Teaching & Learning

T&L staff can support ENWR courses in many different ways, including teaching traditional "one-shot" in-class sessions on conducting research or using technology; embedding in courses; providing one-on-one research help for students; creating asynchronous learning materials like tutorials and modules; consulting with faculty on assignment and course design; and more.

We have several general research-oriented learning outcomes for students in ENWR courses. After completing a library session with their ENWR class, students will be able to:

• Understand scholarship as a conversation.
• Recognize that research is an iterative process.
• Find, access, and save sources.
• Explain ways to get help from the library, including Ask a Librarian and subject liaisons.

Note that it is not possible to address all of these outcomes in one class period, so the librarian working with your class will select the outcome(s) that align best with your course and assignment objectives. If your class is working with the RMC, they may have other outcomes for your students.

Many of these outcomes deal with research; however, library instruction can be beneficial to students even if their class does not include a research assignment. For example, T&L librarians can work with your students on understanding different types of sources or developing a topic, and RMC staff can help your students use technology to create multimodal projects like podcasts, videos, and virtual reality objects.

In-person or synchronous online sessions with T&L librarians are customized for your class and incorporate active learning and critical thinking techniques to address one or more of the learning outcomes above. 

Traditionally, ENWR classes have come to the library for one class session taught by a librarian; however, we are not limited to that model and will work with you to find what makes sense for your class. See examples of ways to include library instruction in your class on this page.

Here are just a few examples of activities we might use in instruction sessions with ENWR classes:

• Thinking Tool, for developing a topic or research question
• Source Deck, for differentiating between types of sources
• Four Databases, for exploring the different databases available to students through the UVA Library
• Research Chain activity, for connecting different sources through their references
• Evaluating sources group activity
• Using scenarios to discuss research ethics
• Finding a book in the stacks
• Finding sources for student research projects

Below are some sample lesson plans used with past ENWR courses:

There are a number of asynchronous online resources that can help your students meet the above learning outcomes; the most relevant are listed below. These resources are customizable and we are in the process of developing new resources, so please ask if you don't see anything that might work for your class.