Course Resources FAQs |
Faculty Tutorial: Library Resources to Support Online Course Development |
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.
There are a myriad of useful features available to students (accessing, commenting upon, "liking", etc.) and faculty (analytics, ability to edit within Blackboard, etc.) to enhance virtual learning and class participation.
► Sample Leganto course resources list in Blackboard (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.
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.
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.
► See example of selecting Permalink (click to expand)
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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
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 provides BlackBoard Building Blocks that make it easy to embed their streaming videos into the course:
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:
*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.
For help importing a library package, contact librarians@senecacollege.ca
For help importing a Sandbox package please contact sandbox@senecacollege.ca
For Blackboard support, contact BBsupport@senecacollege.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 Blackboard course.
The BOILR is a repository of interactive learning resources that have been reviewed and selected by librarians and faculty for use in courses. Questions? Email BOILR@senecacollege.ca
► What is an ILR? (click to expand)
You can help us build the BOILR by suggesting topics, interactive learning resources, or joining the BOILR community that reviews and selects resources to be added to the repository.
Seneca Libraries Assignment Calculator 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.
 Assignment Calculator |
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| Use the Assignment Calculator to help you with time management of your project. This tool is simple to use, just identify the start and end dates, choose your assignment type, and you will be given a customized timeline of your work. |
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.
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.
Contact your liaison librarians for help locating OERs.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.