This week I mostly spent time designing and crafting our search strategy tutorial, which is going to go on our library orientation page. I decided to use Twine, which is the platform used for our citation tutorial. This will allow me to break up the different concepts about developing a search strategy into small, easily digestible chunks. Yesterday I worked on the broad outline of the tutorial, and today I spent most of my time adding visual elements to the tutorial. One great thing about Twine is that you can use javascript, HTML, and CSS, so it’s a very flexible format and really fun to play with.
One thing you realize when making tutorials is that it’s really easy to get lost in the weeds. It’s difficult to strike a balance between not-too-complicated and substantial-enough-to-be-useful.
We also discussed a seemingly perennial difficulty: how do we get more feedback on what we’re doing? For example, while we are trying to better integrate our research guides with Blackboard or other course delivery platforms, will the integration benefit students and faculty? If it’s not used, then the answer is no. So how can we work together with faculty so that students are more aware of the resources the library can offer? One thing we are going to try to do this semester is to create ways to collect feedback more effectively.
Have a good weekend!
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