On Wednesday, November 18, we will hold our first-ever GIS Day at Connecticut College to celebrate all the ways mapping technologies and spatial analysis are being used by students, faculty, and staff. Across the afternoon Professor Beverly Chomiak will discuss GIS courses and the history of GIS projects at Conn, alumnus Zach Wheat ’26 will…
Integrating Wikipedia Assignments into your Courses with the Support of Wiki Education
Wiki Education is a nonprofit organization that provides free assignment support to hundreds of instructors in higher education every semester. They have designed a scaffolded and customizable Wikipedia Assignment for students to research a topic related to your course and find gaps in existing Wikipedia coverage, then write text and add citations to fill those…
Conn Hosts Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon
On October 12, librarians Ashley Hanson, Andrew Lopez, and Lyndsay Bratton, and Professors Ari Rotramel (GSIS) and Kris Klein Hernández (History) camped out all day in Humphrey’s to host a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon for the campus community. The event date saw the overlap of LGBTQ History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and Indigenous People’s Day, and is…
Your Students Should Meet with a Librarian!
Research is often challenging, frustrating, and time consuming. Although we want students to experience all the ups and downs of the research process because that is where learning and important ah-ha moments take place, students do not have to do it alone! All students have access to personalized one-on-one research consultations with our research librarians. …
How Students Are Using the Shain 309 Recording Studio
When we opened the recording studio in Shain 309, we knew students, faculty and staff would find it useful. Over the past academic year, the studio logged 313 reservations from 72 unique users. When students reserve the space, we ask them to share what they are working on, which we are summarizing below. We love…
Perusall Quick Setup Guide
This guide’s purpose is to get Perusall setup as quickly as possible so that students can start annotating documents. What is Perusall? From Perusall’s website: “Perusall turns your course content into collaborative conversations – so students come to class prepared, and instructors save time to focus on teaching,”. If you are familiar with Hypothesis, you…
Inside the New FYS Information Literacy Experience: Partnering with Your Library Liaison
In our last posts about the new FYS information Literacy curriculum (Part 1, Part 2), we shared how exciting this work is for us. We know, however, that the curriculum and activities are only as good as the partnerships with faculty behind it. I wanted to take a moment to talk about what that partnership…
Inside the New FYS Information Literacy Experience: The 75-Minute Research Class
Now that first-year students have explored Shain Library and connected with key service desks through the Common Experience Passport activity, they are ready to move from navigating the physical space to navigating the research process itself. The centerpiece of our reimagined curriculum is a hands-on, 75-minute instruction session built to prepare students for college-level research…
Inside the New FYS Information Literacy Experience: The Common Experience Passport
Last spring and summer, the research support librarians devoted time to reviewing how we support first-year students. Led by Ashley Hanson, this included a close look at our involvement in the First-Year Seminar (FYS) program, comparing its goals as determined by the faculty (login required), reviewing previous learning objectives and lesson plans, and having honest…
Increase Student Engagement with Readings: Perusall
Perusall is a social annotation platform that turns traditional reading assignments into collaborative, interactive experiences. Instead of reading in isolation, students highlight, comment, and respond to each other’s annotations directly within the text – whether that’s a PDF article, a video, a webpage, or a podcast. Why It Matters for Teaching Perusall is designed to address…
