Abstract:

The library at the University of Saskatchewan provides a range of academic support programs, services, and resources designed for co-curricular and curricular needs. Historically, our campus faced challenges with academic integrity education, with no central unit, office, or individual primarily responsible for providing support in this area. A pivotal change occurred when one of the authors, after organizing an Academic Integrity Awareness Week, became a key figure in student-focused academic integrity education. She, and others in the library, were receiving contradicting requests for building academic integrity materials or workshops for different audiences. It was decided that the library could fulfill the varied needs of academic integrity education by developing a tutorial, not aimed at one discipline or cohort, but general enough for all disciplines and stages of education. Working with an instructional designer, a group of learning support specialists and librarians developed an educational resource that was launched in 2018. The tutorial filled a learning need and has been highly successful on campus with various Colleges, departments, and individual instructors utilizing it as part of their course instruction, sometimes as a requirement.

When the world shut down in 2020 due to the pandemic and all learning shifted to remote, like other higher educational institutions around the world, the University of Saskatchewan noticed an increase in the rates of academic misconduct. As a stop-gap measure, the tutorial proved invaluable in helping address the institution's needs. For the library, the result of developing the Academic Integrity Tutorial meant that the library’s learning and curriculum support team was now well-positioned to develop additional tutorials for online and remote learning, including a remote learning readiness tutorial and the recent tutorial on critical thinking.

The ubiquity of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has brought with it new challenges and again, we find ourselves perfectly poised to meet the learning needs of students. At a time when instructors are concerned about ethical assessment and the potential risks of generative AI on learning, without specifically endorsing the use of generative AI, the Critical Thinking Tutorial challenges students to consider their role in engaging ethically and critically with the information they consume, especially information that is artificially generated or misrepresented. We are now balancing both an online educational environment and a brick-and-mortar university. We know that this is a mode of learning and educational support that students and instructors desire and need. Thus, an accident of necessity caused us to shift our teaching and learning model from providing workshops and physical materials, to including open, online tutorials, based on student learning needs and desires. By proactively adapting to changing circumstances and technological advancements, the library was able to effectively transition from physical and in-person-based teaching and learning to flexible, online, and open approaches, effectively addressing academic challenges as they arise. This paper delves into the development and implementation of comprehensive open, online tutorials that cater to the diverse academic needs of students across disciplines and educational stages.

Keywords:

Student learning, self-directed learning, just-in-time learning, tutorial, online, open, learning resources.