This page was created in collaboration with the University of Lincoln’s Library team to help provide accurate advice and support with guided reading activities.

Guided reading is a useful asynchronous activity that can be used within your teaching to help support development of reading and analytical skills. This type of activity is easy to embed and can provide many benefits which will be discussed further within this page. To ensure that you get the best out of an asynchronous reading activity we would recommend:

• You use Talis Aspire software* for your reading lists.
• That reading lists are updated every year to ensure that content is current.
• You assign a guided reading activity that aligns directly with that weeks’ learning outcomes to help segment the learning.
• To help with engagement make sure that the artefacts feeds directly into your synchronous activity to make it meaningful and purposeful.

Academic Subject Librarians are perfectly placed, with up-to-date knowledge in their supported field, to aid you with finding relevant reading for your subject areas. Click here to find a list of ASLs for your chosen area.

*Talis Aspire is the University of Lincoln’s chosen Reading List software. It integrates into our VLE’s (Blackboard and Canvas) and enables students to click straight through to resources.

When using an asynchronous approach you will be able to access data about how your class is using the resources you have recommended – how frequently they’ve interacted and how they have interacted with the content. Your ASL will be able to advise you about the analytics available. Some examples of the analytics below will help you measure engagement, review current content and it’s use and develop the course further.

Typical data that you have access to:

There are many easy to add activities that can be embedded within your course directly to support students development. Please see some ideas below:

Using reading as a discussion point in a seminar

The easiest way to embed reading into your curriculum is to simple set up a discussion activity within your synchronous session. With this activity students are usually asked to read, make notes and comments based on a certain area, which will then be discussed with their peers and staff. Clear instructive language is important here so that students are aware of what to make notes on and how this information will be used.

Whilst this activity is simple, it is effective at making reading relevant and is a good opportunity for academics to analyse students understanding of the topic area.

Break out group activities

This breakout group activity can be used either synchronously or asynchronously but we recommend using it as an asynchronous task so that students have time to analyse and articulate their thoughts. This works similar to a ‘jigsaw’ or ‘expert groups’ activity. Students will be placed into groups and given a certain article to read. They will then be given time to discuss and analyse the piece with in the synchronous session. This compartmentalisation of information helps students focus on key areas, become experts in the knowledge and gives ownership over their learning by feeding their findings back to the group.

Talis Elevate is a way to bring resources to life, such as articles, images and PDF’s, by making them interactive objects to support active engagement.

It helps bring key resources to life by allowing you and your students to leave comments on texts, images, and media you upload. Students can collaborate directly with their classmates within the resources they are using together for their learning, and enables you as lecturer to identify themes, guide, enhance and stretch their understanding.

 Some of the benefits of using Elevate are:

• Deepens students’ understanding: leaving a comment helps them think through what they are reading, seeing, or viewing
• Allows students to build knowledge together: learning alongside their peers and lecturers, inside and outside of class
• Increases students’ confidence: they can comment anonymously or make personal notes which only they have access to. This enables them to personalize their learning
• Enables lecturers to identify misconceptions and re-direct learning