Teaching and Learning

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Librarians can work with UIC faculty to create sessions relevant to course assignments and research papers. We are available to meet with you to plan an interactive research instruction session tailored to your needs.

Credit-Based Courses Heading link

COM Peoria M3/M4 ELEC 156: Survey of Medical Informatics

Professors Emily Johnson-Barlow, Carmen Howard, and Deborah Lauseng

Medical informatics is an interdisciplinary field concentrating on resources, devices, and formalized methods for optimizing the storage, retrieval, and management of biomedical information. The goal is to prepare medical students for success in residency and practice by providing a foundation in medical informatics. The asynchronous, self-directed course surveys information resources and management tools using a variety of instructional methods including online lectures/seminars, readings, and assignments. Assignments are designed for students to build informatics skills and to reflect and synthesize the impact informatics will have on their future career.

DLG 120: First-Year Dialogue Seminar

Various Professors
Faculty Coordinator Steve Whitley

Dialogue is a form of communication that fosters empathy, perspective-taking, and trust as foundations for having sensitive conversations, using conflict for learning, and working toward social change. Rather than proving, persuading, or deciding, Dialogue aims to build relationships, connect different experiences across individuals, groups, and histories, and explore and challenge assumptions held by individuals, institutions, and society.

HON 126: The Daleys’ Chicago: From Midcentury to Global City

Professor David Greenstein

This course will explore the development of our city since midcentury and how changes to urban spaces and narratives of growth were shaped and challenged by diverse groups of Chicagoans. Class members will have the opportunity to explore this transformation and key issues in the history and politics of Chicago through hands-on work with archival materials. We will examine unique resources including the records of the city’s two longest serving mayors, the Richard J. Daley collection and the recently available Richard M. Daley papers. Half of our meetings will take place in the Special Collections department of the library, allowing students the opportunity to discover and analyze primary documents in a collaborative setting.

HON 201: City at a Crossroads: Local, National & Global Politics in Chicago, 1968

Professor David Greenstein

In 1968, Chicago was being reshaped by migration from the American South, changing immigrant communities, increasing suburbanization, and downtown redevelopment that led to contested patterns of housing, urban space, and local politics. This seminar will put students on the front lines of these issues through hands-on work with archival materials. Class members will ask and answer their own questions about local/national/global connections, race and urban space, social movements, and political campaigns using the rich records held in the Richard J. Daley Collection in UIC’s Special Collections and University Archives.

HON 201: Global Encounters in Chicago

Professor David Greenstein

This seminar will explore the ways that Chicago was shaped by global connection in the twentieth century. Through five thematic units class members will uncover how Chicago was connected to the world through migration, business and economy, international conflicts like the Cold War, Chicagoans’ global outlook, and the infrastructure and building projects that fostered the development of Chicago as a global city. Students will have the opportunity to ask and answer their own questions about Chicago in global context through hands on work with archival materials.

HON 201: Research Unbound: Creative Expressions of Scholarship

Professor Anne Armstrong

Students and scholars in academic settings have typically channeled their research findings through traditional products of scholarship such as research papers, peer-reviewed articles, academic books, conference reports and posters. While these formats sustain discourse within scholarly communities, they have limited potential for communicating important findings to the broader public. Unconfined by traditional scholarly conventions, scholars and artists have harnessed the narrative and visual power of alternative forms to convey research findings and information in highly creative formats, including but not limited to documentary film, creative non-fiction, graphic novels, infographics, performing arts, historical fiction and social media. Students will investigate how authors, artists, documentarians and performers have harnessed the unique potential of their chosen media to explore and expand upon themes of war and conflict, immigration, human rights and scientific discovery.

HUM 120: Social Justice and the Politics of Information

Professor Teresa Moreno
TA: Sarah Buchmeier

Is information inherently neutral? What types of political structures exist beneath the surface of our information that impact how we find, use and create information? This class will explore the humanities side of how information is created, used and shared in our society. We will use a social justice framework to explore topics such as how Google curates our searches, how the Library of Congress controls how information is organized and the political implications for us and society of how information is created and shared.

LIB 399: Research Experience in Library and Information Science.

Various Professors

Research experience in Library and Information Science under the guidance of a faculty member who will act as research supervisor. Course Information: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory grading only. May be repeated. Application of credit toward the degree is contingent upon the approval of the student’s college and/or department. Prerequisite(s): Consent of the instructor.

LIB 573: Introduction to Managing Research Data.

Professor Abigail Goben

Description: Research data management is a critical challenge, with new and increasing obligations to preserve, share, reproduce, and handle data ethically, as well as opportunities to collaborate, reuse, and remix datasets within and across disciplines. This foundational course will help graduate students understand data management best practices and begin to implement them. Students will explore data types, rules, and requirements in their own and classmates’ disciplines; and identify opportunities to improve sharing, reproducibility, and interdisciplinary collaboration. This course includes asynchronous lectures and discussions, individual assignments, peer assignment review, and a group project.

Interdisciplinary Collaboration Heading link

Online Research Guides

Librarians create a variety of online subject guides to assist students with the research process and help them identify key resources related to their disciplines and assignments, such as databases, books, or resources on the open web.  Course and subject guides can be accessed through the library website and/or linked to through course Blackboard sites. Contact the liaison for your discipline to plan a guide customized for your course.

Instructional Activities

Librarians can create research-related activities for your students to complete either within or outside of class.

Special Collections and University Archives

Archivists will work with you to customize learning activities to engage students with the building blocks of history, including rare books, original documents, historical photographs, and other special formats.

Research Assignment Consultation

Librarians welcome the opportunity to discuss research  integration of library resources and information literacy skills into course assignments.

Assessment of Student Research Skills

Librarians can develop formative assessments such as quizzes or knowledge probes to gauge student understanding of research-based concepts. They also integrate formative assessment techniques into library instruction to improve student learning outcomes and develop more effective instructional practices.

Individual Appointments with Students

Librarians are available to meet with students both in-person and online, with individuals or small groups. Students can sign up for an appointment online.

Workshops

Throughout the semester, librarians deliver in-person and online workshops on a variety of topics, from citation management systems to conducting graduate-level research. Check the schedule to see what is available, or suggest a topic you’d like to see covered. Librarians can also develop workshops for specific audiences on demand.

Blackboard Integration

At the top of all Blackboard pages, there is a library tab that directs students to key resources. Your liaison librarian can also be added to your course as a course builder to directly provide support to students or provide links to research guides or specific resources (add a blurb about integration of tutorials)

Online Tutorials

Librarians can suggest and create video and interactive tutorials for students focused on a variety of research skills. These tutorials can be used in flipped-classroom settings, or to simply reinforce course content.

Open Textbook Faculty Incentive Program

The high-cost of textbooks is one of the factors that affects student learning outcomes and student success. Students avoid certain classes, drop a class, or do poorly when they cannot afford the text for a course. The Open Textbook Faculty Incentive Program will be to support undergraduate students by creating incentives for teaching faculty to use alternative lower-cost educational materials rather than high-cost textbooks. This may include the creation of new Open Educational Resources (OER) or the use of existing OER materials.