Reading List Guide: Encouraging Student Engagement with Digital Reading Lists

Below are some guidelines to help you and your students get the most benefit from a digital reading list.

• Provide a clear structure – week by week and/or by topic will help students plan ahead with their studies.
• Clearly indicate which texts are essential and which are further or background reading, to enable students to prioritise their readings effectively.
• Ideally contain no more than 100 individual items and provide clear information for students on how to engage effectively with the list. Ensure that the reading list is realistic and achievable.

Here is an example of a clearly structured reading list

Once a reading list has been published, the Talis Aspire software can track any usage or activity. This can be viewed via the list’s Analytics (also referred to as the Dashboard) and is available from the ‘View’ menu within the reading list.

Analytics can help you to make informed decisions around your reading list content by displaying the following information:

• Page Views: the number of times your list has been viewed.
• Clicks: the total number of times people have clicked through to the item view of a resource from your list.
• Annotations: the number of student annotations/notes added to resources on the list.

To view Analytics we need to register you in Talis Aspire. Just contact us at readinglists@exeter.ac.uk if you would like to access this data.

Alternatively, the library can use Google Analytics to provide more in-depth statistics on list usage. If you are interested in seeing more details, please contact us at readinglists@exeter.ac.uk.