A_FLIP to Courseware: A Strategic Alliance for Improving Student Learning Outcomes

Instructors expect students to access the best quality research resources available. Students, however, may be channeled to any number of non-library resources for a variety of reasons. In worst-case scenarios, students default to lesser quality electronic resources from free Internet search engines that are familiar, provide fast, less precise results, and require the least effort and the least critical thinking. In better-case scenarios, instructors use their courseware site to provide links to non-library resources, which students use to the exclusion of library resources. In best-case scenarios, instructors and librarians coordinate their expertise and energies so that students have access to high quality resources. Failing to achieve this coordination makes ineffective use of important and costly institutional assets: the library and its extensive electronic collections as well as librarians and their knowledge of the library's collection and resources.