For Staff

Academic Services is a small team of specialists working within Library Services on the development and delivery of teaching and learning resources relating to ‘academic practice’ – the practice of learning effectively in higher education. Topics covered include writing for assessment, making critical use of academic sources, research and referencing. We work with undergraduate and postgraduate students from across Cardiff Met, including at franchise partners, from foundation level up to PhD.

Our approach is unique, in that it embraces specialist support provided by academic librarians. It is also built upon three clear principles:

• students, their learning, and their personal development sit at the heart of our provision;
• that provision should be aspirational, in that it should encourage students not only to find success in their academic work but to excel by exceeding their own expectations;
• that provision should be contextualised in the discipline in which it is being delivered if it is to have a positive impact upon student learning.

In order to ensure that our teaching is as effective as possible, we encourage colleagues to collaborate with us on its design and delivery.

This might involve providing exemplars to use, assessment questions, or broader context relating to the significance of the session next to any upcoming assessments or the module’s learning objectives.

The impact of our teaching is also enhanced by having a member of staff present or even co-deliver with us. This allows for easier contextualisation of content within the discipline whilst also serving to reinforce the relevant and potential value of the provision to students. It also ensures someone is on hand to directly answer student queries regarding forthcoming assessment tasks.

Due to a recent reorganisation of the team, we no longer have an academic librarian linked to each school.

Requests for teaching and/or learning resources should therefore be sent to libraryacademicservices@cardiffmet.ac.uk where it will be reviewed by a member of the team.

We aim to respond to such requests within 48 hours of receipt. However, it may take longer to reply at busier times of the academic year.

We have a long and successful history of working closely with colleagues from across Cardiff Met on the design and delivery of teaching interventions and the development of learning resources.

We are keen to continue this collaborative work by helping you to create meaningful and impactful academic practice resources for your own students.

Do you have any ideas for academic practice resources that are discipline, subject or school specific in nature? If so, we’d be happy to discuss it with you; you can reach us at libraryacademicservices@cardiffmet.ac.uk