Due to space and staffing constraints, Special Collections is limited in what they can offer to Engagements courses. Special Collections librarians and archivists can offer Engagements courses a general orientation to the library, including an introduction to the types of materials available for research, a catalog search demonstration, and a brief show-and-tell of preselected materials that represent some major collecting areas. Please schedule your Special Collections sessions at least four weeks in advance.
The Robertson Media Center (RMC) can help you develop audio or video projects and support you and your students through the media creation and editing process. If you are considering incorporating audio or video into your course, contact the RMC at teachlearn@virginia.edu to set up a consultation. You do not need prior experience with audio or video technologies to assign an audio or video project.
The RMC can:
Engagements courses can present a great opportunity to introduce first-year students to what an academic library is and how the UVA Library can support them throughout their academic careers. Library instruction can also support assignments in the Engagements courses, particularly assignments that involve any kind of research or digital media creation.
If you are interested in incorporating library instruction into your course, there are several ways to get in touch with us:
We are always happy to discuss possibilities for your class, so please let us know if you have any questions.
In-person or synchronous online sessions with T&L librarians are customized for your class and incorporate active learning and critical thinking techniques. We will work with you to develop learning outcomes for the session, and we will fit the session within your course schedule and time constraints.
Here are just a few examples of activities we might use in instruction sessions with Engagements classes:
Library instruction sessions can work with or without a research assignment. We have created interactive, non-research-assignment-based sessions for Engagements classes using circulating Library materials using maps, yearbooks, historic newspaper clippings, government documents, and more. These sessions introduce students to Library collections and help develop critical thinking skills. Here is an example of an activity we did using Library map collections.
We understand that it might be difficult to fit an in-person or synchronous library session into Engagements courses due to the limited time in these courses. We have a number of asynchronous online resources that can introduce students to library resources; some of the most relevant are listed below. You can see more asynchronous learning resources at this link.
Many of these resources are customizable, so please let us know if you don't see something exactly right for your class. We can also create modules with multiple resources and assessment(s) in Canvas.
We can also create custom research guides for your course to highlight resources and tools for your students to use in their research projects. Here's example of a research guide created for an Engagements class.