Library Tutorials – An Introduction for Instructors

Our tutorials are high-quality, standards-driven learning objects designed to introduce students to the basics of locating, evaluating, and using information. They include video lessons as well as quizzes to assess understanding.

Tutorials let you focus precious classroom time on your course material rather than research skills. And your students can return to these activities for easy reference throughout the semester.

On-Demand Lessons

On-demand lessons for easy access to our most frequently requested topics:

• Types of sources
•  Refining search results
• · How to read scholarly materials
• · Academic Integrity
• · What is plagiarism?
• · Why citations matter
• · Citation style guides
• · Copyright
• · And more!

Master Courses

Comprehensive deep-dives that can be embedded directly into your learning management system:

• Communication, for increasing effectiveness of oral, written, and visual communication
• Critical Thinking, for developing the abilities to evaluate, analyze, and synthesize information
• Health Science, for building skills to locate health resources, apply appropriate research methods, and participate in evidence-based practice
• Information Literacy, for building skills to locate, cite, manage, and ethically use information

 

The lessons are mapped to instructional standards including the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U VALUE) Rubrics for Information and Literacy and others, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy, and the ACRL Visual Literacy Standards.

The Scholarly Information Tutorials content is provided by the Rutgers University Libraries through licenses with NimblyWise and Credo Reference, two leading library instruction providers, for use by Rutgers University instructors on all campuses.

Tutorials are available as both on-demand lessons that can be accessed on the Libraries’ website, and master courses that can be embedded directly into Canvas.

• As a flipped classroom, or to prepare for specialized library instruction: Assigning students to view a video or work through a lesson before they attend a specialized library instruction class can encourage more productive class time.
• At various points during a scaffolded assignment: Rather than introducing students to multiple concepts at once, you may want to deploy them to students at various points in their process. If you have scaffolded an assignment, with milestones such as a research question, topic choice, working thesis, or annotated bibliography, consider having students review individual lessons as they begin that particular component of the assignment. Quizzes associated with many of the lessons will help you assess their understanding of a particular aspect of research or information literacy concepts.
• In a first-year or transition class: Many of the lessons can help students appreciate the big-picture importance of information literacy, strong research and evaluation, and communication skills. You may want to select these lessons at the beginning of a unit or as one component of their success in a first-year experience course.
• At the beginning of a major project: Students may be overwhelmed at the beginning of a major project and not know where to get started. The multimedia lessons cover a wide range of topics essential to success in research, from choosing a topic to evaluating sources.
• At point of need: Your students may be working on an assignment independently, but you want them to have access to resources that can help them throughout the research process as needed, such as a tutorial on database searching when they are in the process of finding sources, or a video about the citation style they need to use.

• Getting Started with Research – Introduce your students to the basics of conducting research, from selecting appropriate sources to refining search results.
• Presenting Research and Data – Empower students to communicate their findings effectively in papers and presentations.
• Academic Integrity – Help your students use information ethically by understanding plagiarism and copyright.
• Writing and Citing – Step-by-step guides to citing in AMA, APA, Chicago, and MLA styles.

Research has found that students who receive information literacy instruction have higher retention rates and GPAs, as well as successfully complete more credit hours per year than peers who did not receive such instruction (Greater Western Library Alliance, “The Impact of Information Literacy Instruction on Student Success: A Multi-Institutional Investigation and Analysis,” 2017).

Library tutorials help prepare students with the skills they need to successfully evaluate information both inside and outside the classroom.

The tutorials are ideal for undergraduate students who need an introduction to the foundations of scholarly research, or for anyone who wants to brush up on the key skills needed to successfully accomplish any research-based project.

Your your library liaison can help you select the most relevant lessons for your course.

For questions about the Library Tutorials content, or to supplement the online instruction, please contact the Rutgers Libraries Instructional Support Team.