Getting Faculty Involved in Increasing Usage of Library Materials: Brainstorming around an All-Online Model

Fall semester planning is on. As you plan your activities, also think about how you will market them to faculty. Below are some ideas for how to get faculty interested in your Credo Learning Tools material, whether you have Information Literacy – Core or our Information Literacy – Health Science products, or both. The same ideas can of course be applied when it comes to marketing other library materials. 

To start with, listen to a webinar we hosted featuring Brandy Burbante, Head of Technical Services and Cataloging Librarian at Nicholls State University in Louisiana. In the hour-long presentation, she discusses ways to get faculty buy-in for digital resources including Credo’s multimedia on information literacy.

Let Faculty Know What the Library Has for Them

Getting faculty on board with using your material is a worthwhile challenge. Here are some tips:

• Try to find a faculty “ambassador.” Is there a faculty member who is already enthusiastic about the InfoLit multimedia and who would be willing to present about it at a faculty meeting?
• Add information about the resources to the faculty newsletter, email, or other communication outlet that gets instructors’ attention.
• Reach out specifically to faculty who were teaching online classes before COVID. These professors are likely already familiar with using databases and other online tools in their classes and might be more willing to implement Credo material than those who are struggling just to teach their first online class. Then use their success with it to market to other faculty, asking the more tech savvy to help their peers who are struggling and to tell those peers how much the material has helped their students. 
• Try to get deans on board and have them discuss it at faculty meetings.
• If you have access to syllabi, find assignments/expectations that match our material and write to faculty accordingly. “Professor So-and-So, I see that in week 5 of this semester, you’ll be talking about bias. Here’s some material that can help,” and include the link to our video “Introduction to Bias.”
• Does your institution or particular departments have strategic goals around information literacy? As above, check for any areas that our material could help with and reach out to the right people to let them know. Same with accreditation goals.

Also, see our IL handbook, which has a chapter on marketing your IL program to faculty: https://cdn.credoreference.com/client-0000/InfoLit_IB_Help_Site/Credo%20IL%20Strategy%20Handbook_Full%20release.pdf

Sharing Student Success with Faculty

A great way to get new faculty on board with using Credo’s Learning Tools is to have other faculty share positive classroom outcomes they’ve achieved using the material. For example, a professor who used the material in a class last semester could be encouraged to share at faculty meetings or in day-to-day conversations with other instructors what benefits he or she noticed from using Credo’s material.   For example, the professor might say that, after using the Credo material on citations, she didn’t have to devote as much class time to that topic as she used to. Or that, overall in the class, students got an average grade of X compared to the previous Y. Or, this many fewer students dropped the class, and so on.

Start Small, Assess, Tweak

As with any plan, starting small is best. You can figure out what works and then implement a bigger plan that has a better chance of success. Here are some steps to take that can increase usage of your Credo material.

1. Add the material to your LMS—that way you can meet students where they already are and in a system they already know how to use. Please contact us at support@credoreference.com if you need help with this.
2. Start small by reaching out to faculty you already know are IL champions and asking them to take a look at the material in the LMS and make any comments on how you’ve arranged it, etc. Is there additional material they need in there? Should it be arranged differently? Does it need any introduction that’s specific to your school? 
3. Make any tweaks to your LMS presence based on feedback from these initial faculty users.
4. Ask faculty to add a link to the Credo material to their online classes and to mention it in their syllabi.
5. Also ask those faculty members to talk about their success with the material when possible.
6. Go bigger, approaching heads of departments with the material, ready with justifications based on departmental syllabi, requirements, etc.
7. When you give library classes, find out what videos or tutorials students have already been required to take for that class—you might not need to cover it, or at least not in as much detail. In general, emphasize to faculty that the heavy lifting should have been taken off you and them somewhat by their use of the videos and tutorials. Remind them over and over that the material is in the LMS.
8. Let that all sit for a while as usage hopefully happens and faculty are in touch with tech issues—”How do I get this into my class?”
9. Have a look at your Credo usage statistics to see what’s being used and what might need a push. That will give you talking points for when you see faculty and students. “Your peers are getting heavy usage out of our APA tutorial; why not give it a try?”

We hope that these ideas work out for you! If you need more targeted help with marketing Credo material at your institution, please contact support@credoreference.com.