Over the past few months colleagues from the Learning Services Unit and the Faculty Engagement Team within the Library here at the University of Sheffield have been collaborating with colleagues from the University’s Digital Learning team and students and staff from nine academic programmes on two exciting projects. Both projects have adopted a participatory action research approach and this has meant that staff have been working in partnership with nine Student Associates, one representing each pilot programme.

The first project, Embedding Information and Digital Literacy as part of the Programme Level Approach, has sought to collaboratively explore how and where to embed information and digital literacy within each programme as part of the Programme Level Approach to meet the objective of aligning programme outcomes with the Sheffield Graduate attributes. The six pilot programmes are BSc Computer Science, BMedSci Health and Human Sciences, BA Korean Studies with Japanese, BA Hispanic Studies, BSc Physics and BA Politics and International Relations. The Student Associates have been working closely with their relevant liaison librarian to map information and digital literacy into their academic programme by collaboratively identifying opportunities to embed our offer within learning, teaching, assessment and feedback activities. The students and liaison librarians have planned some new face-to-face sessions and come up with ideas for new online tutorials. Our Information and Digital Literacy Project Officer, Cat Bazela, has been busy coordinating these projects and also supporting our second project…

…Embedding library content and information and digital literacy in the virtual learning environment, aims to collaboratively explore how and where library content and information and digital literacy can effectively be embedded in the core, institutionally supported digital learning tools, including MOLE (Blackboard), Turnitin, Kaltura and PebblePad to support a programme level approach. The three pilot programmes for this project are BA English Literature, BEng Materials Science & Engineering, and BSc Psychology. The Student Associates have been working with our Digital Literacy Librarian, Rosa Sadler, and Learning Technologist Pete Mella from the University’s Digital Learning team, along with their relevant liaison librarians. They have explored the range of digital learning tools available to staff including the resource list system, Leganto, as well as the online information and digital literacy guidance available and have come up with a list of ideas to pursue within each programme.

Work on the projects will continue to be built upon over the Summer Vacation, and we are now working to produce case studies which showcase the outcomes of the projects and help to share good practice across the institution and beyond.