Focusing on the course literature

Put the focus on studying the course literature 

You can clarify for students that the course main focus will be on the assigned litteratur and that it will be demanded that they engage in it in a more active way to accomplish the learning  outcomes. 

The following tips can help you and your students if you wish to use this strategy:

  • Divide the reading into clear sections (make a list of what to read and divide books into appropriate sections).
  • Ask the student to read groups of texts, eg. read chapter 1 of the book and compare with this given article.
  • Provide students with study questions, such as When you read these texts you should be able to answer these three questions.
  • Ask the student to read a section of the course literature and then to find a relevant article on the subject via LUBSearch, and compare the two texts.

Give feedback on reading and or set up deadlines 

There are numerous tools that you can use to give feedback on reading. How many and which of these you use has less of an importance. What matters is that you use the tools that you feel most comfortable with. 

Please find below a list over digital tools in Canvas and how they can be used for feedback and deadlines specific to a desk study of literature. 

Inbox or assignment: Ask the student to submit answers to the study questions, by email or as an assignment in Canvas. If you use email, ask students to submit their weekly work once a week on a given day to facilitate the process for yourself. You could also ask them to submit a weekly reflection paper on an open question or a specific theme if you have organised the assigned reading in such way. 

Peer-review: If you have many assignments you can ask students to read each other's assignments through peer-review (you tick this option when doing the assignment in canvas, if you are using canvas).

Quizz: Do a quiz in canvas with a few questions that the student should answer.

Discussions and Chat: Use either of these functions in Canvas to talk about what students read.

    • Discussions let everyone respond and write when they can. Give clear instructions that everyone should write one post and reply to 2 or more of others' posts
    • Chat lets you gather students f.ex. once a week to exchange thoughts about the week's reading via a text based chat.

Guides

Questions regarding the above? Please contact us at canvas@education.lu.se