Creating an Online Electronic Reserve Tutorial for Faculty

Abstract

Library staff created an online tutorial and resource Web page for Docutek electronic reserve (electronic reserve software) users at Philadelphia University. Created as part of a larger training initiative revision conducted by the Instructional Technology Specialist, the online resource supports a faculty-driven model of electronic reserve usage. Additionally, the revised training initiative places an emphasis on using electronic reserve and BlackBoard as complementary tools better serving the educational needs of faculty and students. This article explores the decision-making process involved in the creation of the Web page and the training initiative.     

Assessing the Effectiveness of Online Information Literacy Tutorials for Millennial Undergraduates

This article reports on the findings of a study that evaluated the effectiveness of redesigning online information literacy tutorials in order to meet the learning needs and preferences of Millennial students. Using both quantitative and qualitative measures, this study compared two different online tutorials—a static, HTML-based tutorial and a dynamic, interactive, audio/video tutorial. This study found that, contrary to generalizations made in the library and education literature, Millennial students learned equally well from both tutorials. However, students expressed a much higher level of satisfaction from the tutorial designed to be “Millennial friendly.”     

Evaluation of Internet Information Sources by High School Students in Ghana

The Internet clearly presents the opportunity for students to expand their knowledge at a fast pace, since they are able to access enormous amount of information. However, accessing the Internet also has its downside since not all information is of good quality. The study explored how 12th grade students at a high school in Ghana evaluated online information sources. These students and the head of the Information Communication Technology department respond to self-administered questionnaires and a semi-structured interview, respectively. The study found that most of the high school students did some kind of an evaluation of online information sources, however, they were not applying the right criteria. The study further revealed that students were not introduced to evaluation criteria at school and this had contributed to the gap in their evaluation competencies.     

PubMed Instruction for Medical Students: Searching for a Better Way

In 2007, Duke University Medical Center Library instituted an interactive, online PubMed tutorial and quiz for medical students to replace an in-person lecture. This article describes the events leading to this educational paradigm shift and how the tutorial was implemented. Important concerns in the switch to an online approach to PubMed training were student satisfaction and the extent to which searching skills would improve. To determine the effectiveness of the online model, two years of student quizzes and evaluations were examined. Results indicate that students benefit from and appreciate the interactive tutorial.     

Online journals' impact on the citation patterns of medical faculty.

PURPOSE: The purpose was to determine the impact of online journals on the citation patterns of medical faculty. This study looked at whether researchers were more likely to limit the resources they consulted and cited to those journals available online rather than those only in print. SETTING: Faculty publications from the college of medicine at a large urban university were examined for this study. The faculty publications from a regional medical college of the same university were also examined in the study. The number of online journals available for faculty, staff, and students at this institution has increased from an initial core of 15 online journals in 1998 to over 11,000 online journals in 2004. METHODOLOGY: Searches by author affiliation were performed in the Web of Science to find all articles written by faculty members in the college of medicine at the selected institution. Searches were conducted for the following years: 1993, 1996, 1999, and 2002. Cited references from each faculty-authored article were recorded, and the corresponding cited journals were coded into four categories based on their availability at the institution in this study: print only, print and online, online only, and not owned. Results were analyzed using SPSS. RESULTS: The number of journals cited per year continued to increase from 1993 to 2002. The results did not indicate that researchers were more likely to cite online journals or were less likely to cite journals only in print. At the regional location where the number of print-only journals was minimal, use of the print-only journals did decrease in 2002, although not significantly. CONCLUSION/DISCUSSION: It is possible that electronic access to information (i.e., online databases) has had a positive impact on the number of articles faculty will cite. Results of this study suggest, at this point, that faculty are still accessing the print-only collection, at least for research purposes, and are therefore not sacrificing quality for convenience.     

Assessing the Effectiveness of Online Library Instruction with Finance Students

ABSTRACT

Many academic librarians use online information literacy tutorials as an alternative or a supplement to in-class library instruction. Tutorials created with streaming media software such as Camtasia Studio have become increasingly popular. Librarians at a mid-sized Midwestern university have created several such tutorials demonstrating various library resources. The value of streaming-media tutorials is supported by key learning theories such as cognitive load theory, dual coding theory, and multimedia learning theory. However, studies measuring the impact of online tutorials on student learning of information-literacy skills have shown mixed results. The authors tested the effectiveness of an online information literacy tutorial on a group of undergraduate business students. About 140 students in three undergraduate finance classes rated a Value Line online tutorial. Students were also invited to complete a follow-up survey online with Blackboard. This survey measured student knowledge retention of Value Line and interest in online tutorials. The results showed that while students viewed the tutorial positively, they preferred face-to-face instruction from a librarian. Also, while most students could locate the proper links in Value Line, only 30 percent were able to successfully look up a company. Indicators point to a future for online instruction coexisting with, yet not replacing, traditional classroom library instruction.     

Designing an Interactive Web-based Tutorial for Health Sciences Students: A Collaborative Library Project

This column describes the creation of an online interactive tutorial for health sciences students in a general library at a large, urban university. The project was a collaborative effort among the health sciences subject librarian, the library’s web programmer, an assessment and user services librarian, and an instructional support specialist. The column details the initial exploration, design, web programming, student usability study, and subsequent upgrades to the tutorial. Implementation of the tutorial is discussed as well as sampled student input. The effort resulted in the design of improved and more versatile open access coding available for any library to use.     

University Libraries-Electronic Reserve

ABSTRACT

The Arizona State University Libraries Electronic Reserve system provides ASU students easy online access to required course reading. Journal articles, tests, syllabi and class notes are digitized and available on any computer with Internet access. Students no longer need to make a trip to the library but can now read, download or print these items at their convenience. The documents are easily located through a direct link in the libraries' online catalog and retrievable with “two clicks of a mouse.” This system was designed by the staff of the university's library. While outside vendors offered programs ranging in price from $47,000 to $70,000, less than $400 was spent on software. With over 750 files for 169 courses digitized, electronic reserve is popular, averaging 11,000 “hits” a month.     

Information literacy skills and learning gaps– Students' experiences and teachers' perceptions in interdisciplinary environmental science

Despite the ease of accessing information in the digital age, environmental science students need information literacy (IL) to competently tackle complex problems and sustainability challenges. Students' experiences and teachers' perceptions of student IL skills in an environmental science program were investigated through student questionnaires and teacher interviews to identify students IL competence and eventual learning gaps in the program. Students expressed confidence in IL, more strongly in basic skills such as information search and source criticism than advanced skills; critical thinking and analysing, interpreting, and creating information. They found formulating problems and locating and assessing information to be challenging, despite repeated training in tutorial groups. Teachers similarly perceived students to be most competent in accessing relevant information while using information is more challenging. This could be linked to the complexity and interdisciplinarity environmental science. Findings suggest that IL learning gaps could be bridged by greater focus on systematic IL training, intentional training on advanced skills, and iterative training of both basic and advanced skills by strengthening faculty and librarians collaborative teaching.     

Get the cite right: Design and evaluation of a high-quality online citation tutorial

As part of a library initiative to foster information literacy, promote academic integrity, and prevent inadvertent plagiarism, a high-quality online tutorial was designed to teach students to cite sources properly. The development of this tutorial, APA Exposed: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About APA Format but Were Afraid to Ask, was a collaborative endeavor among research and instruction librarians, learning technology specialists, and an instructor. This study employs a mixed-methods research approach that combines the use of multiple data sources – an online survey, website visitor-tracking software, e-mail correspondence, and a Google search – to evaluate the quality and efficacy of the tutorial. Analyses of online survey data indicate 98% of survey respondents found the tutorial useful or very useful. All of the respondents reported the tutorial improved their understanding of APA style. In addition, 93% of respondents said they planned to use this tutorial as a reference resource in the future and 99% said they would recommend the tutorial to others. The online tutorial received an average of 1055 visits per month. The findings of this study indicate that there is a need for high-quality online citation instruction and that the tutorial meets this need. Providing effective citation instruction online not only benefits tutorial participants but also research and instruction librarians as they can now allocate limited library resources to areas of instruction other then proper citation techniques.     

LibGuides and Web-Based Library Guides in Comparison: Is There a Pedagogical Advantage?

This study investigates whether the platform used to deliver a tutorial matters in online information literacy instruction and assesses the overall quality of an information literacy tutorial assignment given to an undergraduate survey class. The study asks whether there is any pedagogical advantage between information literacy tutorials created in the LibGuides library guide creation software and tutorials created as Web pages. This research question is relevant to current studies of online information literacy tutorials, particularly given the increasingly dominant but under-researched position of LibGuides in the academic library world for delivering guides and tutorials. Two separate groups of students completed LibGuides and Web page versions of the same information literacy tutorial assignment in a university undergraduate communication course. Survey results of these 89 students indicated that both the LibGuides and Web page platforms deliver online instruction content effectively and achieve learning objectives almost equally well. Results also indicated content areas within the assignment that could be strengthened.     

Experiential and self-discovery learning in digital literacy: Developing the discernment to evaluate source reliability

Abstract

In our modern digital and information-rich educational contexts, students are increasingly faced with conflicts between popular media and scholarly content. As a result, discerning source reliability can be considered as a key threshold concept in tertiary information literacy curricula. In this study, the author describes the development of an online tutorial designed to teach this threshold concept using experiential and self-discovery learning. Evaluation of students’ learning journeys as they progressed through the tutorial provided insight into students understanding of the concept of discerning source reliability. Therefore, the author proposes that this online tutorial is an effective pedagogical tool to help students develop their personal epistemology regarding source reliability.     

The effects of subtitles and captions on an interactive information literacy tutorial for English majors at a Turkish university

Subtitles and captions have been used to aid second language learning. This study focuses on the effects of subtitles and captions on English Language Learners' ability to learn information literacy skills and apply those skills using an interactive tutorial. Three groups of Turkish university students majoring in English Language and Literature completed a tutorial on ACRL's Framework scholarly conversations. One group completed the tutorial with an English soundtrack and no titling; the second group completed the tutorial with an English soundtrack and English captions; and the third group completed the tutorial with an English soundtrack and Turkish subtitles. Using Morae software, the students were recorded and evaluated for time-on-task and correct completion of the interactive practice elements. The group that viewed the tutorial with an English soundtrack and Turkish subtitles completed tasks at a statistically significant faster pace than other groups and with statistically significant more success.     

Health sciences librarians' research on medical students' use of information for their studies at the medical school, University of Queensland, Australia

This study reports the findings of research undertaken by health sciences librarians at the University of Queensland Library into how medical students use information for their studies, particularly resources and services provided by the Library. The methods utilized were an online survey and focus groups. Results indicated that students favor print resources over electronic, value accessing resources on a one-stop basis, and prefer training to be delivered flexibly. The implication of these results for future resource selection, service provision, and instructional design and delivery is discussed.     

Profiles in Resource Sharing: Tom Bruno

Abstract

Health sciences libraries are expanding services that use online technologies to support teaching, research, and clinical care needs. Saint Louis University's Health Sciences Center (SLU HSC) Library has developed strong, user-centered, online services in interlibrary loan, bibliographic instruction, and electronic reserves. The authors present their successful experiences in using electronic technologies to improve library services.

Journal articles are provided, often the same day as requested through interlibrary loan, and delivered in electronic format using OCLC's ILLiad program. First-year SLU medical students now complete a self-paced, all online, Health Information Resources course that targets the most relevant biomedical resources, reduces student study time, and is viewed as a model for the entire curriculum. ERes, the electronic reserves program, allows faculty to provide course materials that are accessible at the convenience of students 24 hours a day. These online programs are examples of using electronic technologies to better support user needs for excellent library services.     

Graduate student research instruction: Testing an interactive Web-based library tutorial for a health sciences database

Interactive electronic tutorials offer flexibility in delivering library instruction; however, questions linger regarding their effectiveness compared to traditional librarian-led classroom lectures. This study examines a tutorial introducing health science students to the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature database. Half the student sample completed the tutorial and half attended a parallel lecture. A pre/post-test instrument measured mastery of the material. While results varied by subject focus tested, students completing the tutorial demonstrated greater improvement in post-test scores than those attending the lecture.     

Reference Beyond the Walls of the Library: Interacting with Faculty and Students in the 21st Century

SUMMARY

The nature of research continues to evolve from accessing print publications in a library building toward retrieving information online, any time any place. Since patrons no longer need to enter a library building to access information, the social character of reference service has also changed. Demand for face-to-face reference interaction has declined, altering the traditional one-on-one venue for teaching information retrieval and evaluation. To develop new opportunities for influencing the information literacy levels of students, librarians at Northwest Missouri State University are creating outreach strategies that facilitate increased interaction with students and faculty.     

Home on the electronic range: bringing the Journal of Animal Science online

This article describes why the American Society of Animal Science decided to make the Journal of Animal Science available online, some of the issues that were considered before and during the project, and the responses of those who use the electronic journal. The article also contains discussions of new additions to our electronic offerings and the challenge of granting library access to electronic publications. Based on feedback received from American Society of Animal Science members, our online endeavors have been well received, and members perceive these offerings as an important enhancement of membership services.