Library orientation video

Inspired by an orientation presentation we’ve been doing all summer for freshmen & their parents, we now have a self-running orientation “video” that can be played for students.

I created this version when another librarian asked me if we had something we could provide a faculty member who wanted to just play something as students were walking in and getting settled into the class. This just happens to be one of the Centennial Hall classes this semester – one that has 1,200 students enrolled.

I want to add music to this, but in the meantime it’s a nice silent presentation. I created it using the flash-editor program, FlyPaper. Take a look!

LOEX Presentation: Developing an Online Credit-bearing Information Fluency Course: Lessons Learned

Last Friday, I presented at the LOEX Annual Conference with colleagues Leslie Sult and Yvonne Mery. The title of our talk was, “Developing an Online Credit-bearing Information Fluency Course: Lessons Learned.” We reviewed how we developed, implemented, and evaluated the undergraduate Skillful Researcher (UNVR195a) course. To get some backgound, you can take a look at my post from last April when the class was first approved.

We had a good turnout, and the audience actively participated by asking questions and sharing their own experiences. It seemed like a very timely topic, as many other instruction librarians are going towards both online teaching and credit-bearing courses.

Here is our powerpoint to give you an idea of what we talked about, I hope others find this helpful and share any comments:

We also had a handout with a list of things to Try and to Avoid in online instruction, which I’ll share here:

Try It	Avoid It
Establishing and following course objectives	Designing as you go
Keeping tutorials short	Trying to put everything in one tutorial
Keeping text to a minimum	Overusing text
Using smart graphics	Using images that are purely decorative
Including audio	Overusing PowerPoint
Using provocative discussion questions	Making assignments the discussion questions
Including self-assessments	Depending only on quizzes for students’ assessment
Participating in discussions	Assuming students will participate in  discussions on their own
Grading discussions	Having optional discussions
Writing clear directions	Assuming students will know what to do
Paying close attention to course navigation	Over-depending on the navigation in the CMS
Responding to students promptly	Assuming that students do not need immediate feedback
Listening to feedback	Ever thinking you’re “done”
Preparing for a significant time commitment	Assuming teaching will be less work because it’s online

What Librarians Can Learn from E-Learning Professionals

Last week I attended the E-Learning Guild Annual Conference in Orlando, FL. It was something a colleague had run across a couple of months ago and thought would be appropriate to attend, as we are in the process of creating another online course.

It was absolutely enlightening! There is a whole world of E-Learning professionals out there that I didn’t even know existed. Primarily those that attended the conference were instructional designers (IDs) that either work for a corporation or non-profit or are consultants. They receive content from subject matter experts (SMEs) that they are then to make into an online learning object, and distributed across the country (or world) to the company’s employees. It’s for training purposes, mostly.

These E-Learning professionals have been doing this sort of thing for years, becoming experts in the fields of displaying online content, designing for online learners, and assessment through online mechanisms.

I can’t possibly share everything that I learned, but I will share some key points that are important to us as librarians.

1. Rapid e-learning tools are fantastic, and there are plenty of them out there. You don’t need to learn Flash or XML. At my library we already have Articulate, which is a big one, but I learned about other options such as Adobe Presenter, FlyPaper, Raptivity, and Lectora. There’ s also programs like CodeBaby where you can create animated characters who speak to each other. Very cool. They can be expensive, but these companies often offer academic discounts, and you can usually get a trial to test it out and see if it’s worth the money. Why is this a big deal? By taking advantage of these tools, librarians will no longer have to go to their software programmers or try to learn programming skills to create this stuff. These tools can usually be self-taught and require little technology-savviness. And they have great help forums.
2. Designing instruction for online learning is far different than designing it for face-to-face sessions. But fortunately, there is a lot of research and a ton of books out there on how to design effective online instruction. Check out Empowering Online Learning, Making Sense of Online Learning, the Online Learning Idea Book, and the E-Learning Handbook (which are all now on my Goodreads “to read” list). Here are some tips I picked up:

• Don’t make them read. Construct your use of text very carefully. Use tables and graphics and images where appropriate. Always set a context for the learner. Always make the experience a conversation between teacher (or computer) and learner. Read Letting Go of the Words (the author, Ginny Redish, was a conference speaker on this topic and was fantastic).
• Take a lesson or two from infomercials. Find ways to draw your student in by telling them what this will do for them, and why it’s worth their time. Keep it simple, but incorporate stories, and use testimonials and quotes from experts to further convince them that this instructional tutorial is worth their time.
• Aesthetics matter, so remember a few simple rules. Use just one font type in one section, reserving any alternate font for important messages you want to get the students attention. Use different font sizes to distinguish headers from main points from supporting points. Don’t use decorative fonts, ever. And be consistent. Use good color schemes – Adobe Kuler is a great resource for selecting attractive color schemes.

I believe as instructional librarians are getting more pressure to produce online tutorials, classes, and other content – we should reach out to those that are experts in exactly that.

If you are involved in building online instruction or tutorials, I highly recommend attending a conference geared towards e-learning professionals. In addition to the E-Learning Guild conference, there is DevCon and DevLearn both happening this year. I have to say it’s possibly the most worthwhile and practical conference I’ve been to since becoming a librarian!

Captivate vs. Camtasia: Captivate Wins

I wrote a post awhile back attempting to compare these two software products that can be used for creating interactive screencapturing videos. I spent months learning the ins and outs of Camtasia, creating a number of videos that are now being used in the library. Now we have Captivate keyserved, so I finally have it on my computer and have had a chance to spend time with it and get to know it a little better. Conclusion? Captivate is much easier, cleaner, dynamic, and creates a nicer final product than Camtasia.

We had a training open to all library staff earlier this week on Captivate. Here is what we have determined:

• Captivate projects are easier to edit: you can copy and paste slides, delete and add sections, & extend time frames in a much easier manner than in Camtasia. In Camtasia you can screen draw and select mouse options before and during the recording phase, but cannot change this in editing mode. You have to start over. Captivate lets you play with these options afterward. So if you mess up during recording, you don’t have to start all over again.
• Captivate saves you time: this is a smart software, and can actually add captions for you based on what you’re doing on the screen (like “click X,” “you are now on X page”). These are easy to alter or delete if you like, but if you want them this will save you a lot of time.
• Captivate quizzes are pretty: well, prettier than Camtasia’s. And you can actually preview them without publishing the project.
• Captivate allows interactivity: this is a big one, and one I mentioned in my previous post. You can select an area on the screen and the user has to click it to continue, or take them somewhere. Allows a lot more customization than Camtasia’s “hot spots.” There’s also a new feature in Captivate 3 called “branching,” where you can make your product even more dynamic as users go to different places and discover different things.

This doesn’t mean to say I’m writing Camtasia off completely. I do like it’s easy ability to record audio with powerpoints, and I like it’s preview screen which Captivate is lacking (have to select “preview” to see what the project looks like in motion and any changes you’ve made). That said, an intern at the library this summer spent 2 months messing with Camtasia trying to make a tutorial on searching for newspapers using Access World News. She was very frustrated, particularly with the screen drawing and audio quality. She spend less than a week with Captivate and made a nice, clean, professional product: http://www.library.arizona.edu/help/tutorials/courses/jour/accessworldnews/Tutorial.htm. That’s enough to convince me in the Captivate vs. Camtasia debate: Captivate Wins.

Utilizing Technologies for Engaged Instruction

I presented this to the library on Friday so thought I’d share it here:

How to Narrow a Research Topic

I’ve just finished revamping the second module of the new online info lit class, “The Skillful Researcher,” a collaboration between the library and University College. The module is on “Narrowing Your Topic.” The students are writing a hypothetical research paper; they are doing all the research and creating an annotating bibliography as their final project. The second module is very important, since it’s where they pick their topic for research, and create a few potential research questions.

The students have already selected one of 5 broad topics we give them – education, food, human rights, music, or sports. For the assignment and discussion posting, they have to come up with 2-3 research questions that are appropriate for writing a hypothetical 8-12 page research paper.

Here are the techniques we’re teaching them:

1) Brainstorming. We have them complete a worksheet where they can talk about what they already know about a topic, what interests them about it, and what they would like to know more about.

2) Concept Mapping. I found this really cool YouTube video demonstrating how to do this:

3) Reviewing What’s Out There. We have them select an article from a list on various aspects of their broad topics. All the articles are from CQ Researcher, which is great for topic overviews and includes nice bibliographies. I created a Camtasia video on how to use CQ Researcher, and directions are presented in an Articulate template.

4) Defining Certain Aspects. A tutorial created using Articulate demonstrates how they can narrow a broad topic by looking at thing such as certain time frames, geographical locations, types of people, and/or aspects (sociological, economical, legal, etc.).

Since it’s only a one-credit class, and this module only lasts one week, we can’t teach much more than this. Another technique that I would like to teach (possibly if we create a “Skillful Researcher 2″) is how to review what’s out there by looking in library catalogs and databases. This gets a little more complicated but is a great skill for students to learn.

If anyone has other methods they teach students, I’d be interested to hear what they are! I’m hoping these 4 will be a good foundation for them, but any feedback would be appreciated as well.

Info Lit Class Approved!

This week the course I’ve been helping develop was officially approved to pilot this summer!  It will be open to the entire undergrad campus, but aimed at first-year students in University College (undecided majors), and based in that department (UNVR 195a).  It’s called “The Skillful Researcher” and is a one-credit, web-based course, that will run for 5 weeks, one module per week.

We based the course on the ACRL standards, and the development of the content has been a collaboration between a number of us within the library’s Undergraduate Services Team and one of the academic advisors & instructors in University College.  It will introduce students to library resources and how to define a research topic, and teach them about searching strategies, evaluation methods, and the ethics of information use. Initially this summer, we will probably have 50-100 students in 2 different sections of the course.  The goal is to end up with about 500 students per semester – and ideally to make this course required for all undecided university freshman (or perhaps all freshman, period).

Experienced instructional design librarian, Leslie, will be teaching this summer, along with Keith from University College.  In the fall I will probably teach a section or two, and we’re hoping down the line that we can have SIRLS grad students teaching the course as part of a graduate assistantship.  We’re designing the course in such a way that it will require minimal amounts of time & grading on the part of the instructor, and we are using interactive tutorials and quizzes, videos & virtual lectures, etc. to keep the course engaging while making it scalable for use across a variety of library instruction initiatives.  We’ve been using Articulate a lot recently to develop the modules and it’s been working very well.

It was very exciting to get the approval this week, and by the end of the month we hope to have the course completely developed and ready to go!

Camtasia for Creating Tutorials

After playing around with trials of these products a little bit, last week our library purchased Camtasia and SnagIt for us to use in creating online tutorials and trainings. I’m working right now to create a training session for all the librarians so we can all utilize these very cool toys to our advantage. The goal is for all librarians to be able to quickly make screen captures, demos, etc. for use in tutorials, subject guides, and anything else, without needing any support from our IT department.

I made the demo below in 5 minutes. Unfortunately the quality’s not great because I had to publish through Windows Media Player to upload to Google Videos; the standard is to create a Flash file but WordPress doesn’t allow for that right now. This is the simplest example – you can also add audio, add captions, bubbles, import other images & media, etc. I’ll get around to that soon enough but below is what I’m thinking for use in a tutorial on “Defining Your Research Topic.” It shows how you can use CQ Researcher to browse for topics:

P.S.  There’s also a free version called CamStudio – very simple and doesn’t include any editing features, but is great for creating short screen captures in Flash format.  Download it online for free here.

My First Week as a (Real) Librarian

I just completed my first week in my new position as a reference & instruction librarian. Overall it went well – although I managed to get terribly sick on Tuesday night and missed 2 days already (I really should have missed 3 but forced myself to show up on Thursday…), but I’m hoping I’ll be back to normal tomorrow and ready to take on the job with a healthy state of mind.

So here’s a summary of the 3 days I actually spent on the job:

• Hauled a book cart of my things from my old desk in the circulation area to my new desk in the basement offices. Organized the new desk, new files. Got the computer organized with the right software. It’s smaller and the ceilings are lower, & I have suspicions the confined space is what made me prone to getting sick – there’s not much air circulation down there. But hopefully my immune system will get stronger because of it.
• Shadowed the reference desk for a few hours. Got to help a student find murder mysteries that weren’t made into plays or films (first official reference question!); also helped a librarian answer a circulation question
• Assisted in two instructional sessions for English 102 students. One was great fun and I even learned a couple things (CQ Researcher is your friend). Remembered being one of those students not that many years ago and sympathized with their confusion over database searching.
• Joined the other instructional librarians in a class for new English Composition Grad Assistants (the ones who teach these classes). Interestingly it was much like the sessions for the students themselves, although half an hour longer, with more handouts and a few suggestions for teaching the material. There isn’t currently any assessment for these sessions. Wondered what the teachers walked away with. (At this point it was the end of the day and I was running a fever, so I didn’t come to any significant conclusions.)
• Met with our instructional design librarian who wants me and Yvonne (the other new Assistant Librarian) to work on creating two online tutorials – one for narrowing down a research topic & one for evaluating the relevance of search results. We’re going to look at a few software options (including Camtasia & Wink) to see what might work best and then work together on establishing the content.

It was a good week, despite the getting sick in the middle of it all. I think I’m most excited about working on creating tutorials & getting to do some instruction. I just need to take my vitamins and get plenty of rest. Because being a real librarian can be so intense it can make your body shut down, apparently. But now I’m getting the hang of things… I think… I’m sure things will be looking better next week

Best Practices for Instruction of Diverse Learners in a Nutshell

As the final assignment for my Designing Instruction course, we were asked to create a presentation outlining best practices in instruction specifically garnered to diverse learners. This includes learners with disabilities, second-language learners, those with cultural differences and those with different learning styles. In the spirit of sharing knowledge I have attached my slide show presentation here: