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Course Resources

Academic Skills for Pathway Students
Course Resources FAQs
Faculty Tutorial: Library Resources to Support Online Course Development
Leganto Guide

Leganto

What is Leganto?

Leganto is a resource list management system that allows course instructors to quickly build specialized resource lists for your courses. The Leganto search spans the library collection and other openly available resources, and you can add more digital items from online and your own collection.

Because Leganto is also linked to Blackboard, you can embed your resource lists right into your courses, making it easy to access for students.

 

►  (click to expand)

Learn more about Leganto and how to start building lists by checking out our Leganto for Faculty guide.

Interested instructors should  contact their liaison librarians.

 

Academic Skills for Pathways Students

Academic Skills for Pathways StudentsScreenshot of Academic Skills for Pathways Students page

A recent program undertaken by Seneca Pathways, Seneca Libraries and Seneca Learning Centre sought to explore the unique needs of pathways students and their academic skills. 

This site covers the unique skills and behaviours of pathways students at Seneca Polytechnic and how instructors and staff can support these students in their class. This also includes resources for your courses to support pathways students and all students including:

Leverage our Digital Collection

Seneca Libraries' digital collection offers excellent sources of authoritative and - from the student perspective - inexpensive readings for your classes. In this era of expensive textbooks, faculty may wish to substitute traditional textbooks with resources from our digital collection.

More information about eBooks as course readings
eBooks

Faculty Miniseries | Episode 06 | July 2021

When you are linking to Seneca Libraries resources, you cannot copy and paste the URL from the address bar. You must find the persistent link (aka permalink) and may even need to edit it according to our  persistent link instruction guide.

You can get the persistent link for resources in Library Search by clicking on the title of the resource in your results, and then selecting Permalink.

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library search saving options with permalink highlighted

Alternatively, if you have found the resource in a particular database outside of Library Search you can manually create the persistent link according to the instructions for that particular database.

 Seneca Libraries Guide to Obtaining Persistent Links

Link to a Streaming Video in Your Blackboard Course
Important! 

Copy & paste the following instructions alongside any links to videos from Seneca Libraries:
"You will be prompted to login using your Seneca email username and password. If you cannot view [video title] right away, you may be experiencing a slow network or a maximum number of viewers has been reached. In these cases, close your browser window and try again in a couple of minutes."

Acquiring a Permalink

To obtain streaming video links that work, always use the links explicitly provided by the streaming service. Do not copy the URL from the browser's URL field. To ensure that the link works within MySeneca, always set the link to open in a new window.


YouTube 

Click on the "Share" button located underneath the video screen. Expand the "Options" link to customize the quality of the video or specify different start point.


Streaming Videos from the Library

If you find a streaming video from our library search, click on the "..." icon and use the "Permalink" from the to copy the persistent link.screenshot of creating a persistent link to a video

 

Next Steps

Once you have the link of the video, follow the instructions on MySeneca's Help on how to add external links to add the streaming video link into your course. Make sure to set the link to "open in a new window."

Instructions for creating more direct persistent links to specific streaming video resources (Curio, Films on Demand, Kanopy, NFB etc.) offered by Seneca Libraries can be found at this link.

Embed a Streaming Video in Your Blackboard Course

Important! 

Copy & paste the following instructions alongside any links to videos from Seneca Libraries:
"You will be prompted to login using your Seneca email username and password. If you cannot view [video title] right away, you may be experiencing a slow network or a maximum number of viewers has been reached. In these cases, close your browser window and try again in a couple of minutes."

YouTube

YouTube provides BlackBoard Building Blocks that make it easy to embed their streaming videos into the course:

  1. Select Build Content > Mashups: YouTube Video.
  2. You can search for a YouTube video within MySeneca.
  3. Select a video, and the video will be automatically embedded into your content area.
Streaming Videos from the Library (e.g., Films on Demand, Curio, Kanopy)

Many streaming platforms provide embed codes that work in MySeneca. In general, these are the steps to follow for embedding a video from the library:

  1. Go to the streaming video page of the title that you want to embed.
  2. Look for an "embed" link or section on the page. Sometimes, the embed functionality may be shown within the sharing functionality.
  3. Copy the embed code. Make sure you are highlighting the full code when you copy it.
  4. Open another browser window with MySeneca and log into your course.
  5. Select Build Content > Create Item.
  6. On the text editor, click on the down arrow button to see all editing options. Click on the HTML button, then paste the embed code that you copied into the HTML code view window.
  7. Important: Do this before you save / submit the item!* Within the embed code that you have pasted into MySeneca, locate the video URL (starts with http://) and add the following prefix: (see the screenshot for details) http://libaccess.senecapolytechnic.ca/login?url=

screenshot of the BlackBoard text editor showing the image and HTML buttons for adding an embedded code.

*if you save the embed code before you add the prefix, you will have to add it twice to the embed code - Blackboard creates a second version of the embed code once you save it, and if the prefix only appears in the second version, the embedding will not work.

Tips:
  • If you decide to embed a video, make sure that you do not have the video start to play automatically when the page opens.
  • To make the video accessible make sure that it provides closed captioning or add a link to the video transcript underneath the video.

TRC, EDI & Sustainability

Course Resource Support for Truth and Reconciliation; Equity, Diversity and Inclusion; and Sustainability

Whether you are participating in Seneca’s Curriculum Integration initiative, or you are just looking to include more on these topics in your course, the library has many resources for each of Seneca’s priority areas:

TRC:

  • Subject guides: Indigenous Resources ; Indigenous History
  • Databases: Indigenous Studies Portal, Informit Indigenous Collection, NFB videos
  • College Libraries Ontario: Maamwi Hub - including Blackboard packages to import content and assessments directly into your course! 
  • “The Maamwi Hub library packages invite students to move toward reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples of Canada by deepening their knowledge and appreciation of Indigenous histories, cultures, and worldviews. The educational materials, reflection questions, and activities are non-program specific so that faculty in any discipline can incorporate them into their courses.”

EDI: 

SUS:

Library Packages and Tutorials

►  Library and  Sandbox packages are zip files that you can add to your Learn@Seneca (Blackboard) course.

► Imported packages create a content area in your course and can include tutorials, videos, and/or quizzes for students.

► Quizzes are automatically graded and entered into your Grade Centre within Blackboard. 
The Library in Blackboard

Faculty Miniseries | Episode 01 | February 2021

 

Instructions for importing library packages (PDF)

Instructions for importing library packages (video how-to)

For help importing a library package, contact librarians@senecapolytechnic.ca

For help importing a Sandbox package please contact sandbox@senecapolytechnic.ca

For Blackboard support, contact BBsupport@senecapolytechnic.ca 

Students can use a variety of  interactive tutorials and instructional videos to help with their research.

Faculty can encourage students to complete the interactive tutorials by sharing the links to the tutorials or by importing the related Library Package into their Learn@Seneca (Blackboard) course. 

Assignment Planner

Seneca Libraries Assignment Planner is a time management tool that creates a roadmap of the steps required to complete assignments and projects by their due date. Each step in the process points students towards relevant tools and services that will help them to complete their work.

calendar icon (in white) Assignment Planner
This Planner will help you break down your assignment or project into manageable steps and guide you to useful services and tools from the Library and Learning Centre. Follow the guidelines for the assignment as discussed in class and consult with your Professor/Instructor if you have any specific questions about the assignment dates.
 
 
 

 

 

Subject Guides

Subject Guides are custom websites curated and maintained by library staff that centralize the key resources and tools that best serve specific programs and subject areas. They are intended as a starting point in the research process for students. Subject Guides are available for most program areas that have a research component, and faculty can link to or embed them within their Blackboard courses.

Faculty can enable the Library Resources tool in Blackboard to embed a library subject guide and connect students to relevant library resources from within their course page. By activating this tool, the Library Resources menu item that appears on the Blackboard course page will feature the recommended subject guide within the Blackboard frame.

To embed a Subject Guide:

► Contact your liaison librarian to confirm the Subject Guide you want to appear in your course along with your course code.

► Once you receive confirmation from your librarian that the link between the subject guide and your Blackboard course page is ready, follow these instructions for adding the Seneca Library Resources menu item to your course.

OERs

 

 

 

 

Seneca's Open Educational Resources Repository    includes openly licensed educational materials that have been authored or adapted by Seneca faculty. Educators are invited to explore these resources and build upon them, or to submit their own OER to the repository.

What is an Open Educational Resource (OER)?

"Any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license." - UNESCO

What can I do with an OER?

"The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them." - UNESCO

What materials are considered OERs?

"OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation." - UNESCO

Click here to visit the Faculty Guide to OERs.

Select OERs are discoverable through Library Search.

List of OER repositories 

Contact your liaison librarians for help locating OERs.

Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.