Online Tutorials for Library Instruction

• How can I request the tutorial for my class?
• Can I review the tutorial before assigning it to my students?
• Can the tutorials start the first week of class?
• Do students receive credit for completing the tutorial?
• Some of my students have already completed the tutorial. Do they need to do it again?
• Who marks the tutorial?
• Are follow-up classes required?
• Does the library offer other kinds of help for my students' research assignments?

To request an online tutorial, please fill out our Request Library Instruction Form.

Tutorials can take up to one week to set up, so please keep that in mind when requesting due dates.

If you have other questions or special requests, please contact your subject librarian:

Yes! We are happy to enroll instructors into our guest courses. Please email the library instruction team at libraryinstruction@langara.ca with your name and employee number.

The tutorials can take several working days to set up and we get a lot of requests near the beginning of term, so we cannot guarantee that your tutorials will be ready for the first day of classes.

Additionally, if students are added or dropped from your class in the first few weeks of term, they are not immediately enrolled or dropped from the tutorials. For this reason, we ask that you wait a week or two until your class lists are steady before the tutorials are meant to begin.

That is entirely up to you.

After the closing date of your tutorial, we will email you a spreadsheet that includes the marks for all of the students in your class. Each tutorial includes quizzes that will result in a mark out of ten. What you do with this mark is up to you.

We strongly encourage that you assign a grade for completion of the tutorial or include it in a participation mark as an incentive.

We keep all student marks on file in their individual library records and can forward you marks from previous classes. These marks will appear in the spreadsheet that we send once the due date of a tutorial has passed.

We will always send the best mark that we have on file for a student.

If you want to insist that your students take the tutorial even if they have completed it before, please let your subject librarian know in your request and we can remove that option for students.

We keep tutorial marks on file for three years. If your student has not completed the tutorial in the past three years, they may need to complete it again. 

The quizzes are marked automatically as students complete them, but the Library Instruction Team processes the marks after the due date for the tutorial. We will email you a spreadsheet with all of the students marks after the due date.

You will be added as an instructor to the course in Brightspace, so you may monitor and review your students' marks and progress any time you wish.

We ask you to try your best to be firm on due dates with the tutorials to reduce workload on the library instruction team.

However, if you are concerned that students will not complete the tutorials by the deadlines you have set, we recommend setting later dates for the tutorial.

You are enrolled into every library tutorial as an instructor, so you are able to see whether students are completing the tutorial quizzes. In the Brightspace tutorial you wish to check on, follow these steps:

1. Click on the arrow beside "My Tools" and click on "Grades"
2. Click on "Enter Grades" on the left side of the window

This shows you the grid of students who are completing the quizzes for your course, but may not necessarily show you students who have already completed the tutorials in an earlier term. Those students can check their marks by logging into the MyLibrary Account:

If you do require us to extend deadlines, it is much easier to do so before the first deadlines pass. Please consider checking student progress and requesting extensions before the original deadline of the tutorials.

Due to the workflow of processing the tutorials, we are unable to open the tutorials for single students. If you require an extension to the due dates, we will only grant it to the whole class.

A follow-up in-class library workshop can enhance the learning experience for your students. However, the tutorial is designed to stand alone. Here are some examples of when a follow-up class would be useful:

• Your research assignment requires use of specialized materials or subject-specific resources that require further explanation or demonstration.
• You want students to get hands-on practice using library resources in a computer lab.
• You want to emphasize one aspect of the tutorial that is of particular importance to your assignment - for example, activities that demonstrate how to come up with good search terms, evaluate using criteria from the tutorial, or citation practices.
• You want students to complete an activity or group exercise that helps reinforce the concepts covered by the tutorial in a hands-on way.

Classes can be held in library classroom L216, library teaching lab L108, or your regular classroom depending on the nature of the follow-up class.

Yes!

You can contact your subject librarian to access different kinds of library instruction services. We will work with you to develop content that is relevant to your assignments.

• Research Guides are developed to point students toward the resources that will be help them complete research activities.
• In-person workshops can be delivered to give students hands-on, activity based practice.
• Assignment Consultations give us the opportunity to work together to make sure that the library's collections and services are a good match to your assignment requirements.