Teaching & Learning Commons: A Teaching Materials Repository

The Teaching and Learning Commons is an online collection of teaching materials created by faculty and staff at Minnesota State University, Mankato for educators to share and reuse to support teaching and spark new ideas. This growing repository includes assignments, curricular planning documents, teaching best practices and more. Search the collections or browse by pedagogical focus categories (complete list below).

The Teaching and Learning Commons is supported by CETL and Library Services at Minnesota State Mankato. Faculty and staff across the University added material to the Commons, including contributions by Instructional Design Services.

Consider contributing your own teaching materials to the Teaching and Learning Commons to grow our resources and share great ideas! Contact Heidi Southworth, at heidi.southworth@mnsu.edu, to learn more.

Pedagogical Focus Categories

• Advising
• Assessment
• Curriculum Planning
• Culturally Responsive Teaching
• Digital and Information Literacy
• Experiential Learning
• Labs
• Open Educational Resources
• Professional Development
• Research Methods
• Service Learning
• Teaching Tool and Technique
• Writing Across the Curriculum

Welcome!

Welcome to the Library Instruction Materials Blog!

The Instruction team here at Minnesota State University's Memorial Library is busy creating materials for you. Except, we created all of this awesome content and then realized there's no easy way to get it out there! Thus, this blog was born. We'll be using this blog solely to send out updates about new videos, guides, and handouts that could be useful to you or in your classroom. Feel free to contact us if you'd like any  of the materials personalized... that's what we're here for!

APA 7th Edition Tutorials Now Available

 We now have APA style 7th edition tutorials available. Our tutorials include:

(type anything in opening box):

·       APA: Formatting

·       APA: In-Text Citations

·       APA: Reference List

The tutorials cover the foundational rules of the new APA 7th edition style for student papers. Each tutorial contains  examples, quiz questions, and small activities. These tutorials can be used as support materials or graded assignments. As an instructor you have the option to automatically import scores into your D2L gradebook (contact Justine for instructions).  We can also easily create custom versions to meet your course needs.

To learn more about using the tutorials as a graded assignment or other questions, contact Justine Martin at justine.martin@mnsu.edu.

APA Style Manual 7th Ed. Now Available

Memorial Library now has copies of the new APA style manual (7th edition).  The American

Psychological Association Publication Manual 7th edition updates formatting and citation guidelines for students and researchers using APA style.  Library Services supports both the older 6th and new 7th edition styles. We will update our support materials over spring and summer to have 7th edition materials ready for Fall 2020.

The links below can help you understand the new edition:

• What's New in the 7th edition
• APA Style and Grammar Guidelines
• Sample Papers

Updating YouTube Videos!

Now that our MavScholar search is updated, we've been hard at work updating all of our Instructional Videos too! Check out our Library Services YouTube page for newly updated videos!

Memorial Library's YouTube Channel

Introducing New MavScholar!

It's here! Our new MavScholar interface is connected to the Library's website and ready to use! Just use the MavScholar search box like normal and you're good to go!

We're working to update all of our tutorials and directions to accurately portray our new MavScholar, but if you're looking for some immediate information on how to use this new interface, check out our "What is MavScholar?" Library guide along with the videos and information there!

New APA Tutorials!

By popular request, we've created a set of APA tutorials to guide students through some of the finer points of using a citation style! Our new tutorials include:

• APA: Formatting
• APA: In-Text Citations
• APA: Reference List 

These tutorials will work on D2L, have questions and activities incorporated, and are created specifically for you! Currently, you can find them on our Tutorials Guide and our Citations Guide. They'll also soon also be featured in our toolkit!

Our Tutorial Guide featuring new Tutorials!

Winter is Coming... and so is a new MavScholar!

This winter, Library Services will update many of its online systems. These updates will result in a new MavScholar! Library employees have already begun work on this migration. We hope to move forward with minimal inconvenience to Minnesota State Mankato students, faculty, and staff. However, this migration will impact the way you search for library materials, your online Library account, and any links you may have saved to records in MavScholar or the library catalog

Also, from January 24 through January 29, 2019, the library system will enter a brief freeze for the final stage of the migration. This freeze will temporarily affect the availability of some services, including interlibrary loan and online renewals.

For more details about how this migration will impact you, visit our guide MavScholar & Library System Migration Guide at libguides.mnsu.edu/migration. For additional questions and concerns, contact Metadata & Emerging Technologies Librarian Bobby Bothmann at robert.bothmann@mnsu.edu.

Check out our online guide for updates!

Updated Newspaper Guide

Are you curious what newspapers are available through the library? Our newly revised Newspaper Guide can help! It has links to various newspaper databases (based on geography) along with explanations of what newspaper resources are available in the library and where!

Our Newspaper Guide!

Updated Confirmation Bias Assignment!

We were recently requested to modify our Confirmation Bias Tutorial... so we made a new version! Confirmation Bias Tutorial 2.0 is still a comprehensive lesson on Confirmation bias, but we've made the following changes:

• The tutorial starts with the coffee assignment from our Confirmation Bias Assignment
• The Ted Talk was removed from this draft (makes it shorter!)
• Easy-to-read steps and tips at the end

This assignment is a great comprehensive lesson, but we'd love to hear what you think! Do you like version 2.0 better or the original Confirmation Bias Tutorial? You can send your feedback to Jenny Turner at jennifer.turner@mnsu.edu

Confirmation Bias Tutorial 2.0

Evaluating Web Sources

Want to help your students determine if those sources they're finding online are reliable or not? Check out our new Evaluating Web Sources video! It applies our new and improved "CABLES" to websites with plenty of examples. Happy researching!