LTI’s Back-to-School Toolkit: Teaching & Instruction

Get excited about returning to the classroom with these reads

Posted on August 6, 2025 in Blog Posts

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LibTech Insights editor
A librarian preparing for back-to-school teaching and instruction

Ready or not, we’re one week into August, which means that we’re one week closer to the start of the school year. In preparation for the new school year, we decided we’d highlight a selection of our evergreen posts on LibTech Insights to reenergize you for the months ahead. This week, we’re going through our archives to curate a toolkit on teaching, instruction, and pedagogy. We hope these posts inspire you!

Using Online Concept Maps to Increase Student Collaboration

“Active learning” and tech seem, at times, to be in fundamental conflict. Christina Beis offers concept maps as a method for increasing student collaboration. This post examines three different tools for creating content maps and bolstering student engagement.

Tech Tips for Teaching and Training in a Hybrid Environment

Hybrid classrooms have become more popular since 2020 and have a unique set of affordances and challenges. Matthew Fesnak offers tips for instructors teaching in a hybrid (or totally digital) format.

A librarian teaching AI information literacy one-shot sessions

GenAI in Information Literacy Sessions: Strategies for One-Shot Instruction

Talking about generative AI in information literacy sessions is now unavoidable. Like it or not, students will use GenAI throughout their academic careers, and librarians can be trusted guides to this new technology. Bronte Chiang offers useful ways of integrating GenAI discussions into one-shot information literacy sessions.

Three Polling Applications to Consider for Your Instruction

Soliciting student feedback is a crucial way to keep students engaged and evaluate their learning. Steven Bell offers polling as a way of gathering immediate feedback. He evaluates three different polling applications you can easily integrate into your instruction.

A man on a computer screen with a speech bubble above him, probably benefiting from AI and information literacy instruction in the composition class

AI and Information Literacy Instruction in the Composition Class and Beyond

Librarians often have close partnerships with English composition instructors, making them key allies in teaching about the ethics, abilities, and limits of generative AI. Deborah Bauder and Kenneth Nichols offer a two-part series analyzing the shared goals of librarians and professors and, in part 2, preparing students for the shortcomings of AI.

Two instructional librarians with various social media logos around them

Social Media and Scholarship as Two Sides of the Same Coin

A perennial struggle librarians face is teaching students what exactly academic scholarship is all about. Beth Carpenter suggests that many students already have a framework that can be adapted to understanding scholarship: their knowledge of social media. Beth draws illuminating parallels that will be familiar to many first-year students.

A teacher addressing the technology gap in the classroom

The Technology Divide: Meeting Students Where They Are

In this follow-up piece, Beth Carpenter considers the assumptions we make about so-called “digital natives.” She observes that, though many students have grown up around technology, they aren’t totally digitally literate. Beth offers ways of meeting students with and teaching them curiosity.

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