Faculty Engagement Teaching Offer

Research Skills Sessions

The University Library's Faculty Engagement Team (FET) partner with academic staff and Schools to provide tailored support for teaching and learning. Our services are designed to be embedded directly into your programmes, ensuring students develop their research and critical thinking skills in a discipline-specific context. 

We provide a blend of synchronous and asynchronous learning opportunities. Our team offers a range of tailored teaching sessions that can be delivered face-to-face or online. These sessions are complemented by a collection of videos, tutorials and guides that can be integrated into your Blackboard course from the Content Collection , for flexible, asynchronous learning.

Our support covers a variety of key topics, embedded at the most relevant part of the programme, these topics can include:

• How to use StarPlus: an overview of the library catalogue and keyword searching.
• Literature Searching: We offer sessions on how to plan and execute effective literature searches, and the use of specialist databases (such as Scopus, MedLine, and PsycInfo). The session can also cover how to utilise AI within the literature search and strategies for finding grey literature. This session can also be tailored for those learning about literature searching for systematic reviews.
• Referencing and Plagiarism : We teach students how to reference correctly and maintain academic integrity in order to avoid plagiarism, helping them use the appropriate referencing guides for their School.
• Introduction to Reference Management : covering the principles of reference management tools using Endnote as an example.
• Using Primary Sources : Our workshops provide an introduction to working with primary sources and archives, including both physical and digitised collections.
• Critical AI Literacy: a workshop which focuses on the skills needed to engage critically and ethically with the outputs from Generative AI (GenAI) and developing understanding of how GenAI can be used to inform academic work whilst maintaining academic integrity. 

We can focus on one of these topics or combine elements for a more tailored session. To discuss how the library can support your teaching program, please get in touch with your Liaison Librarian. We'll work with you to tailor a session to your students' specific needs and assignments, helping them develop their research and critical thinking skills.