Happy 2019! I hope everyone’s holidays went well. It’s been a while since my last update! During the intersession, I will be working on developing questions and prototypes for a (very small) UX study regarding our LibGuides landing page and our research guide page.
Following a similar study conducted by Nora, we’ll be using paper prototypes and advanced scribbling to determine what features students do and don’t find useful about the LibGuide landing page. How can we make it easier for students to find the information they need? For example, our research guide is not visible on the default LibGuide landing page. But even if it were, is this the best layout? The process of creating wireframes has certainly helped me become much more familiar with our LibGuide content.
I’d also be curious to find out if non-LIS students generally know what LibGuides are. Because my own undergraduate days long precede the advent of LibGuides and my LIS student experience is biased toward familiarity with LibGuides, I feel like I don’t have any real sense of whether LibGuides are something students generally know about, or whether most have no idea of their existence. Which came first, the user or the design? Can an amazing LibGuide draw students in if they don’t use it in the first place? I suppose this speaks to the need for strong library promotion and outreach!
Libraries, search strategies, and usability
Here is the postcard I mentioned in the previous post advertising our search strategy tutorial. We’re going to print them on cardstock and have a stack ready as students prep for finals.
The wayfinding study is underway and we had our first two interviews today. These have been fun to do, and students seem to find it somewhat entertaining. Already we have gotten some good usability feedback.
Speaking of usability, I am also going to work on the LibGuide landing page to make it more appealing and easier to drill down to the subject/topic guide you are looking for. It’s been really interesting to look at other LibGuide examples and see how they are presenting their content. Most use the format we have in place, but I have found some interesting variations that I think will help make LibGuides more accessible to students looking for information. This week and next I will be creating wireframes that we hope to use in an informal UX study.
Search tutorial finished! — Update from the instructional design intern
Greetings!
So it took longer than I had originally thought, but the search strategy tutorial is finished. I also designed a (very simple) postcard that we can have when we do screen printing with students this Thursday.
Please share with your students! The tutorial is modular in that students can look at the module for step 1 (keywords), or if they already looked at that section, they can jump ahead to step 3 (revising your search). There is also a table of contents at the bottom of each page so that the student can easily zero in on a specific part of the tutorial.
I would love to hear feedback about what works and what doesn’t work in this particular tutorial. We tried to make things visual, as evidenced by my attempt to diagram nested search terms, and easily navigable. The tutorial also includes 10 questions students can use to quiz themselves on the tutorial’s concepts.
Our wayfinding study is also underway. I’m excited to get more experience in conducting these types of studies and hearing from students about what works and doesn’t work in terms of navigating the physical library.
Latest update from the Instructional Design Intern
Greetings and happy Library Privacy Week!
I have been spending the majority of my time on finalizing the search strategy tutorial. It will hopefully be ready to unveil soon, and just in time for students working on research papers. The search goes into using keywords, boolean operators, and iterative searching. Right now I’m refining content and working on creating quiz questions.
Overall I think Twine has been a really flexible and customizable way to deliver tutorial content. It combines modularity (which students have indicated a preference for) with the flexibility to jump around to different parts of the tutorial. The fact that it’s open source is an added bonus.
After the search tutorial is done, I’ll be focusing on creating LibGuide content. Have a good weekend!
Deeper into searches–Update from Instructional Design Intern
Hi everyone,
Sorry for the late post! This week I created a draft of a survey we want to distribute to the faculty who use our library instruction services, but most of my time was spent on finishing up the search tutorial.
What I like about the interactive storytelling method is that you can add depth to sections where needed without the tutorial seeming weighted down. Each page will have a table of contents at the bottom in order to maximize navigability. This will allow students who return to the tutorial to easily find the specific issue they are looking for without having to go through the other material.
This week’s focus has been on developing the content for the section about revising your searches and developing a little quiz so students can test their boolean knowledge. I haven’t fully decided on the best format for the quiz yet, but it won’t be anything too complicated.
Have a good weekend!
Boolean? — Update from instructional design intern
Today I had the opportunity to sit at the reference desk and field some questions from students. As with last week, it was great to interact with the students, and I’ll be having more opportunities in the future to do so.
The timeline for the search tutorial is progressing. Here is a sneak peek of one of the graphics I made. 
Of course, this raised the question of terminology. When I’m learning a new skill, words like boolean would probably float past me without making an impact. So for now, we’re going to refer to them as search terms or search operators.
I’m sure this issue will come up repeatedly as we create more instructional materials. What are some other terms like this that can be rephrased for use in instructional materials?
Have a great weekend!
How to search effectively — Update from the Instructional Design Intern
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!
Making buttons and tutorials at the library! — Update from the Instructional Design Intern
This week was a week of laying out plans and projects. While there are a variety of areas to work on, my first main project is to create a tutorial for how to search for materials in academic databases. The tutorial is going to be short and sweet and will focus on how to use keywords + boolean searching to find the stuff you need. The emphasis will be on a search strategy rather than on using a particular search platform/interface. While I’m not too sure of the design yet, it may or may not involve cats and will definitely be interactive. I’m aiming to have a draft by next week and go live the week after that.
Today was also City Tech’s Club Fair, which is when a bunch of student clubs have tables and students come to check them out. The library had a table and Nora brought down the button maker, which was a huge hit! I got to meet a bunch of students and took pictures of them with their custom buttons: https://www.instagram.com/p/BnrP6m7BNV5
I’m trying to up our social media presence so stay tuned for more regular instagrams and tweets!
Hello from the new instructional design intern
Hello! My name is Betsy and I’m the new instructional design intern at the City Tech library. I’m currently a student in the Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences at Queens College and previously worked on the Open Educational Resources initiative at the College of Staten Island. I’m interested in multimedia and interaction design and am excited to develop my skills through this internship!
Today (my first day!) I learned about the types of things I’ll be doing this semester. They generally fall into three main categories:
(1) Create additional fun and interactive resources for students. I will probably start with our library orientation, which is a modular tutorial on where to begin with your research.
(2) Develop relationships with students and faculty and generally spread the word about all the great things library has to offer!
(3) This third one is a more technical goal–enable interoperability between different educational platforms so that our LibGuide content can be incorporated into Blackboard.
As with the previous interns, you can expect weekly updates on my progress. Feel free to reach out to me via twitter and instagram (@citytechlibrary on both). I look forward to the rest of the semester and hope to hear from folks!
