Enrich your Online Courses with eResources

If you are teaching an online or hybrid course, including York University Libraries' electronic resources (eResources) can make your course site more relevant to students and provide them with selected contextual information that can be so important for learning new material.

Aside from providing additional information, eResources have the advantage of being readily available to students when they need them (as opposed to having to wait for reserve material to be returned) and web-based resources can be more cost-efficient for students who live at a distance from campus. Making access more convenient could mean the difference between well-prepared students and students who haven't even looked at the material.

Some ideas for enhancing your course website:

• Provide links to periodical indexes where students may search for and find reserve readings
• Provide links to supplemental readings, either by pointing directly to an online source, or by suggesting another type of resource, such as a periodical index
• Include links to the subject research guides in a specific subject area
• Point your students to relevant tutorials such as Finding Newspapers or the Library Research Roadmap or, even better, work with your liaison librarian to develop a tutorial especially for your students

Success Stories

In very successful cases, faculty members at York and elsewhere have found that their students' experiences were significantly and positively impacted by including eResources and online research tutorials into their online courses. One faculty member even had former students request access to courses that they were no longer registered in... to view the online library tutorial!

Other faculty members have taken advantage of the library’s eResource collection to help students, particularly those early in their academic careers, make the link between academic course content and the Libraries. In a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, one professor commented, "a typical course site won't be just a syllabus, a discussion board, a course roster and readings on reserve. Instead it will be a portal through which students will get a list of databases especially recommended for their discipline, as well as contact information for a librarian who specializes in their field, style sheets for term papers...or a bibliography of sources available at the library."*

When you're building your course site, consider including more than just the default hyperlink to the library website. York University Libraries provide high quality, academic online content which, combined with our online tutorials, can guide your students towards better resources and ultimately, better research habits. We encourage you to contact your liaison librarian for more information on useful links you might include and for any assistance you may require in making links to specific eResources.

Other online resources for students in distance learning courses

Feel free to direct students learning in online courses to the distance learning services on the Libraries' website (http://www.library.yorku.ca/ccm/Home/Services/disted.htm). These pages give students an "at a distance" overview of library services: how to search for items and borrow or renew them online, get online reference assistance, access online learning and research resources, and much more.

* Carlson, Scott. "New allies in the fight against research by Googling."The Chronicle of Higher Education, 49(28) p. A33

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