Leveraging LibPaths for collection development

Curating digital resources through LibPaths portals extends collection development. Like print circulation reports, tracking how these digital repositories get used provides valuable feedback for every school.

By monitoring portal usage and engagement with specific content, educators can identify areas where they might need to give additional instructional support – as well as determine which guides are most effective in engaging students.

Understanding the dimensions of student engagement

ACER’s research divides ‘engagement’ into three layers:

Mapping resource use to assessment data can reveals useful patterns and behavioural insights. Frequent use of essay guides may indicate that a student needs help with structure or citations, while low access to research or study guides could show disengagement.

Tracking data helps identify who is progressing, who needs support and which interventions are effective.

Three strategies for harnessing the power of tracking data:

1. Promotion and tracking go together

Ensure students know what resources are available to them. Use direct links on class pages or assessment task sheets, so students can easily find support.

Share anonymous access research guide links with parents – through newsletters or the parent portal – to further encourage student engagement.

2. Engage in timely reflection

Collecting feedback from students who are currently engaged in the assessment task means you can adjust as needed.

When combined with analysis of available tracking data, and other post-assessment feedback, you can leverage immediate insights from teaching staff and students to facilitate meaningful improvements.

3. Share analytics with key stakeholders

Sharing tracking data with teaching staff, and examining how it corresponds with assessment data, can help identify patterns or connections between student outcomes and their use of available resources. This offers information that’s relevant to both teams.

Evolving alongside student needs

By integrating a content curation platform like LibPaths, and tapping into its analytics, libraries can track which research guides, study aids and other digital resources see the most use (and which ones gather dust).

That usage data becomes a roadmap for building and refining collections because it highlights:

• hot topics to expand,
• outdated materials to retire, and
• gaps where new content is needed.

In this way, libraries evolve their digital offerings alongside student needs, cementing their role as a vital partner in the learning ecosystem.

Want to know more about how to make the most of LibPaths’ tracking capabilities? Talk our team today.

Links for further reading

Australian Council for Educational Research. (n.d.). Monitoring learning progressions. https://research.acer.edu.au/monitoring_learning/

Australian Council for Educational Research. (2022). National Assessment Program – ICT Literacy 2022 public report. https://research.acer.edu.au/digital_learning/

Australian Council for Educational Research. (n.d.). Digital learning research overview. https://research.acer.edu.au/digital_learning/

Australian Council for Educational Research. (n.d.). Libraries curating evidence [Conference presentation]. https://people.acer.org/en/publications/libraries-curating-evidence

Australian Council for Educational Research. (n.d.). Information management research. https://research.acer.edu.au/information_management/