News & Blog

We have a new series called Research Tips Thursdays. Each Thursday we will be posting quick videos that focus on building specific research skills to make the research process faster and easier for students. Students can sign up to be notified when new content posts!  

The current week’s videos will be highlighted here https://guides.ucf.edu/rtt, as well as on our Facebook and Twitter pages. You can find past episodes in our archives.  

Topics coming up:   

October:  

• Synthesizing Ideas from Multiple Sources  
• Is it Trustworthy? Election Edition  
• Using Advanced Search Options  

November:  

• Why We Cite  
• Following the Research Conversation  
• Identifying Research Gaps  

Streaming videos are a great way to add engaging content to online courses in a broad range of fields beyond film studies. Everyone from Sociology and LGTBQIA+ Studies to Environmental Studies and Mental Health Counseling can benefit.

Swank Digital Campus offers many popular films and current releases as well as HBO documentaries and TV series for use in online courses. UCF currently has 364 Swank films licensed for use including recent releases like Just Mercy (2019), Bombshell (2019), and The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019) to classics such as Cool Hand Luke (1967) and Greed (1924). Links for these films can be sent the same business day as the request.

If none of those great films fits your course, you can search the full Swank catalog for specific films or browse by discipline. If you see anything you like, submit a request through the form on our guide.

And to help with your searching the list of currently licensed films is now sortable by title, year, or expiration date. Primary category will be added to the sorting options soon.

Are you working on planning your mixed mode or online courses for fall and thinking about incorporating library instruction? We have several options available, including both synchronous and asynchronous sessions. We can tailor the sessions to your particular course and research assignments.

If your class is meeting synchronously through Zoom, your librarian can hold a live session for you and your students demonstrating search techniques and highlighting relevant library resources.

If your class is being held asynchronously, we can create recorded sessions or other customized learning objects to include in your Webcourse modules. We also have our Information Literacy Modules, which cover a range of research and citation topics, that can be assigned to your students.

Contact your subject librarian to find out more information about our services and to schedule your library sessions for the coming semester.  

Are you looking for videos about library research to add to your online courses? Do you wish there was a quick way to show students that there’s more to doing research than just searching Google? Well, look no further. Check out UCF Libraries on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/ucflibraries

Our videos cover a range of topics, from short demonstrations of how to navigate our homepage and find ebooks to recorded webinars on plagiarism, basic statistics, and presentation skills. You can also find playlists of videos organized by topic, like business research, citation, and Google Scholar, in the showcases https://vimeo.com/ucflibraries/albums

Not finding what you’re looking for? Let us know. We’d love to hear your ideas about videos you’d like for your classes. Reach out to your subject librarian or to instruct@ucf.edu with your thoughts.

Want to build library instruction into your online course?  The UCF Libraries have you covered! One of the easiest ways to help your students build skills related to citing sources, avoiding plagiarism, or researching topics with library resources is to integrate the library’s Obojobo Info Lit tutorials into your canvas course. 

Each tutorial takes approximately 20-30 minutes to complete and allows instructors to import assessment scores directly into their Canvas gradebook.  There are twelve different modules to choose from that cover everything from the mechanics of integrating secondary sources into academic writing to evaluating sources.  For information on how to integrate the modules into your course check out our Quick Start Guide.   

If you have question or there are topics you would like covered that are not currently available, email Christina Wray at christina.wray@ucf.edu