Reading List of the Week – Literacy and society, University of Liverpool

Our Reading List of the Week is Literacy and society from the University of Liverpool by academic Kay Richardson. The list introduction explains to the students that the course centres around textbooks and guides students on how they should approach the list and use it alongside the teaching they attend.

This list stands out as being extremely detailed, with lots of useful annotation from the academic. We often hear from students that they like having just one place for all of the information they need, so we know that annotating lists in this way is useful.

The list is split up into weeks to guide students through the course, allowing them to revert back to particular teachings from a point during the course, but also making sure they keep up with what is discussed during any contact hours.

The weekly sections are then split up into sections by importance, such as ‘further reading’ or ‘essential reading’. The academic has also added notes explaining the terms used, to make it clear to the students what is expected of them. Here’s what is written at the top of each section:

The list is divided into an Essential Reading section and a Further Reading section. Essential readings are those you have to undertake to prepare for your classes. Further readings are those you undertake when preparing your projects and revising for your exams.

A great feature of this list is that it contains a section for student presentations – this is awaiting content as Week 12 has not occurred within the term yet. Using reading lists in this way means that students can easily access shared presentations from other class members, without the need to reach out to class members individually.

At the very end of the list is non-course related resource on using PowerPoint. Sharing these types of resources to improve study skills of the students can be done really effectively within reading lists as they directly solve problems that students may be having whilst using the resources.

The list was created for the 2015-16 year for 24 students, and since its creation 9 months ago, has had 222 pageviews and 47 total clicks onto items.

Do you have a list you’d like to share? Send an email to rloftheweek@talis.com or tweet us the link, @Talis with the hashtag #ReadingListoftheweek