Library+Activity

Return to Guide to New and Revised Activities



New Library Activity : Online library use was identified as a missing element. While the library's resource page itself is helpful, there is so much information that it can appear overwhelming, causing some students to not understand the full range of tools or to avoid the page altogether. A new activity was created to increase the learners’ skill in online library usage and encourage them to take advantage of the university’s library. The culminating result will be the creation of an online resource library (ORL).

To create this activity, Veronica Bielat, a liaison librarian for Wayne State who is available for research consultation, would help facilitate a a Wimba session to discuss research and how to use the online resources offered by WSU. The discussion would be archived for future use during the semester. A simple reflection activity would follow the Wimba session and conclude with the ORL. The creation of an ORL promotes invaluable collaborative online learning, as it involves students posting researched information and sharing different opinions on the topic.

An ORL, as defined by Bonk and Zhang (2008), will give students the opportunity to share various resources and review them for peers in the class or group. Students will be asked to find related articles to the topic at hand and form opinions on the article and topic itself. In a forum dedicated to resources, students will post links to the article and their review. Other students will be asked to respond to posts. The ultimate goal is to create a class database of resources for various topics that are easily and quickly accessible by the class.

An example ORL resource review: