Remote learning is now the main focus of your coursework, interactions with your lecturers and collaboration with your fellow students. To support you getting the most from this style of learning, the library have collated some resources to get the most out of your online learning.
Click on the tabs across this section to discover more information and remember that the library team are working remotely too, and always here to help with anything, email us at library.midlands@tus.ie.
Tips for Remote Learning Quick reads to get you started
Online Courses Upskill remotely for free
Check out the videos and webinars below for quick starters on your common learning software
Microsoft Teams : Student Introduction to Teams, a Hub for Collaboration and Communication. 1 hour webinar on how to improve class collaboration and group projects by consolidating messaging, meetings, notes, files, and more in a single place.
Communicating Online With fellow students, team mates & lecturers
Quick Guide for Class Reps This guide was produced to help class reps to engage with your fellow classmates during the Covid-19 crisis
Success Strategies for Online Communication in your Course Tips for how to be a good classmate and engage with your online learning sessions
Check your Sources Don't spread misinformation online
Online Library Collections
AIT Library collections quicklinks to databases, ebooks, journals, reference, positive living and well-being collection.
Assignment Essentials: Library Guide on researching for assignments
Online Library Services & Supports
Exam Papers Online: From the 'Collections' drop-down menu on the top of the Library Homepage, click on 'Exam Papers'. You will be asked to login with your AIT network credentials i.e. your Moodle login.
Undergraduate Theses Online: From the 'Collections' drop-down menu on the top of the Library Homepage, click on 'Exam Papers'. You will be asked to login with your AIT network credentials i.e. your Moodle login.
Postgraduate Theses Online: available on our institute repository Research@THEA
With the move to online teaching for both students and lecturers in the current crisis, academic staff are demonstrating their flexibility for the benefit of their students and are learning themselves how to make this huge transition in a very short space of time. AIT's Learning & Teaching unit have created a Moodle course for staff transitioning to online delivery and connecting with students online.
This guide collates online resources and courses on teaching online, related issues that arise and resources on online assessments. Click on the tabs across this section to discover more information and remember that the library team are here to support staff with any needs from sourcing online course materials to research queries, email us at library.midlands@tus.ie or contact your subject liaison librarian.
Online Resources Skills, software & more for remote teaching
Online Assessment
The Irish Universities Association has launched a three-year project to mainstream digital in teaching, learning and assessment through an ambitious professional development programme. You will find examples of vlogging, e-portfolio, learning journals, virtual presentations, reflective assignments and more.
Alternatives to Traditional Exams and Papers from the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning in Indiana University Bloomington
Alternatives to Traditional Exams Tacit quick guide in teaching and assessment for Cork Institute of Technology T&L Unit
Online Courses Skills for remote teaching & learning
When transitioning to online teaching, once you get to grips with the basis, We will be updating this section with more areas as they arise. Looking for information on something, let us help you source what you need, email library@ait.ie with your query.
Copyright
Remote Working
Access to Free Inspection Copies
In support of staff and students moving to remote teaching and learning, the library has collated this section to provide further access to e-resources.
Included in Collections tab are the many newly Open Access materials from publishers which AIT do not subscribe to as well as a comprehensive list of Open Education Resources (OERs - always free).
In the case of the newly available material from commercial publishers, it is likely that there will be timelines on this availability so the library will not be adding these items to our catalogues. With this in mind, if lecturers are linking into the resource for students, they should link directly into the resource rather than linking to the library catalogue.
Click on the tabs across this section to discover more information and remember that the library team are working remotely too, and always here to help with anything, email us at library.midlands@tus.ie. This list will be maintained and expanded regularly as new materials become available.
Alongside the Library's online e-books, databases, journals and Institutional Repository, the list below collates newly available e-resources since COVID-19 as well as a range of Open Education Resources (OERs) for inclusion in teaching, courses or assignments.
ProQuest Ebook Central: As a customer of ProQuest, TUS Library now has unlimited access to titles from over 50 publishers until mid-June 2020. This collection is accessible to AIT users via the Library's e-books page, the eBook Central link - all additional titles available will appear in your normal search.
Internet Archive National Emergency Library This collection from the Internet Archives draws on e-texts from a wide range of international institutions including fiction titles for all ages, historical texts and scholarly monographs
University of California Press UC Press are offering free journals until the end of June 2020. They publish scholarly journals in Biology, Communication Studies, Criminal Justice, Environmental science, Film and Media, Food Studies, Law, Politics, Psychology, Research Methods and Sociology.
Ohio State University Press E-Book Access A list of over 650 monographs and textbooks are now available for the duration of the COVID-19 crisis.
Muse open access journals There are over 2000 open access books and a small number of fully OA journals on the MUSE platform.
BookRags The largest collection of literature study guides, lesson plans and educational resources for teachers and students.
BiodiversityLibrary Works collaboratively to make biodiversity literature openly available to the world as part of a global biodiversity community.
Digitalbookindex An Index of 165000 commercial and non-commercial e-books.
DOAB - Directory of Open Access Books A non-profit organisation that provides access to thousands of peer-reviewed academic books from hundreds of publishers.
E-Books and Texts A collection of 20,000,000 freely downloadable books and texts.
FreeComputerBooks Offers free Computer, Maths, Technical books and Lecture notes.
Free e-Books.net Access to thousands of e-books fiction, non-fiction, text books and academic.
Freetechbooks A Database of free open access computer science textbooks and lecture notes.
GoogleBooks The worlds most comprehensive index of full text books.
IntechOpen Leading publisher in the fields of Science, Technology and Medicine.
JustFreeBooks Online Offers a wide range of e-books for download to your kindle or tablet.
Theonlinebookspage A regularly updated list of free e-books on the web.
OpenStax A publisher of high quality peer-reviewed open text books o a range of subjects.
Opentextbooks A curated Collection of courses and textbooks.
Project Gutenberg An free online library for e-books. Mostly consisting of older works that can be downloaded or read online.
Scribd.com A large subscription based digital library with millions of documents and e-books. Fee month trail available.
Refdesk.com Website that indexes and reviews credible and current internet reference resources
World Public Library Association Coordinated effort to preserve and disseminate historical books, classic literature, Serials, Bibliographies, and other heritage sites.
Digital media and podcasts:
APA "speaking of Psychlogy" podcasts series 117 podcasts covering a wide range of psychology related topics
Contact Us for Support
The Library team are available to assist you via our email library.midlands@tus.ie. We will deal with your query or direct it to one of the team. We can facilitate 1:1 sessions for supports, finding resources, search strategies and consultations. Follow us on our social accounts to keep up-to-date on resources & service updates, we are on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
E-Resource Access Issues
If you experience difficulty accessing online resources please ensure the following:
If you are still having access issues, please email library.midlands@tus.ie with the following information and a member of the library team will respond to you as soon as possible:
These readings will be of interest to staff, students and higher education professionals as we all adapt to increased dependence to the online learning environment. Links are all directly into TUS Library Collections. Contact us on library.midlands@tus.ie with further suggestions or support in finding materials.
Abdous, M. (2011). A process-oriented framework for acquiring online teaching competencies. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 23(1), 60–77. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12528-010-9040-5
Coker, H. (2018). Purpose, Pedagogy and Philosophy: “Being” an Online Lecturer. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(5). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v19i5.3312
Dunlap, J. C., & Lowenthal, P. R. (2018). Online educators’ recommendations for teaching online: Crowdsourcing in action. Open Praxis, 10(1), 79–89. https://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.10.1.721
Gómez-Rey, P., Barbera, E., & Fernández-Navarro, F. (2018). Students’ perceptions about online teaching effectiveness: A bottom-up approach for identifying online instructors’ roles. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 34(1). https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.3437
Martin, F., Ritzhaupt, A., Kumar, S., & Budhrani, K. (2019). Award-winning faculty online teaching practices: Course design, assessment and evaluation, and facilitation. The Internet and Higher Education, 42, 34–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2019.04.001
Meyer, K. A., & McNeal, L. (2011). How Online Faculty Improve Student Learning Productivity. Online Learning, 15(3). https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v15i3.169
Peacock, S., & Cowan, J. (2019). Promoting a Sense of Belonging in Online Learning Communities of Inquiry. Online Learning, 23(2). https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v23i2.1488
Smits, A., & Voogt, J. (2017). Elements of satisfactory online asynchronous teacher behaviour in higher education. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 33(2), 97–114. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.2929