Valued Services
Teaching and Learning
This year saw us offer significant support to our students, who continued to study in challenging circumstances. This support spanned a number of services: My Learning Essentials (MLE), My Research Essentials (MRE), Specialist Library Support (SLS), Widening Participation (WP) and our Credit Bearing Teaching (CBT).
Our Virtual Teaching approach, launched in Semester 1, prioritised asynchronous delivery of study sessions and resources.
We had 3,801 attendances at 355 virtual sessions and drop-ins across the Library’s learning programmes.
We also further strengthened our asynchronous offer by:
- updating 38 existing online resources
- creating 249 new online resources, blog posts, videos and podcasts
- handling 3,731 enquiries outside of scheduled sessions.
In total, our resources were viewed over 250,000 times by around 35,000 users. Subject guides and MLE webpages were viewed over 645,000 times.
Providing our academic colleagues with Library expertise and embedding support in the curriculum has never been more important. In 2020/21 we:
- handled 174 embedded support requests
- added/updated support in over 120 courses/programmes
- made our materials available to over 9,800 students in a total of over 250 taught spaces.
We stepped up our Credit Bearing Teaching offer to give students more choice of units, when some teaching had to be cancelled in Semester 1. We were approached by the University College of Interdisciplinary Learning (UCIL) to offer our Digital Society course unit in Semester 1 (in addition to Semester 2 when it usually runs), based on the strength of the course and readiness for online delivery.
In Semester 2, we received our highest ever feedback scores from students taking Digital Society (average 4.81/5 across all questions), and some very positive feedback on the online format.
‘Another aspect of the course I have nothing but overwhelming, positive feelings towards is the nature of how the course was delivered … The delivery of the content on Medium was easy to digest yet just as informative, if not more than an online lecture … For this, I feel thankful and would recommend all other modules to take inspiration from the creative design of this module’.
Virtual Teaching Space
Working with the University’s Media Services Team the Library developed a Virtual Teaching Space (VTS), enabling curators to deliver collection-based teaching during lockdown when face-to-face teaching was paused. The VTS utilises technologies pioneered by the Rylands Reader Services Team who have operated a Virtual Reading Room (VRR) since the summer of 2020 delivering over 253 virtual appointments to readers from Australia to Russia. Both the VRR and VTS have been truly sector leading and we are proud to feature as case studies on the Research Libraries UK website.
Multiple digital cameras, lighting and sound technologies allowed curators to deliver the MA in Medieval and Early Modern Studies. This innovation allowed the 2020/21 MA cohort to experience the materiality of an object and benefit from curatorial expertise in a virtual classroom setting. One student told us of the thrill of hearing the sound of the pages as they turned and being able to relate to the size and structure of an object in relation to the hands of the curator.
'This is an excellent initiative, well thought through, grounded in pedagogy and demonstrating a clear benefit to online learning with reach well beyond pandemic teaching. The University of Manchester Special Collections team are sector leading.’
Reading Lists Online
Reading Lists Online (RLO) provides academic staff with a simple way to deliver equitable online access to reading lists, and seamless access to electronic content from within the VLE. Whilst the service already had an e-first policy, the move to predominantly online learning during 2020/21 increased the need for students to be able to access resources, no matter where they were.
During 2020/21 an additional 951 lists were added to Reading Lists Online - an increase of 67% on the previous year and over 50% of all taught courses had at least one online reading list available by the end of the academic year.
Almost 1,000 staff involved in teaching delivery used RLO to create and edit their lists and an average of 7,560 students used the system monthly to access their recommended reading.
Additionally, the RLO Team:
- reviewed over 1,200 reading lists to ensure provision of cited content
- purchased an additional 525 new titles as eBooks, 75% of which offered unlimited user access
- supplied 631 digitised extracts from print only texts, and digitally held titles with restrictive licences.
eTextbook Programme
Our well established eTextbook programme (already one of the largest in the UK) was expanded in 2020/21 to support as many of our students as possible with a personal downloadable copy of their core textbook.
The Library’s eTextbook programme is the central negotiator for eTextbook deals for the University, drawing on its ability to take a holistic view of textbook purchases across the institution. In 2020/21 we continued to work with publishers to source electronic access to the textbooks being recommended by our teaching staff in an affordable and sustainable way, whilst striving to ensure the platforms used provide our staff and students with an experience that not just mirrors that of the print environment, but enhances the learning process.
In 2020/21 the programme provided:
- students on 550 course units with access to their own personal copy of an eTextbook - a 184% increase on 2019/20
- 80,000 eTextbook copies to 27,500 students.
Almost 12,000 more students have benefitted from having at least one eTextbook in 2020/21 compared to previous years, this includes nearly 100% of first year undergraduates.
Uptake and engagement with the eTextbooks provided was also high:
- 80% of students registering and actively engaged with their textbook/s
- 95% of students spending 15 minutes or more during each study session - spending an average of 2hrs reading each title (accessing an average 899 pages)
- Students also made almost 1 million annotations – demonstrating the value of the eTextbook platform and the enhanced features offered.
The programme was accessed in 141 countries/3,933 cities around the world. The highest usage outside of the UK was in Hong Kong.
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