Instruction Services

What is Information Literacy Instruction?

Information literacy is a set of competencies designed to prepare the 21st century student for our information overloaded world. Through our instruction services, students learn to: research effectively and competently, evaluate the quality of the information they find and synthesize a variety of sources into a coherent whole.

What is it Based on?

All of our instruction services are based on the Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education and the goals and learning outcomes for each course.

We Offer

Open Educational Resources Support

Interested in utilizing Open Educational Resources in your course? Or using library materials to make your course a Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) course? We can help you adopt, adapt or create course materials for your in-person, hybrid or online course.

Instruction Sessions

Utilizing active learning, our sessions can range from 15 minutes to a full class session or more.

Guides and Tutorials

We have designed a range of guides for subjects and courses across the Mines curriculum. We also have a growing collection of video and click-through tutorials on foundational research skills. Not finding a guide or tutorial to fit your needs?  Contact us

Research Assignments

Either separately or in conjunction with a session, we can work with you to design assignments or formative assessments to help students explore information literacy concepts. Some of our past assignments have included: quizzes in Canvas, scavenger hunts and worksheets to help students focus topics or explore research materials.

We can also help you evaluate current research assignments from a research skills perspective to ensure students have access to the support and materials necessary to complete the prompt.

Canvas and Online Courses

Our in-person sessions can be adapted for online courses.  Our guides, tutorials and most library materials can be embedded in your Canvas site.  See our Instruction for Mines Online page for more information.

Special Topics

Some of the specialized topics we have covered in the past include:

• Finding Statistical information
• Using government information
• Patents and grey literature
• Maps
• Historic mines
• Using primary sources and archival materials