Designing Effective Online Tutorials for Libraries (online learning course)

Instructor: Joe Barker

Designing Effective Online Tutorials for Libraries
(online learning course)

Whether you work in an academic, public, school or special library, web-based online tutorials can provide training or explanation covering almost any facet of your library's services and tools:

• How do I use the catalog?
• Where do I find journal articles for my research?
• How do I use Infotrac (or Lexis-Nexis or you-name-it database)?
• What do call numbers "mean"?
• What should I look for when I evaluate web pages?
• What's the best way to begin searching the web?
• How should I cite books and journals in term papers?

A well-designed tutorial can alleviate some of the need to spend time answering commonly asked questions over and over again. It can also help train remote users and those unwilling to ask for help. By contrast, a poorly designed tutorial may contain good help but will rarely be consulted.

This course will help you recognize what constitutes an appealing, successful web-based tutorial and what characterizes a weak one. It will also equip you to design online tutorials for your library.

Workshop Description: In this four-week online learning course you will explore many "real world" examples of tutorials for a wide range of topics and purposes, targeting many levels and types of audiences. Using checklists and principles explained in the course, you will determine the content and layout of a tutorial for a topic of your own choice and decide if it is suitable for online use. You will also learn how to test for usability and assess the quality of a tutorial, and will have the opportunity to assess your own work and that of other course participants.

This course includes many options and techniques for adding interactivity, self-assessment, deep learning, and attention-retaining pizzazz to your tutorial. You will also receive online and print resources to use in the future. The emphasis will be on designing tutorials that will be used.

Please note that this is not a course in coding. This course will stop short of actually writing the HTML or other programming required for implementation and mounting a tutorial to a web server. However, some basic knowledge of HTML coding is required - please see Prerequisites below.

Preliminary Course Outline: Using your web browser and your Internet connection, you will log in to the Infopeople Blackboard online learning site and complete the following learning modules:

• Week One: Why Develop Online Tutorials?
  • Some uses and advantages of online tutorials for libraries
  • Skills needed to develop online tutorials and skills for optional extras
  • Ingredients of a good tutorial
  • Things to avoid
• Week Two: Phase One: Setting the Framework
  • Assessing your audience and establishing objectives and outcomes
  • Envisioning the major project and your approach
  • Cultivating learning depth by incorporating practice, self-assessment, and feedback
  • Planning to maximize retention, familiarity, and eagerness to learn
• Week Three: Phase Two: Laying it Out
  • Tools to help with layout
  • Establishing the flow and inner connections
  • Language and tone
  • Utilizing outer connections to supportive resources
• Week Four: Phase Three: Test, Evaluate, Modify
  • When to evaluate and objectives of evaluation
  • Crucial questions for evaluation
  • Evaluation methods
  • Addressing what evaluation reveals

Pre-workshop assignment: Prior to the course, please decide on a topic for which you feel highly motivated to create an online tutorial.

Online Learning Details: This four-week workshop will be taught online using the web. When you register, you will receive the URL to get to the course, as well as a username and password in your registration confirmation. "Designing Effective Online Tutorials for Libraries" will start on October 7, 2003, and be available until November 4, 2003.

The workshop consists of four one-and-a-half to two-hour learning modules. You can work on each module at your own pace, at any hour of the day or night. However, you will be expected to log in to the course each week to do that week's assignment. During the course you will be doing exercises and taking quizzes. You will also participate in online discussion forums in which you will be encouraged to contribute your own opinions and experience and comment from the perspective of your library's specific needs.

We ask that you log in sometime during the first week of the course to begin the course work. The materials will remain available to work on for two additional weeks, but you will be expected to accomplish the majority of the course in synchronization with your peers during the first four weeks.

Who Should Attend: Anyone from the California library community (including, but not limited to, public services staff, reference librarians, trainers, web managers) with a desire or need to create and assess web-based, online tutorials in libraries.

Prerequisites: This course is taught over the web. You must:

To be successful in this course, you will also need to be familiar with at least basic HTML coding (text, tables, lists, hyperlinks, layout, inserting images, and interpreting HTML source code). The course will not require you to write/create HTML code or pages, but will sometimes expect you to be able to inspect the coding behind an existing tutorial and determine, at least in general, how the page "works" and whether you think you would like to try to design your pages following some of the coding principles used. Also, understanding some of the coding will help you determine how difficult it might be to adapt what you see and like in other web tutorials.

If you are not comfortable with any of the above, please consider taking this course with a colleague who does meet these requirements.

Please note: Because of grant funding, California residents can take this course for the subsidized fee of $75.00. The out-of-state fee is $150.00.