Reading lists are an important learning tool and shape how students view and interact with the knowledge, perspectives, histories and cultures in their academic discipline. Creating reading lists that are structured, focused and contextualised help students to plan and engage with reading. They can also lead students into further enquiry and deeper learning.
It is essential for both moral and legal reasons that our reading lists are fully accessible to all our students. The University always has dyslexic and visually-impaired students and we have an anticipatory duty in law to offer modules that can be accessed by disabled students. There is more information available on this at the end of the file, but all staff should note that the more time we have to prepare accessible reading lists, the better the experience for the students. Read more about accessibility and reading materials.
The following best practice guidelines were developed by the academic community in consultation with Libraries and Museums and Student Services to ensure consistency of experience for students and to support academic staff on the creation, maintenance, and use of reading lists.
Best Practice Guidelines:
Making lists available in this way creates a consistent, easy to use access to resources for students, provides stable links to electronic resources and ensures copyright compliance. It also ensures that resources are available in an accessible format, ready for all students to use.
Please ensure that reading lists for online modules include only resources that are available online.
The system is fully integrated with Moodle.
Be realistic; consideration should be given to how many resources students can reasonably be expected to read over the course of a semester. Ensure that lists are a manageable length and the amount of reading corresponds to the level of study, module workload and credit weighting. Too many readings act as a barrier as students find themselves overwhelmed and struggle to choose what to read, in what order, and to what depth. The number of resources will vary according to the academic discipline and module needs, but as a general guide, we recommend 2-3 resources per week (per module) as ‘required’ readings (see below for more information).
Consider carefully how the resources link to the taught content, assessment tasks, how they align to student learning outcomes, and how they support pedagogical scaffolding. How does the reading support the student in achieving their goals for that module?
Lists should be clearly laid out. Section headings indicate when and what students are expected to read, for example: lists may be organised by week, lecture or seminar/tutorial topics.
Provide appropriate signposting, so that students understand what is expected of them week by week; this can be achieved by including a Reading Guide at the start and/or consider providing brief annotations for each of your readings that explain to students how to engage with a particular resource. This might include information about why each resource has been chosen for the reading list, which part they should focus on, and what they are meant to gain from the reading. Giving context or guidance leads to more engagement from students.
‘Required’: key texts that every student must access; they should enable students to pass and do well in the module. ‘Recommended’: supplementary reading around the subject to further or deepen knowledge, in a way that would allow students to achieve higher marks or use the module as a foundation for future study or further research.
The number of resources will vary according to the academic discipline and module needs, but as a general guide, 2-3 resources per week (per module) should be enough to cover ‘required’ readings.
If you would like to include a fuller bibliography of further readings (additional to the ‘required’ and ‘recommended’ readings), create this as a separate list. There are opportunities for students to develop their independent research skills by engaging with library resources. Library staff are happy to advise on support materials or skills sessions which can be embedded in the curriculum or delivered alongside modules.
Keep all readings in the online reading list. Students struggle to find extra reading materials added in other locations. Often, there are also accessibility issues. Any scanned paper that does not use ‘optical character recognition’ is not accessible by students who use screen-readers (dyslexic and visually impaired students). The majority of inaccessible scans in Moodle are supplementary reading materials added by module teaching staff. If you wish to add extra readings, contact the library and ask for them to be added to the reading list.
Complete your list by the set deadline to ensure it will be available for students in advance of the start of the module and to give the library time to work on lists, purchase new titles and make sure the number of copies or licences are available. This also allows time for the Digital Accessibility Adviser to provide alternative formats for any disabled students who may require them.
Small tweaks to the list nearer the time may be possible but the main list should be submitted by the deadline to enable work to be carried out.
The deadline for semester 1 2025/6 is Tuesday 15th July 2025
It is a good idea to review your list regularly (usually annually if you are teaching the same module) to reflect new scholarship, current debates or changes in module content. You may also like to consider feedback from students and usage data. Make sure that you are not only adding material but also removing less relevant ones; lists have a tendency to grow.
References to relevant journal articles relating to best practice will be added here shortly, along with some examples of reading lists at St Andrews which show how the guidelines presented on this page can be incorporated into a list.
General Good Practice
Includeresources from a variety of voices, by using authors with different backgrounds and viewpoints. Inclusive, diverse readings model good practice in research to students.
Includea range of formats, e.g. audio-visual content, journal articles and digitised readings to support different learning styles and to give students a varied experience and a rich list of references.
Incorporate your reading list into class teaching to embed the importance of reading and research into student’s academic practice. For example, set questions or tasks which require use of your reading list to answer.
Accessibility of reading materials:
Every year the university has students who need reasonable adjustments for their reading in the form of alternative formats. These students are often visually-impaired or dyslexic.
This mainly involves students who rely on screen-readers – technology which will read aloud text on screen. This is called text-to-speech software. The students then listen to the material. They may also navigate the computer without a mouse, using a keyboard instead.
Student services and the library work closely together to source or produce suitable formats for these students. This work can involve:
retrieving PDFs from publishers’ complex webpages and moving it to a single sharepoint folder. It is not always clear how to download a PDF from complex publishers’ sites, or you may only be able to download chapter by chapter, which makes it very hard for any student who is relying on audio and keyboard navigation.
contacting publishers to supply digital copies when they are not available in the library
scanning print copies of books where no digital copy is available
converting files from one format into another (e.g. PDF to Word)
preparing a SharePoint folder for each module for the student who requires the alternative format, with all their materials readily available in a structured folder format.
This work needs to begin sometime before teaching starts. Often the students like to start their reading earlier too (e.g. over the summer) because it takes them so much longer to read. The importance of a reading list being supplied in good time, with a reasonable number of texts, and enough time to source alternatives is essential for the success of these students.