Instructional support
Supporting your students' learning
Concordia University's subject and teaching librarians are ready to work with you to support students in their discovery, strategic searching, critical evaluation, and use of information relevant to their academic disciplines, research questions, professional trajectories, and beyond.
Workshops, activities, and assignments for your courses
Subject librarians provide workshops, online learning activities, and assignments that are specifically tailored to the needs of individual Concordia faculty and their courses. For example, workshops can include hands-on instruction in the use of search tools in a specific discipline or discussions of the critical evaluation of information sources. Assignments or activities can include exercises or tasks that reinforce concepts covered in workshops or that enrich research or critical inquiry skills being taught in the course overall.
Contact your subject librarian
To arrange for a workshop or activity, or to discuss other possible collaborations, contact your subject librarian.
Librarians are very open to collaboration for the benefit of your students and welcome conversations around your requirements. It is helpful if you include teaching materials such as your syllabus and major assignments in your communications, as these are likely to indicate the information needs and expectations that you have of your students.
Note that a minimum of two weeks before the delivery of a workshop or activity may be required in order to tailor the offering to your students’ needs.
Materials to incorporate in your teaching
Library Research Skills Tutorial
The Library Research Skills Tutorial has modules on choosing a research topic, searching for information, finding books and articles, reading and note taking, and citing. Choose the modules or activities that you would like to integrate into your courses or work with your subject librarian to identify the most relevant sections.
How-to videos
The Library has prepared videos that demonstrate search tools and introduce key concepts for students who are looking for information sources. Recommended videos on the Library’s YouTube channel include:
Quick Things for Digital Knowledge
Quick Things for Digital Knowledge is a learning resource from the Library about emerging topics in our current data-rich and technology-driven world. It aims to promote critical thinking about complex topics that affect everyone, such as generative AI (like ChatGPT), Web 3.0 and the metaverse, data visualization, and security and privacy.
As an instructor, you can incorporate the Quick Things as well as the suggested readings, videos, and activities in your course as pre-work or in the classroom to spark students’ learning about these topics. More ideas are on the "how to use" page for teachers.
Subject and course guides
There is a subject guide for each field of study at Concordia and many course-specific guides as well. Links to these guides can also be found in the Library Resources Moodle Block. The subject and course guides introduce key information resources in each discipline.
Library how-to guides
Top library how-to guides include:
- How to write a research paper
- How to write a literature review
- How to write an annotated bibliography
See all general guides for finding, evaluating, writing and using.
Citation guides
The Library has guides for all popular citation styles, including APA, MLA, Turabian, Chicago, SBL and IEEE. See all citation guides.
