Category: Academic Libraries
April 27, 2007
Incorporating Tutorials Into Library Instruction
Eleonora Dubicki, Monmouth University
Annemarie Roscello, Bergen Community College
Ruth Hamann, Passaic County Community College
Eleonora opened the presentation with an overview of how library instruction has evolved. Lectures and handouts have been replaced by tutorials and hands-on practice. The types of tutorials vary in format from simple handouts such as a PDF on using WilsonWeb, to EBSCO’s Basic Searching Powerpoint slides, to interactive content seen in the University of Wisconsin’s CLUE multimedia tutorial, http://clue.library.wisc.edu/
Annemarie continued with showing a graphic illustrating the most effective learning (75%) takes place when students ‘practice doing.’ She also encouraged us to incorporate gaming into learning as this will engage the learner more. Additional challenging questions posed for the audience were, ‘what can we do to improve learning and retention without becoming programmers?’
Rounding out this presentation, Ruth introduced us to the ARCS Model of Model of Motivation for Instructional design by John Keller. We need to rely on and use the tools of instructional design: attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction as we design and create tutorials for our students.
A discussion of vendor-produced tutorials versus in-house production followed. The User Education Committee of ACRL/NJLA conducted a comprehensive review and evaluation of online database tutorials both vendor-created and library/librarian created. This valuable table was included as a handout. Some sites Ruth showed included the following:
Guess-the-Google, http://grant.robinson.name/projects/guess-the-google/guess-the-google.swf an image guess game.
An engaging tutorial on business research from Baruch College: http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/tutorials/zicklin/research/
posted by Chris Herz, Gloucester County College
Posted by at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)
More Captivating Your Audience
The session was a smorgasbord of how librarians are using Captivate in a variety of teaching settings. Four presentations were packed into the 50-minute allotted time. This User Education Committee sponsored-session gave a great value for your limited conference time! I opened the program with the following:
Creating Image Movies: More Than a Simple Slideshow
Chris Herz, Gloucester County College
Instead of PowerPoint use Captivate to create an image movie. To the resulting movie you may enhance the images with text captions, highlight boxes, and audio. The timeline feature in Captivate gives you director control of your movie.
Captivating First-Year Students: A Different Take on a Web Tour.
Leslie Murtha, Princeton University
Leslie gave an overview of the time it took from learning Captivate to its implementation in rolling out a polished, finished tutorial for first year students. While it is a tour of the library’s website, it also introduces students to its digital resources. Leslie's Captivate project can be viewed here:
http://library.princeton.edu/help/openhouse/
What Makes a Journal Scholarly?
Eileen Stec, Rutgers University
Eileen engaged the audience much as she does her students by inviting us to recall a sporting event and asking some questions leading us to the concept of the rule-enforcer, the referee. Eileen’s presentation can be viewed:
http://rci.rutgers.edu/~estec/presentations/njla2007.htm
A title Eileen recommended:
Conrad, R. & Donaldson, J. A. (2004). Engaging the online learner: Activities and resources for creative instruction. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Captivate Tutorials, We Can Build Them But What Are We Going to Do With Them?
William Vincenti and Nicole Cooke, Montclair University
Bill discussed their experience with getting familiar with Captivate and then his and Nicole’s sales pitch to their Reference Dept. and Administration to garner support for the project.
Both their tutorial, Finding Periodicals, and their presentation are available here: http://blake.montclair.edu/~vincentiw/Captivate/FindPeriodical/
posted by Chris Herz, Gloucester County College
Posted by at 9:32 AM | Comments (0)
June 9, 2006
Social Software and Libraries: June 2, 2006
N.B.: This is a guest entry by Marc Meola, whose e-mail address is: meolam [AT] tcnj [DOT] edu.
Edward Corrado (TCNJ) and Jim Robertson (NJIT) provided a useful
overview of some new technologies often referred to as social software or Library 2.0 at a program sponsored by the Technology Committee of the NJLA College and University Section/ ACRL-New Jersey Chapter on June 2.
Social Software is software that supports group interaction, such as
instant messaging, RSS, blogs, wikis, folksonomies, podcasting, photo sharing, and social bookmarking.
Some features that social software have in common are: they are
collaborative and leverage the widsom of crowds; there's a low barrie
to use and adoption; they are open and can be expanded linked or
"mashed"; they foster community; they're fun.
While some of the new software can be frivolous, some creative
librarians have come up with some interesting and innovative library
applications. Check out how users can tag their own items and write mini-reviews in the University of Pennsylvania's catalog, for example (see how the user named "jarson" tags the book Broadcasting It).
What are the implications for cognitive authority and user privacy? As
Bob Dylan says, the answers are blowin' in the wind and the times, they are a changin'! Check out more photos from this event in the CUS Social Software Set at NJLA's Flickr account!
--Marc Meola, meolam [AT] tcnj [DOT] edu
Posted by at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)