Decker Library

Teaching Support

Teaching Support at Decker Library: Enhancing Learning Together

At Decker Library, we recognize the importance of integrating library resources into your teaching. We offer a range of synchronous and asynchronous teaching options to support your courses and engage your students.

Information Literacy Program

Explore our Information Literacy Program guide to access a variety of resources, including:

  • Canvas Commons modules for direct import into your courses
  • Slide decks and lesson plans
  • Video tutorials

Request a Research Instruction Session

Enhance your students' research skills with a tailored instruction session. Here's how to make the most of it:

  • Schedule Early: Contact the teaching librarian at least one week in advance. The instruction calendar fills up quickly, so request early in the semester (or even before it begins).
  • Collaborate on Learning Outcomes: Work with the librarian to establish learning outcomes for the session.
  • Prepare Students: Make sure students understand their research assignment and have a possible topic in mind before the session.
  • Attend and Participate: Your presence conveys the value you place on developing strong library research skills. Actively participate by interjecting information, asking questions, and encouraging students to engage.
  • Share Your Zoom Link: Share any Zoom course links with the librarian for seamless online access.
  • Cancellation Policy: Please note that we require 48 hours' notice to cancel a session for any reason other than illness or emergency.

Request a Research Instruction Session

Collaborative and Inclusive Teaching Support

We believe in working closely with faculty to create a learning environment that is inclusive and tailored to the unique needs of each course. Once you have scheduled your sessions, the instructor will be in touch about Zoom or other online teaching access.

Get in Touch:

Have questions or need further assistance? Connect with your librarian.

Workshops

The library also offers tool- and skill-specific workshops on copyright for artists, Wikipedia, Baltimore community history and more described below.

Decker Library's special collections can be included in an overview of Library resources or can form the basis of a session focused on particular subject matter, imagery, techniques, and material culture artifacts of diverse origin. Some examples can be seen on the MICA Digital Library and Decker Library Tumblr

This session will address image rights, fair use, and transformative work. The session leader will demonstrate how to find images in databases and websites and discuss Creative Commons licenses, public domain materials, and orphan works.

This workshop will work through best practices for digitization of analog material, born-digital file management, metadata, and organization to help you maintain intellectual control over your personal archive.

This session, geared towards faculty and graduate students, will be focused on how you can use Wikipedia to teach information literacy, open source software, and Creative Commons licensing.

Students will learn the basics of Wikipedia editing, including best practices and key policies. In an active learning session, they will make small edits to live articles in real time. 

In this session, we'll discuss the increasing use of digital technologies in research, publication and scholarship, and teaching We'll look at tools that might be useful for art historians, examples of digital scholarship in art history and discuss how digital engagement might affect methodologies and theoretical inquiries. 

This session will help students navigate through Baltimore's rich history, with a particular focus on primary source collections available at neighboring institutions. We will review the kinds of topics that could be researched, where to conduct certain types of research, and discuss barriers to access.