CoLRiC is delighted to announce that the winner of the prestigious Innovative Practice Award for 2022 is the Learning Resources Service at Bridgwater & Taunton College/University Centre Somerset for its ‘Embedded Librarian or Taking the Library to the Classroom’ initiative.
The Award is presented in celebration of highly innovative and enthusiastic contributions to team working including:
- A demonstrable impact on the teaching and learning experience; primarily through assessments, surveys and feedback
- Active engagement with academic staff, curriculum colleagues and students.
The Learning Resources Service at Bridgwater & Taunton College/University Centre Somerset impressed the judging panel for several reasons:
- The collaboration and dialogue with teaching staff to create an engaging bespoke service for students
- The effective utilisation of digital curriculum platforms to contextualise learning resources within the wider learning environment, embracing everything from print and electronic sources of information, information retrieval and research skills to equality, diversity, health and wellbeing awareness
- The use of universally understood social media communication techniques to engage with the student community
- The introduction of complementary ‘pop in’ classroom visits at specific and relevant times of the academic year to offer guidance, hints and tips on common queries like referencing, most notably ‘speed databasing’
- Sensitivity to the needs of a diverse student community
- Overwhelmingly positive feedback that evidences a major impact on student learning, including the accuracy of bibliographies, improved writing skills, the wider exploration of information resources and overall academic confidence.
‘The Learning Resources Service, the entire College, is honoured to receive this award. We would like to thank the judging panel for recognising the value of the initiative and the impact it has had on the learning experience. Students are at the heart of everything we do. We continuously seek to adapt to the changing learning needs of a diverse student community and support digital transformation.’
Jolanta Peters, Research & Library Services Manager
‘I am proud that our Learning Resources Service is the winner of the prestigious 2022 CoLRiC Innovative Practice Award. As we celebrate, we reflect on our efforts to innovate and support learning in the digital age. This is an exciting project – a linking bridge with the curriculum that has created a service engaging students with library and learning resources in support of their academic development. We are immensely grateful to CoLRiC for recognising this achievement.’
Adam Sturt, Deputy Director of Quality
Special thanks go to Emma Duffield for being the external judge for this award, and to CoLRiC’s valued sponsor IS Oxford Ltd. Emma is Sales Manager at IS Oxford and a Library and Information Management Consultant.