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Our Teaching Offer: Teaching we offer

Provides information on teaching that the Library can deliver for your students to help them develop their skills, as well as highlighting supporting online resources.

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Workshops & events

Workshops overview

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What do we offer?

Our Academic and Research Services team can work with you to embed information and research training within your modules. We also offer our core sessions as open workshops throughout the year that you could direct your students to. These sessions are designed to help students develop their information and digital literacy skills, and become confident Library users.

Through the range of teaching that we offer, students become equipped with both an awareness of relevant information resources, and the skills to evaluate and use those resources effectively and responsibly. This enables them to succeed in their studies and beyond. 

A menu of workshop sessions that we offer can be found below. Please contact your Academic Liaison Librarian  to discuss your requirements, and to arrange teaching sessions or other support.

Our workshop menu

Skills at Library workshops & events with image of students hand stack

What other support is available to you and your students?

As well as delivering teaching, we provide additional support to help students develop their skills, and make the most of the Library and its resources. 

We have a variety of online resources  designed to help students develop their information and digital literacy skills. You can direct your students to these and can easily link to them via your Moodle page.

Subject Guides  are a collection of resources put together by your Academic Liaison Librarian. The guides are designed to help students with specific subjects and topics they may want to explore.

If students have reviewed these materials and need any additional help or have specific questions about the topics/skills, they can Book a Librarian  for a group or 1-to-1 session with their dedicated Academic Liaison Librarian.

If you have any additional questions or would like to discuss ways that you would like to collaborate with the Library on your module or programme, please contact your Academic Liaison Librarian .

Workshop calendar

As well as providing embedded sessions, we run workshops throughout the year on many different topics. Students can look at what we have coming up, and can book a place to learn more and develop their information and digital literacy skills. 

Your students can find a full list of our workshops from our Events page

Upcoming Events

Image of three students walking outside the Albert Sloman Library with text overlay that reads "Skills at Library, Intro to the Library"

Overview:

This 45 minute workshop provides an interactive introduction to the Library and the resources we offer. If you are new to using academic libraries, or simply new to Essex, this session is for you! Come along to learn how you can get the most out of the Library and develop information literacy skills for academic study.

Key areas covered:

Supporting resources:

 

View upcoming workshops

Organising Information with decorative image of a laptop with notes and paperwork around it.

Overview:

This 1 hour workshop covers how to organise information for your course and research. In this session, you will learn how to create a search strategy to keep you organised throughout your research, maximise time, avoid errors, and reduce stress. We'll also give examples of how you might use AI tools to improve on your search strategy. Organisation skills are important for all levels of study and research, so this session is open to everyone! Come along to practice skills, learn alongside your peers, and get instructor feedback.

Key areas covered:

  • Organising course documents & sources
  • Using software & tools to stay organised
  • Creating a search strategy for organised literature searching

Supporting resources:

View upcoming workshops

Advanced search techniques with image of person using magnify glass

Overview

This 1 hour workshop covers different methods for combining the keywords identified in your search strategy and gives a practical introduction to advanced techniques that can be used when researching for an assignment or finding sources. Advanced search techniques will help make your searches more efficient and lead you to the most relevant information. These techniques can be used across many different databases, so no matter where you are conducting your search, you can use advanced search skills.

Key areas covered:

  • Developing your search strategy
  • Identifying where to search
  • Getting the most out of Google Scholar
  • Using advanced search techniques
  • Refining your search process to improve results

Supporting resources

View upcoming workshops

Section heading text reads 'Unlock digital readings' with image of person using an ereader tablet

Overview

Sometimes there are barriers to accessing information. You might be asked to pay to read the full text of an article, or find a particular online reading platform difficult to use because of the way text displays on your screen. Fortunately, there are usually ways around these barriers. This 1 hour workshop will give you the keys for unlocking information so that you can access the full text and view the content in a format that suits your learning style.

Key areas covered

  • Accessing Library digital texts & resources
  • Using digital reading features & tools
  • Accessing full text for sources found outside the Library
  • Adapting digital texts to improve your learning experience

Supporting resources

View upcoming workshops

Section heading text reads 'Checking Sources' with image of Abraham Lincoln statue and text "Don't believe what you see on the internet"

Overview

This 1 hour workshop covers fact checking and evaluating skills that will help you avoid unreliable sources and build your views and arguments on solid evidence. Being able to critically evaluate information is an important life skill and essential for academic and professional success. This session is relevant to all information consumers.

Key areas covered:

  • Distinguishing between quality vs unreliable information
  • Finding authoritative sources
  • Applying the SIFT fact checking method to verify academic, news media, and social media sources
  • Evaluating information using the TRAAP checklist

Supporting Resources:

  • Workshop activity: evaluate the 6 sources that you have already found or the list of sources provided (available via Moodle)
  • Prepare by exploring the 'Checking sources' section of our Skills at Library training.

View upcoming workshops

Skills at Library using information with image of student typing on laptop

Overview

Come along to learn what academic integrity means in a UK Higher Education context and how to use information and artificial intelligence ethically to avoid plagiarism and other academic offences. You will also learn why referencing is important, what needs to be referenced, and where to go for help and support. The session will provide practical tips and strategies for avoiding academic misconduct, how to construct your references, and explain how the University detects plagiarism.

Key areas covered:

  • What is plagiarism and how to avoid academic offences
  • Why, what, and when to reference
  • Fair use of information and artificial intelligence

Supporting resources

View upcoming workshops

Referencing header with a Skills at Library logo and an image of a sunlit bookshelf

Overview

How to reference properly is something that causes students a lot of stress – but it doesn’t need to be difficult. This session will introduce you to different referencing tools and software that can help you save time, avoid common mistakes with referencing, and allow you to make the most of your sources. We will also cover the practicalities of referencing AI use.

Key areas covered

  • Constructing references in the departmental style
  • Using reference management software and other referencing tools
  • Learn how to reference AI use 

Supporting resources

  • Prepare by taking a look at the 'Referencing tools' section of our Skills at Library support and find out your departmental referencing style.
  • Download and set up Zotero (or another reference management software of your choice!)
  • Workshop activity: Create references for the 6 sources you've found previously or the list of sources provided (available via Moodle).

View upcoming workshops

Skills at Library sharing information with image of a student presenting about their research

Overview

Have you ever considered whose voices can and cannot be heard in your assignments and research? Or what impact referencing has on the people you are citing? This interactive session is designed to demonstrate the value of good information-sharing principles in both academia and your personal life for the purposes of promoting marginalised voices and making information more accessible.  We will reflect on how you engage with information and help you find ways to share your work according to best information-sharing practice.

Key areas covered

  • Explore why citing diverse sources is important
  • Understand the value of good information-sharing principles
  • Reflect on how you engage with information in different settings

Supporting resources

  • Prepare by checking out the Skills at Library 'Sharing information' pages 
  • Workshop activity: Find out more about the authors behind the 6 sources you've previously found, or use the list provided (available via Moodle)
  • Consider where and how you might want to share your work and to what audience - a blog, LinkedIn profile, publish in a journal - such as the Essex Student Journal

View upcoming workshops

 Overview

News & media sources can be incredibly useful across many areas of the social sciences & humanities, whether for current or historical research topics. This session will share with some of the key resources available and how they might be relevant to your students.

Key areas covered

  • Importance of news and media
  • Contemporary and historical sources
  • Social media
  • Data

Duration

50 minutes

Context

This session is aimed at students on modules involving study of news and media, or undertaking research requiring knowledge of news and media sources. It can be adapted for undergraduate or postgraduate level.

Learning Outcomes

  • Learn about the range of news and media resources offered by the library (and open access)
  • Understand which could be useful to your research
  • Practice searching selected resource

Supporting Online Resources

  • Our Subject Guides provide subject specific guidance, highlighting key resources for each discipline. Where news and media resources are relevant to the discipline, these are highlighted in the subject guide. Examples can be seen in the Sociology, Politics and History subject guides.

 Overview

This session provides an introduction to special collections and archives, and how they may be useful in an academic context. We can provide tailored sessions, so please do contact us with your requirements and we will do our best to accommodate them!

Key areas covered

  • What are special collections
  • Special collections at the Albert Sloman Library
  • Finding special collections and archives elsewhere

Duration

2 hours

Context

This session is recommended for any level of study.

Learning Outcomes

  • Understand what special collections are and why they are useful sources of information
  • Know where special collections can be found
  • Be aware of the special collections held at the Albert Sloman Library, and how to access these

Supporting Online Resources

  • Our Art and Special Collections pages provide an overview of the collections that we have here at the Albert Sloman Library.
  • We have a short video which introduces using primary source materials and special collections in research.