The Experience of Reading Lists
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This document discusses the experiences of four universities - Manchester Metropolitan University, University of West London, University of Queensland, and Deakin University - in implementing the Talis reading list tool. It provides positive feedback from academics and students who found the reading lists easy to use and helpful in accessing required resources. Some challenges mentioned were materials not being included on lists or links not working. Overall, the universities saw benefits to students from having consolidated, electronically accessible reading lists.
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The Experience of Reading Lists
- 1. The experience of a reading list Rebecca Carruthers Talis Insight Asia-Pacific 5th February 2016
- 2. Things don’t always go to plan
- 3. With a little help from our friends • Manchester Metropolitan University • University of West London • University of Queensland • Deakin University
- 4. Manchester Metropolitan University Talis Aspire rollout Staff & Student comments
- 5. Academics’ Aspire training feedback “The most useful session I’ve attended in all my five years here!” - Fereshte Goshtasbpour, Postgraduate Linguistics Tutor “Thank you very much for the training session today. It was really helpful. As always, the Library team is aces!” – Brian McCook, Head of History, Politics and Philosophy Department “I really appreciate the time you spent with me today. I know I will find this very helpful for my teaching going forward.” – Sue Pope, Associate Head of Department, Professional Development & Educational Innovation
- 6. Aspire Awareness Week Student feedback: The Good “Everything I need is on there” “Comprehensive“ “Really useful; easy to access wherever” “Easy to use” “It's very useful for knowing the right resources without buying just anything” “All of my modules have them and it is good and easy to use” “Easy to access” “I use it everyday. It's really useful” Really like the reading list and how it has direct access to ebooks” “I really like the fact that the reading list is separated into different sections such as: to buy, essential and further reading”
- 7. Aspire Awareness Week Student feedback: The ‘needs more work’ “Not everything that we are directed to read is on the reading list” “Annoying if link is to book we don't have or we only have one copy” “I don't know how to use it” “The lists are too long” “The lists are too short” “Not mentioned by tutor” “Hard to find if you didn't know where to look” “Ebook slow to load” “I can't access the e- resources” “Don't know when to read certain things, wishes lectures again would use the reading lists plug ins so students were more aware of what to read and when”
- 8. Comments: 27 pages! Initial analysis by Graduate Trainees Picked out themes
- 9. ManMetLife Article aimed at academic staff Chris said: “I have been trying to champion the integration of the Library reading list and Moodle, and so it is heartening to hear this.” Chris Chambers, Owner of ‘Professional Practice’, the most used Talis list!
- 10. University of West London “The introduction of the electronic reading lists has enhanced the students’ ease of access to current module book lists, allowed for updating by staff and provides a real professional academic feel. Noting that students may use a variety of digital devices to access from anywhere and anytime.” Colin Beeke Senior Lecturer in Computing
- 11. The University of Queensland An observation Students regularly ask at the desk about items on their learning resources lists and staff direct them to the Talis reading list. Students are often surprised and pleased to discover that the list is available with links to electronic resources and digitisations.
- 12. Deakin University “It more than met my expectations. I went from having two confusing lists where one was linked to internet sources and the other was linked to the library, to having one cohesive list that was divided into weeks and clearly showed the students what they needed to read each week in preparation for their classes.”
- 13. Deakin University “I found this particularly beneficial for … a unit I had just taken over and only had a hardcopy version of readings so everything needed to be put in the Cloud. I found it beneficial for both units in that all the readings were in one place for students to access and that I could include comments such as what part they should be reading in an edited chapter book etc. If I had more time I would have liked to get more familiar of all the aspects of this resource.”
- 14. Deakin University “YES!! Some academics are lazy and roll their Cloud readings over year after year and they get more and more confusing to access. Dividing the readings up into weeks is clear and easy for the students.”
- 15. Summary • Numbers are great .. but they only give you half the story • If something isn’t getting good “hits”, it’s not necessarily about the content • It’s not about spoon feeding, it’s about consistency
- 16. Questions?
Editor's Notes
- This session is all about the experience. My major take away yesterday from Linda’s presentation (and one that is actually quite close to my heart) is assessing use of .. an article, a piece of information, a list, whatever … and using that information to improve it. A lot of people focus on numbers - access and usage - and these are awesome, however as covered yesterday, you can only go so far with them. The best information to help improve and assess use is actual feedback from our users. At this point i would love to hand over to an academic or student to talk about their own experience with engaging students and their experience with Talis - reaffirm to us all what’s important and why we’re here…
- But things don’t always go to plan. Although it’s the right time of year for us to learn and engage with each other, it’s not for our academic friends - they’re either enjoying some much earned time off, marking or still teaching.
- we will get by with a little help from our friends
- We deliver monthly training sessions to academic staff on both of our campuses, and frequently meet individually with staff to show them how to get the best from Talis Aspire.
- Late Nov we ran one of our termly awareness weeks, focusing on Aspire and pushing the online reading lists towards students. As part of this we gathered student feedback relating to the lists – we’re currently working our way through 27 pages of comments! There was a lot of positive feedback…
- …but it also highlighted a number of areas across the Library Service, where we need to do more. Pleasingly, none of the negative comments related to Aspire itself!
- All we need to do now is take a closer look and pick out what we can do more of. Key themes Lists need to be clearer on Moodle Lecturer should do more to highlight the reading lists and they should do this more regularly. A number of students had to find the lists themselves without any guidance. Lecturers are still giving paper copies or including references on lecture slides Lists given out are often incomplete or not organised properly Students want more varied resources on lists and more digitisations Want specific articles rather than journal title Frustrated when items included which aren’t in the library, when library has limited copies or when links don’t work Suggested improvements from those survived included -More varied resources -Make them easier to find on Moodle -More explanation of sources available -Consistency in categorisations -Make it clearer that the lists link to the library as students not realising and purchasing books. Too many clicks to get from the reading list to the catalogue -Could be longer -too many items on list off putting and intimidating -not enough of particular books and some books end up with lots of reservations -Lists need to be more relevant to the unit assignments -preference for weekly reading lists and for greater use of the plugin General positive comments -Easy to Access -Useful/helpful- a good relevant resource -Comprehensive -Easy to use -Like the app and the fact it linked to catalogue -Enjoy weekly readings and plug in -useful starting point for assignments
- We produced an article for ManMetLife which goes out to all MMU staff. We had a number of additional bookings on our academic staff training sessions quite soon after so we were quite pleased about the outcome for this and we want to do more such as promote lists of the month/term and getting more feedback from those already managing their own lists.
- At UQ, we haven’t run any formal surveys asking for feedback from students so I do not have any quotes. We promote reading lists to students by providing links on our website, via MyLibrary (personalised student portal), the Electronic Course Profile database and Blackboard – although I think we could do more.
- At the end of the pilot for Deakin, the academics involved were asked a number of questions relating to their experience in using Talis.
- This is my favourite - when asked whether they would recommend it to a colleague, one academic responded
- Numbers are great .. but they only give you half the story If something isn’t getting good “hits”, it’s not necessarily about the content It could be it’s hidden or hard to find. If people have to know where to look to find something, it means you can’t expect people to find it on their own. It’s not about spoon feeding, it’s about consistency In my previous life as a liaison librarian i had a lot of comments about whether reading lists were spoon-feeding our students and decreasing their digital literacy skills. But that’s now what reading lists are really about. We saw some comments from students that they are happy when “everything i need is there” and concerned or unhappy when “not everything they are directed to read is on there”. Students don’t want too long a list - they don’t want to be spoon-fed everything that they can possibly find on a subject area. So reading lists can give a starting point for information gathering. You can include links to resources, you can just add the bibliographic information, but you can also add notes - point students towards a specific topic, database or journal. I remember as a student that once i was given a launch point, I was fine, but it was often difficult to find the right place to start.