Development of an Online Module in Academic Integrity at Chalmers University of Technology Library

Övrigt konferensbidrag, 2021

Chalmers Library is a part of the Department of Communication and Learning in Science (CLS) which is considered a pedagogical hub of the University (Chalmers University of Technology, 2020).

The online module CLEO (Chalmers Library Education Online) became a part of our offerings along with tutoring sessions that together are mandatory for most BSc students. The module, however, is not credit-bearing.

The first version of CLEO was created in 2015 with the help of internal grant for a blended learning project. The initial work was previously presented at ECIL 2017 (Wernbro & Nordfeldt, 2017). After we received good evaluations more BSc programs became interested and ordered the online module.

CLEO is offered in either Swedish or English and consists of short videos with quizzes on source criticism, referencing, plagiarism and copyright. The quizzes are interactive, automatically graded and provide immediate feedback. This makes students more active and gives them an opportunity for a deeper reflection on academic integrity, which becomes increasingly important in a post-truth era. There is considerable evidence that active learning should be preferred to traditional passive learning summarized, among others, by Freeman (2014).

The content of the course was updated last year following ACRL Framework for Information Literacy (2015) with clear learning outcomes. Chalmers has recently started using a new Learning Management System (LMS), Canvas, which we used for the updated version of the online module. Previous research shows that embedding library instruction in Canvas helps the librarians to work more efficiently, enhances student learning and increases collaboration with the faculty (Mune et al., 2015).

We encourage the students to look at CLEO prior to tutoring sessions since they can get acquainted with basic concepts. This gives us more productive time during face-to-face meetings to which students come prepared and ask more deliberate questions. The sessions become therefore more effective thanks to the flipped classroom approach which is also confirmed by Hodges (2015).

During the autumn of 2019 we conducted user experience (UX) tests in order to make CLEO more user-friendly and in the spring 2020 the online module was integrated in two BSc and two MSc Canvas courses. Around 550 students writing their theses are now taking part of CLEO.