Finding and Teaching with Digital Library Resources in Moodle

Overview

Video streaming, article databases, digital course reserves, and more are all available to you and your students via the NC State University Libraries. There are different strategies for finding resources that work for your classes and then integrating them into Moodle to provide easy access for you and your students. Save students money by integrating resources for reading and viewing that are already part of the NC State University Libraries collections.

How to Get Started

1. Consider your learning goals

Before determining resources – -books, videos, articles, etc., for your students, determine what learning goals you have for them. Then search for and find resources that will help them achieve those learning goals. If you want to plan this out in detail, a course map is a document that can be very helpful in planning the structure of your course.

  • Course learning objectives: What will students be able to do by the end of the course?
  • Module learning objectives: What will students be able to do by the end of this module, unit or lesson?
  • Instructional Materials and Learning Activities: How will students get the information and build the knowledge they need to achieve the learning objectives? Here’s where you will be able to add in content from the NC State Libraries.
  • Assessments: How will you measure students’ ability to demonstrate the learning objectives?

Course mapping resources

2. Find library resources — digital books, streaming video, articles

Digital Books and Videos

If you know the title of a book or video you are looking for, search the library catalog for that title. You can also use general search terms and the left sidebar filters to browse for different content areas. If you are looking for a video, consider searching the streaming media collections.

If you don’t know the title, you can also browse the library catalog for specific topics and then filter/limit your search to only find resources that are “Available Online” so that you will be able to integrate them into Moodle.

Use the “Ask Us” resources if you struggle to find a resource.

Ideally, when you find a resource, look for “Any number of users may access simultaneously” to be sure your students can all watch or read the resource.

Articles

If you know the title of an article you want students to access and read, start by searching Summon for the article. If you have trouble finding it, you can use a discipline-specific database to find the article. If you exhaust search strategies, you can also request it via Tripsaver and get a PDF delivered to you via email.

2. Get links, embed code, or download documents/files to share with students

Once you find a digital book or video, you can copy the catalog record link (example). Then students would use this link to access the library catalog entry and then click again to open the book or video. This is a very stable way of linking to a resource. If you want to copy a link directly to a resource, look for “share” buttons and then links that have “prox.lib.ncsu.edu” or something similar as part of the address to copy/paste into Moodle.

When sharing journal articles, you can use a link or sometimes download the article. If you see a “Download PDF” button, you can also download the article. Also, look for “share” buttons to find links to articles and/or to find a download button. In the link you plan to share with students, look for prox.lib.ncsu.edu in the URL.

3. Getting the digital book, video, or article into Moodle

Links to resources can be added independently as a URL resource, or you can link to content within any Moodle resource or activity in which you can type text and use the built-in text editor with the linking button.

If you have a downloaded PDF, you can add it as a File in Moodle or as part of a tool like Perusall (an interactive e-reader that can auto-grade student discussions and annotations of text).

4. Course eReserves and the Library Course Tools Moodle Block

You can directly link to the library’s e-reserves and request materials be held for students in person or via digital reserves (depending on availability).

Resources

Workshops

Links to Support Pages and Video Tutorials

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