Author Archives: Matthew Cunningham

LBA001: Academic Writing Workshops

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Using academic language appropriately and correctly can make a tremendous difference to the quality of your work, but it doesn’t always come naturally.

The Academic Language Support Service offers a range of support in academic writing and study skills specifically aimed at and designed for native or near-native English speaking students.

Students can sign up on Learn module LBA001 for courses on

Coherence in writing 1 Wavy Top WAV0.41 30th October 5PM – 6.30PM

Punctuation and proofreading Wavy Top WAV0.41 1st November 5PM – 6.30PM

Coherence in writing 2 Bridgeman Building BRI 2.08 6th November 5PM – 6.30PM

Paraphrasing and summarising Wavy Top WAV0.41 8th November 5PM – 6.30PM

Tailored Lynda.com Playlists

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Lynda.com playlists have been created for each school to showcase some of the courses that might be relevant for staff and students. There are also two Excel playlists available and ready to be watched so you can improve your Excel skills. Statistics are also available showing usage to date of the skills videos including details of what students in the Schools have been watching.

What is Lynda.com?

Lynda.com is an online learning platform that can help you acquire software, technology, business and creative skills to achieve learning, personal and professional goals.

The resource, which offers access to over 5000 video tutorials, has been purchased as part of the Digital Strategy for Learning and Teaching and is now freely available to all Loughborough University staff and students from any desktop or mobile device.

So why not login with your University username and password and take advantage of what www.Lynda.com is offering you. Please click here for guidance on how to login.

 

School-specific suggested playlists…

The school-specific playlists provide a snapshot of the availability on Lynda.com. All you have to do is click on ‘copy’ then ‘edit playlist’ and you’re ready to add or remove courses/videos to make it more tailored to your subject area. Please be aware that there may be more content suitable to your school which is not currently on the playlists. Guidance for creating playlists is available here.

To access the playlists, click here to view the list of schools. Click on your School name e.g. Wolfson School and explore the list of recommended courses.

 

MS Excel and Office 365 playlists…

Two Excel playlists have also been curated suitable for staff and students to watch at any time available on the CAP webpages. Take advantage of these Excel playlists to improve your skills using the key functions and advanced features within Microsoft Excel:

  • MS Excel Overview and Key Features – This playlist combines an introduction to Excel 2016 for those with limited experience or who need a refresher, together with some more in-depth information on the use of formulas, functions and charts. It is an example of how you can create a more tailored list of videos, rather than just a long list of courses.
  • MS Excel 2016 Advanced Features and Functions – This playlist contains selected videos on some of the more commonly used advanced functions and features of Microsoft Excel 2016 and provides links to some in-depth courses for those wishing to explore them in more detail.

Are you using Office 365 Groups? Well now you can watch a playlist which covers the main and important features of Office Groups, helping you to use the tool in the most efficient way. Click here to access the playlist.

 

What is the engagement on Lynda.com like so far?

Since Oct 2017 to June 2018 a total of 1652 unique users have viewed content on Lynda.com of which 655 were staff/researchers and 997 students. During this time there have been a total of 4170 hours of skills training watched overall, 1944 hours by staff/researchers and 2226 by students.

The Word Cloud below provides an overview of the content being viewed on Lynda.com.

 

If you have any further questions or would like access to more in-depth statistics of courses viewed by each department/School, please contact Jaina Pattni.

 

Socialism on Film now available!

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We invite you to take a peek behind the Iron Curtain with our exciting new acquisition, Socialism On Film: The Cold War and international propaganda from Adam Matthew Digital.

A rare opportunity to look back at the communist world, this is an important and historic film resource. Much of the twentieth century is covered from the Russian Revolution to the 1980s and countries featured range from the USSR and China to Eastern Europe and Britain. This is a fantastic opportunity to explore socialism in context. Produced almost entirely in the communist world, this collection includes documentaries, newsreels and feature films revealing the world from the perspective of the filmmaker. Socialism is laid bare in this important primary source.

Access is via IP address. To begin searching go to: www.socialismonfilm.amdigital.co.uk

Spotlight on… resources for your assignment

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Abhi Sharma, Books HD, from www.flickr.com, used under a CC-BY 2.0 licence

Reality hits as your assignment deadlines approach!  Quality information resources are one of the foundations of highly marked assignments, so come along to the stand to discover how to:

  • identify the sorts of resources you will need for your assignment
  • discover which databases can help you find high quality resources quickly in your subject
  • search the databases or sources effectively
  • evaluate which books or articles would be appropriate for an academic assignment

When: Tuesday 7th November, 12-2 and Thursday 9th November, 2-4

Where: Pilkington Library foyer

Find out more via this short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=364CfEeMrmk&rel=0

Problems accessing Mendeley?

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Mendeley are in the process of transitioning their log ins to a different server, which means that access via the usual web address: http://www.mendeley.com can be unreliable. If you try to log in via this address and receive a message: “We’re sorry but we can’t sign you in at the moment. Please try again later”, please log in via: https://mendeley.com/sign/in/plus instead. Once the transition process has been completed the usual Mendeley address will be working again. Mendeley apologise for the inconvenience.

Important! Last Chance to Save Your RefWorks References

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Are you a RefWorks user? If so, it is important that you act now in order to ensure that you do not lose any of your work.

From the end of October 2017, the University will no longer be supporting RefWorks; so it is vital that you make provision to migrate any references you have in RefWorks to a new platform.

The University is now recommending Mendeley as our chosen referencing software. If you choose to use Mendeley migrating your references from RefWorks to Mendeley is a simple process, details of which can be found on the Referencing Software pages on Learn:

http://learn.lboro.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=3539

These pages have further details about Mendeley, with videos and guides, informing you about the functionality of Mendeley and how to get started using it.

The Library is also running an introductory workshop on 9th November, 2-3.30pm.

Go to the Library website to book your place:

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/services/library/students/eventsandworkshops/

Alternatively contact your Academic Librarian for further details about workshops and Mendeley:

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/services/library/staff-researchers/about/librarystaff/

Support from the Enquiry Desks during the Vacation Period

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During vacation periods, the Enquiry Desks will close at 17.30 weekdays (apart from on Wednesdays when it will remain open until 20.00). During the Easter vacation, the Library is staffed by security until 20.00 but they will not be able to assist with any library enquiries and will refer you to the Library staff the next working day. Please bear this in mind when you plan your visit to the Library.

Library colleagues published in new book

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Matt Cunningham (User Services Manager on left) and Dr Graham Walton (Assistant Director Academic and User Services on right) were happy to receive copies of the recently published book “Quality and the Academic Library: Reviewing, Assessing and Enhancing Service Provision”.

Matt wrote a chapter about using Investors in People and Customer Services Excellence and Graham considered how quality is measured in the Library building. Graham has contributed to and edited a number of books in the past, but this was Matt’s first book contribution. Looking at the overall book Matt comments:

“It is really pleasing that external experts in the field have asked Graham and me to contribute to this book as it recognises the emphasis Loughborough places on customer service standards and how the Library building is developed and shows that we have a positive message about the way we have developed these areas over a number of years at the University Library. Writing my chapter was a great way to review and critically evaluate what we have achieved over the last ten years.”