sweet treats, and a chance to win big! Meet the one and only “ Colin the Copyright Nerd”,  yes he’s real, well, to be more precise he’s not, he’s AI  generated, but he’s here to help you unravel the mysteries of copyright. Come and play the  “Copyright for Humans” game and see if you can become the wise owl of copyright !

Owl postcard for readinglists@ucl

Got thoughts on your online reading list? We want to hear them! Take our quick online survey and help us make your experience of using your reading lists even better.

And because we love to spoil you, we have :

• £25 Loveshop vouchers up for grabs
  

  Loveshop_voucher

• Lollipops and chocolate for everyone
• A whole lot of copyright and reading list fun!

So come for the treats, and leave a little wiser about copyright and your online reading lists. What more could you ask for?

Using the Explore catalogue to find reading lists

Teaching and Learning services (TLS) are regularly making reading list information available via the Explore catalogue. This means you can search the catalogue by module code and/or module title for your favourite reading list !

Only published reading lists or lists with unpublished changes (not blank lists) will be made available on a monthly basis.

To help you find your lists, here is a short video that shows you how you can filter to reading lists via the Explore catalogue.

Don’t worry you can still find lists at the usual home page for reading lists or via your Moodle course.

If you have any problems accessing reading lists via Explore, please do not hesitate to contact – readinglists@ucl.ac.uk

It is that time of the year to submit this summer’s past exam papers !

Image of student studying and Portico

If you would like to submit past exam papers to Teaching and Learning Services (TLS) here’s how to do it !

First method

Download a local copy of the metadata sheet, and add a line of metadata for each exam paper you are submitting, and then email the PDFs together with the completed metadata sheet to readinglists@ucl.ac.uk. There is an example line at the top of the metadata sheet. Feel free to delete this before proceeding.

Second method

Download a local copy of the metadata sheet and add a line of metadata for each exam paper you are submitting. Then upload the PDFs of the exam papers, together with the completed metadata sheet to the ‘Exam Papers Submission’ sharepoint folder‘.

Within the sharepoint folder, create a departmental folder containing your PDFs (e.g. ‘Anthropology 2023) and metadata sheet. TLS will get an automatic alert and will process the papers in due course. There is an example line at the top of the metadata sheet. Feel free to delete this before proceeding.

Please note: You may need to click on “skip verification” if you are off-site to access the metadata sheet.

Which method to use

It does not matter which method you use, but method 2, using the Sharepoint folder is best for larger submissions, which may exceed the maximum size for an email.

In both cases a metadata sheet needs to be completed and submitted along with the exam papers. This is to ensure that each paper has the correct metadata when uploaded to the Explore library catalogue. Please ensure you make clear which line in the metadata sheet relates to which exam paper being submitted, and that you adhere to consistent naming between the PDFs and the metadata.

Once you have submitted your paper(s) using one of the above methods, TLS will contact you to let you know once the process is complete, and your papers will be available on Explore and Digital Collections

Please see our webpages for further information – https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/digital-collections/collections/exam, and FAQS.

Please note that we have a rolling three or five  year collection of past exam papers depending on departmental needs. However we are now currently in the process of removing any papers prior to 2019, so if you want up-to-date papers to be made available, get submitting now !! 

If you have any queries at all about the process, please don’t hesitate to email readinglists@ucl.ac.uk.

‘Tribute to Roger Ebert’ by get directly down

Our colleagues in Digital Eduction have recently been working on updating the UCL E-Learning Baseline.

The e-learning Baseline is now included in the Academic Manual, and offers a best practice template for taught courses at UCL, setting out the minimum expectations of a module.  One of the drivers is to support students who need consistent and clear information on their module, readings and assessments.

The baseline includes a requirement to have a reading list for students and recommends ReadingLists@UCL; it also clarifies that UCL policy is to have reading materials available for students 48 hours before teaching (both in section 5: Resources).

Providing consistency across programmes, and clarity of what reading is required, is one of the most positive feedback messages we have had from students about ReadingLists@UCL.  For some modules their reading requirements are spread over a handbook, with sometimes different or additional information in Moodle, and by email: having one consistent place to check makes their life much easier.  This also helps the library ensure books and journals are provided in time, and can translate into good feedback for your module.

Though reading lists themselves don’t have a baseline, we do run ‘Best practice’ sessions for academics.

In a Best Practice Reading Lists session last year we spoke to teaching staff in the Engineering department about recent research around how students use reading lists, and what potential barriers they find in understanding what is required of them, or accessing their essential readings in time.  All barriers are very simple to overcome, for example by using the controlled language provided by the ‘Essential’ ‘Optional’ tags on each reading; and dividing the list into sections by topic or by week needed.  Enriching your list with personal annotations really helps students understand whether you are pointing to a few readings that could be useful, or a seminal text they can’t get by without.  Some academics even like to point to readings they don’t believe have very good arguments, or are based in another library to oblige the student visit another institution: this is also helpful to make clear!

This is the Best Practice reading list of a very few resources used during our session.

Would you like a similar session for your department, or a quick 1:1 to look at your module?  Or would you find a baseline for reading lists a helpful guide?  You can reach us by email, or call or visit the TLS.

The ReadingLists@UCL software is provided by a company called Talis.  We have worked closely with them over the years to develop our service; feedback from UCL academics and students have led to improvements to the reading lists for everyone.

This week we co-hosted an event with Talis, attended by librarians and learning technologist from other Universities.  Some of the presentations and discussion really gave me pause for thought.

June Hedges reminded us that the UCL student body has more than doubled in the past ten years.  Budgets, space and resources certainly haven’t kept up with this amazing growth, so reading lists really is one of the essential value-for-money services we can offer:

• using the lists to deliver readings digitised under the CLA licence, so paper print readings can reach all students on a taught module
• to make the most of existing electronic resources by bookmarking articles, e-books and film direct to the reading list
• … and in doing this, students clicks on key readings maintain the resources’ high usage statistics, which helps to ensure they continue to be funded for purchase.  (Adding a copied pdf into Moodle, by comparison, will mean no measureable indication that the journal is being used).

Eugene Walker from the School of Managment gave a wonderful insight into how his department has identified the benefits to using ReadingLists@UCL, wanted their students to have the improved academic experience, and doggedly set about improving their uptake!  They have some subject specific resources which they use to create excellent, helpful lists for students.  They also have some self-imposed ambitious targets for next year.

Goldsmiths had a similar approach to UCL, explained by Maria O’Hara: they aimed to thoroughly use their online reading lists from the start.  In their statistics they count reading lists which are set up, populated, and have the key texts purchased or digitised.  That is a great deal of work, but sets a wonderfully high standard for their users.

Something else I took away and will be working on this year, is looking ahead. One measure of our success last year was reaching the target of 65% coverage of reading lists for taught course modules.  This year we are focussing on:

• Quality and currency.  Excellently resourced lists that are updated regularly, are enriched by commentary or notes, and excellently resourced.
• Best practice.  What makes a good list?  Do you know if students are engaging with all or some of the list, or what they need from a list?  We will use research, student feedback and analytics to suggest best practice.
• Use in teaching and research. Academic staff have told us how they use reading lists in the classroom for teaching, it would be good to capture this for peer-to-peer use.  We will also suggest ways to use lists as a tool to engage students in learning through research.

Everyone seemed engaged in the conversation and the TLS team certainly came away re-inspired with some academic-new-year resolutions for online reading lists.

The question we are asked most often by teaching staff is why not just use Moodle for providing links and pdfs to readings?  Today’s case study shows one student’s experience of this.

Easy access for students?

A student contacted the library e-resources team as she had difficulty accessing an article online.  Her Moodle course is well organised and gives key readings with some great context and reading notes.  Several of the readings, however, led to an error page instead of the online article.

This is happening for two reasons.  The URL for the reading was copied and pasted directly from the web address bar.  For some resources, such as OVID, the web address contains session information or search terms: it is not a stable link.  When re-visited later, the link no longer works.

A second problem is that even if a stable link is used, it does not include the information which prompts students to log in with their UCL details.

In the majority of cases, both these issues can be resolved by bookmarking from ReadingLists@UCL in the recommended way – using a bookmarking button, much like Pinterest or del.icio.us.  When you first set up a list we will offer a quick orientation to show you how to do this.

For a handful of specialist databases, bookmarking requires an extra step. You can ‘Request review’ when your list is complete, and TLS will check and amend links for you; or ask TLS to create the bookmarks for you.  For those who prefer to be self-sufficient we have some guides: in the tag cloud to the right, click on ‘Non-standard bookmarking‘.

How can this situation be avoided on your course?

• Set up an online reading list and have a brief orientation with TLS
• Switch on the ‘Library Resources’ block to make a stable link from Moodle to the online list
• Let your students know about the online reading list!
• Remove any articles from Moodle to avoid duplication of work, and confusion for students

I am very pleased to report that ReadingLists@UCL has reached its target for July 2017: 65% of taught courses at UCL now have an online reading list.

The target was set in the UCL Library Services Strategy to have 65% coverage by the end of July 2017. 65% equates to more than 3,000 reading lists, and forty-one departments have met, or exceeded 65% coverage. To show how far we have come, the first measurement of the new system in October 2014 showed a baseline of around 29% coverage.

Librarians, administrators and academics have worked hard to embrace the online reading lists, with the aim of providing excellent quality guidance and resources to students. With a wealth of e-resources available to us at UCL, many essential texts link to full-text readings, or are digitised using our CLA licence.

Here are some figures. Between 1st September 2016 and 31st July:

• there were more than 460,000 visitors
• the top visited reading list was ‘ANTH1001 Introduction to material and visual culture’ with 5425 page views
• total visits each month have been consistently higher than in the same period last year
• the busiest month was October 2016 with more than 70,000 visits
• … and around two-thirds of these were returning visitors, demonstrating that students return to lists rather than look just once.

You can read more about online reading lists on our webpages and in our ReadingLists@UCL blog.  And of course do get in touch if you would like to know more!

Happy new year! 2016 was a good year for ReadingLists@UCL.

Here is our year in numbers

• 2705 lists were set up by December 2016. Which represented:
• 57% of all taught modules having an online reading list.
• 407,545 visits (January – December 2016) which equated to:
• 1,528,024 page views

If you are interested in the number of visitors to your reading list, log in to the list and click on the green ‘Dashboard’ button.  It will show the number of page views and how many times each reading has been clicked on in the past 30 days.

You prefer a story to figures?

In this film clip, an academic and student at the Shakespeare Institute, Birmingham, discuss their online reading lists and why they are helpful to their teaching and learning, respectively. They use the same reading list software as UCL, but with a different name. (Length: 3 minutes 53 seconds).

Paul Wilkinson ‘Party Popper

Make a new year resolution

… to guide your students better in 2017 by setting up an online reading list, or updating an existing one.

The TLS team in the library are very happy to help, or drop in to our Senate House office on a Wednesday afternoon for a hands-on session. You could walk away with a list set up and completed!  Something ticked off your to do list: a good start to the year.

One member of UCL teaching staff used to hand out paper versions of his reading list for use in class, however he has now changed his practice to use ReadingLists@UCL instead.

During face-to-face teaching, students now add their notes about each reading directly into the online reading list, using their ipads or laptops. Notes against each reading are private to each student and accessible only by them. They can also use the ‘Have you read this?’ buttons on ReadingLists@UCL to organise their reading intentions.

If a printed version of a reading list is still useful you, or they, can export the online reading list to a printable PDF:

• to print the reading list in its existing layout, select ‘Export’ then ‘Export to PDF’
• to print a list of the readings in alphabetical order, use the ‘View bibliography’ button click ‘Export’ then ‘Export to PDF’
• or to view this list in different citation styles: ‘View bibliography’ and select a citation style from the drop-down box ‘Harvard’. If a key citation style is missing, use the ‘Feedback’ button (top toolbar) to request another.

The QR code in the top right hand corner of each printed reading list enables students to return directly to the online version, with all the advantages that brings.

Do let us know about any other exciting ideas you may have, or tell us about innovative ways in which you use your online reading lists. Students, please use the Feedback button on your reading lists to let us know your thoughts!