Are you
good how are you.
Pretty good, pretty good.
You ready for this.
You make it sound so daunting.
It's not you know be easy. Okay. Oh,
is Robin yet.
No, I don't see his name on there yet. Okay,
yeah he and I don't think we decided Who's going first.
But yeah, I guess, so I can just start messing around with the
tools in here and see if make sure everything's work.
Yep, definitely.
Okay. All right.
Can you tell me how to pronounce your last name.
Oh Bathie. Okay.
Thank you. Sure. Okay.
Can you see my screen okay
yep I can see it looks good.
I'm just gonna stop sharing that.
That was easy.
Yes, zoom really does make it easy. Yeah.
Have y'all heard any thing about the fall semester, do you know
y'all are gonna be in person or some kind of.
So I was on a hiring committee, a couple weeks ago,
and this
the only reason I found out is because the, the candidates were
asking as well and so the Dean of that college said that right
now they're just telling everyone to prepare for a
hybrid,
because they don't know.
They don't know.
I mean I'm hoping with the current spike in cases that it's
pretty obvious that we should not be open. But I don't know
who makes those decisions. It's not me, unfortunately.
We'll have to see how it goes.
Yeah, my husband works at LSU and my daughter's a student at
LSU. And, you know, the, they still are definitely trying to
figure out what was going to happen in the fall, nothing has
been decided. Yeah, they're still being very positive about,
you know, in person classes but,
yeah,
still pretty uncertain.
And I get it like you can't really make this decision, until
you get there, you know. Yeah.
Yeah, I would rather wait to find out, then have them like
commit to one thing or the other and then, you know, everything
gets thrown up in the air and,
yeah, yeah.
How did your daughter do with the online classes last
semester.
Um, she is an art major. And so all of for, you know like, 75%
of what she does is in studio classes. So she did not like it.
It took her out of being able to work in the studio at all. So it
was you know it wasn't a great transition for her. But, you
know, I mean she understood that, that's just the way it was
and Bryce is hoping that they'll figure out some way for them to
be able to be back in the studio, you know maybe with
altered hours or, you know, something in the fall.
So, I haven't I haven't followed the story closely.
I don't remember seeing LSU his name up there, but I know there
are there are those class action lawsuits that have been filed is
LSU
involved in any of those Is there any of the students.
Is it for like tuition reimbursement or. Yeah, yeah. I
feel like maybe I remember something about that. Mm hmm. It
was you know she did live in the dorms, and it was you know like
not the greatest feeling to still because we did deferred
payment. So we were still we still owed money when she was
living back at home. That's like not the, you know, not the
greatest feeling to still be paying for something that you're
not actually receiving. Absolutely. but I you know I
understand that they, they just had no choice they you know they
had staff, they had, you know, they have bills they have to pay
to So,
how it worked out.
Fewer recordings I have to watch what I say,
well, and my husband works at LSU so I've got like both, you
know, huh, see both sides of the equation.
Yeah, yeah.
And all this will be added to that.
Oh, excellent okay good Yeah. Good, good. Yeah.
Yeah, I guess they could certainly make the case, about
the library, you know the other side that well it's not being
used so we're just not gonna pay you guys.
It's not what I want to hear, but I guess there is that
argument to be made.
Well, I mean, maybe the in person physical structure is not
being used, but the resources are still being used and yeah,
yeah. No need to be supported. Yeah. Yeah. Are you guys still
working from home or you're in the office,
we're in the library.
Yeah, yeah, we're here now but students. Students are not
allowed in. We're doing curbside for both printing and checkouts,
although it looks like most students are being encouraged to
use the digital resources by their instructors. So,
yeah, that's good,
bro.
Hey guys How are y'all.
Pretty good.
You guys want to figure out who's gonna go first.
Who's going first.
Doesn't matter. I'm happy to go first. Okay, if you'd like.
Yeah. Yeah.
Can I test my screen share Laurie,
Of course,
I can see your Canva.
Yeah, I'm just trying to get myself to see my Canva now.
The problem is that I'm on a Mac, and I'm not actually a Mac
user
does Canva have
a presentation mode, it does and it's really the more I use it,
the more I love it.
Yeah, I haven't used it I've used it for posters, but that's
about it.
I use Canva. Almost every day actually
do. It's great.
But how do you get to Canva.
It's Canva. COMM ca nba.com.
What do you use, what are you doing that presentation today to
rob.
I'm not talking about Canva but the presentation that I am doing
will be on Canva. So is it like PowerPoint, it is yeah but it's
online, I think it's a lot better than PowerPoint, to be
honest.
What's that, that's your next presentation. I can was better.
Yeah, I mean, I love it. It's, I can't speak highly enough about
it and actually I just found out Laurie you might be interested
in this that they have a live presentation mode on Canva.
Where you can give people the link and then they can like chat
and I'm like they all, they would need to be on their
computer viewing your presentation from their
computers.
Oh, that is pretty cool. Yeah, I just put a link in the chat to
the presentation that you and Katherine did on that included
Canva.
Yeah.
She did her presentation on Canva right.
Yes.
Yeah. I didn't understand it.
I have to do it myself, I guess.
The best thing I think to do is just go to canva.com, make an
account and just kind of poke around, that's what I did. Okay,
I'm gonna try that.
It should spell ca n da Kanda
Canva CMV up.
I just give a message with a swelling in there.
ca n v as an epi vicious a.
Okay, thank you.
That was a good word thank you for using that. That's how I
feel every day by leashes.
I think my, my presentation I think is by vicious today it's
got its
cheesy, fun, I guess.
I keep us awake after lunch. I hope so.
We play style video then you can see me on this on this picture.
If you have a camera Yeah. Okay. Press video, see if you can see
me.
Yeah, we see your
background you got going on there.
Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I was like going through all of the
backgrounds I could use and I was like, Ooh, I like this one
is so nice and colorful is see how bad basis it is.
Rob while we waiting Do you know anything about Fitbit.
I do not actually I've never used one before.
Because I cannot get mine to change the, the date when I
first bought it it was cool, and everything was working and now
it's like okay why is the day like 16 hours earlier something.
So even with the app, it doesn't. So I actually went to
Planet Fitness yesterday is like hey can you guys help me with
this. And she was like yeah if you enjoy. Nice. No, she was
like really helpful she was really nice and everything but
it still wasn't working so now I'm still trying to figure it
out and I'm like, maybe I should just take it back. Maybe I
really need a Fitbit like for real, a bit
and synchronize it lay it against your phone, do you have
a yeah have the app open it up and lay it against your phone
and pull it down and synchronize it. Yeah.
Mom, dad.
Alright, thanks for having us today. This is great.
I think we're really excited about it. These, these
presentations have had have been really well received. Oh, we get
a lot of people and watching them live, and then you know
you've seen the messages probably on the listserv asking
for when the recordings are going to be available. There's a
lot of interest. And we are finally all caught up on all the
recordings, everything is uploaded with with transcripts.
So those are all on the website now.
So that was the one thing that I couldn't find this the
synchronizing of it. Like, it doesn't show me where you can
sync it
itch right up by your picture and pull the screen down
right pull the screen down. Yep.
Does it tell you it's synchronizing.
See, no you can't see.
I can't see it. Yeah.
But no, it is synchronous did the first time i've you know
when I set it up. But now it's just like, no, mo, we're not
gonna work for you. Sorry. Have you turned your phone off and
lifted off a little while, you know, then might be a good thing
to do because turning stuff off does work so you know what I'm
gonna do that might be the problem, or the solution.
leave it off while we're doing our workshop. Yeah. In this way
it won't be ringing. So,
you have a picture of a little girl behind you. Is that your
daughter.
That's my granddaughter.
Ah, I have a
several pictures behind me. Yeah, let's be
nice. Next Mount St. Helens in the middle and Alaska. Oh, nice.
Yes, I like that one. I like to see people's background as well,
covering mine. Love yours.
I have nothing.
Right. Looks like we're one minute past one. So let's go
ahead and get started.
Just give me one second.
All right, so it's 1:01 , so let's get started we do have a
couple people who are still connecting but they can catch up
with us. So today, we have first Rob Stevens with Nicholls State
University, he's going to talk to us about. Remind me Rob what
your section is on
is about connecting providing library support for online
classes using YouTube social media.
That sounds right to me. And we have Khalil El-Bathy with SOWELA
and remind us gain Khalil what your section is going to be on.
I'm going to be talking about just some learning design
principles related to video and libguides.
Sounds great. I'll turn it over to you, Rob.
All right, I'm gonna go ahead and share the screen here.
And Laura you can I assume you guys can see my screen there.
Yes, we can see it. Okay. Cool.
All right, so this presentation I'm going to talk about
providing support for providing library support for online
classes for a little bit of context, I am the research and
instruction librarian here at Nicholls State University, and I
am also in charge of our social media, I'm the outreach
coordinator so I do any events here at the Library. And one of
the first things that I wanted to kind of hit the ground
running with I just got hired in January, or just started in
January, I should say, was doing videos, which ultimately really
became important which once COVID hit and was fortunate that
I kind of got a little experience before that happened.
I'm going to talk about some of the ways in which I've reached
out to classes and done some instruction, using video and how
I made some of those videos, and how we created social media
marketing to reach out to some of our faculty and students. So,
once we went into quarantine, our strategy here our approach
for connecting with students and faculty members was kind of
threefold One was that we wanted to build on existing
relationships. And this actually worked out really well for me
because I had just sort of just started at the library here and
just met everybody in person so it's kind of fresh on the brain
for people on, we wanted to create a social media presence
that sent out a very clear message to our students and
faculty over that time period, and we wanted to create videos
that sort of mimics the one shot instruction that you might
typically do during the semester, under, you know, good
circumstances when you come on the classroom, but we wanted to
do those using YouTube by creating videos that teachers
can then embed in their classes or students could visit YouTube
to see. So the main message that we sent via social media, and
through our emails and all of our marketing was just, we're
here for you. This is a big focus to show everyone on campus
that even though we were at home. And I know that some
people are still at home. Some people are away but this is
still a message that I feel like we're sending right now is that
we're here to provide instruction. I think one of the
biggest challenges with this goes during COVID or not, not
during COVID, but one of the biggest ways that we can reach
out to our students and faculty is just to make them aware of
the things that we can provide them, and the services that we
can provide them. So here's kind of some of the steps that I took
to get in touch with people first was that I reached out to
email. I actually looked up every single instructor who had
a summer course. Once the summer semester was starting, and I
sent a, an email to every single instructor on that list, who was
in my liaison, so I'm the liaison for our English and
modern languages department, as well as our business department
our art departments I send, I sent an email out to every
single instructor. Now I do have a template I'm going to share
the template here with you, just so that you can kind of see the
sort of things I was offering, but it's just a little nudge to
let them know, Hey, we're here, we can help you. We want to help
you. Um, here's the email I sent out. Now the little dragon guy
at the bottom, he's just for your entertainment he's not a
part of the email um. So the email reads this hi Professor X,
Professor actually probably heard of him he teaches here at
Nichols, Rob Stephens here your library liaison, I noticed that
you were teaching this summer and I want to remind you that if
you need any help with instruction regarding research
of the library's resources, please reach out to me. I'm all
I'm available to video call into your classes for a lecture, full
class or series of classes I can also make research guides or
video for your class if you like. Finally, feel free to use
the videos on our YouTube account if you're interested,
you can link to them or embed them into your classes, we have
videos on on there that teach how to use our website to find
scholarly sources, what databases can help with research
and similar topics. I'd also be happy to make a custom video
tailored to your class. And if you need any other help with
your costs consider reaching out our librarians are very skilled
with Moodle Zoom and other technology that you may use for
online classes Thanks and have a great summer. The idea here
being that this is just an invitation for them to reach out
and you know I sent out probably, I don't know 50 of
these emails and two or three professors email me back. Um,
one or two emailed me or I should say about four or five
email me one or two just to say thanks for emailing you know,
and just appreciating that we were there but but two to three
actually had me make content for them I've made some lip guides,
which Cleo is going to talk about but also some video
content. Step two was a social media campaign and we were
really consistent with this social media campaign and I just
want to show you some of the types of posts that we made on
social media to reach out to our students and faculty.
So, this is two of the sort of earlier tweets that we put out
and I pulled all these images from Twitter we post on Twitter
and Instagram and Facebook, on the one on the left says for the
foreseeable future I librarians are working online to meet your
information needs. So email, text or chat us. We're available
today 730 to midnight visit Nichols EDU slash library to get
in touch. And at that time, we still have computer labs open.
And then, you know, a fun image that says that we're at your
service. The one that a tweet on the right, I couldn't believe
once we tweeted this how much of a reaction we got in terms of
people actually getting on online and chatting with us, our
chat numbers really kind of went up once we started posting these
things. I'm working on research this weekend at Nicholls state.
don't forget our chat is live on a weekends Saturday 9am to
5:30pm Sundays 3pm to 11pm. I should note that people were
asking about Canva before I made most of these images with Canva.
As well as this presentation. canva.com I can't say enough
good things about it. And these are actually both gifs to
they're not acting like gifs right now on this little
computer actually bounces up and down in his coffee mug. Like
emits heat there so. Some other examples. We did it. A couple of
tweets that were directed directed at faculty not just not
students but directly at faculty faculty as you plan your online
classes this is March 13 so right when we're going to
quarantine. This resource. Excuse me faculty as your plan
your online classes, consider Credo Instruct this resource
includes videos tutorials etc about information literacy
citations research. Here's the link, contact us if you want
help setting this up. I don't know how many of you guys have
Credo with your library but it was just a reminder that here's
a resource that you can embed in your classes that you can help,
and we're happy to help you. And we made this graphic I actually
made this graphic here about various ways that people could
get in touch with us. And the idea was just a consistent
message we're sending out these messages, several times a week
so that hopefully you know students will be aware that
we're there we're still doing our job. Finally, we did some
that were just kind of like fun but fun reminders on once a week
on Fridays so Nicholls has a tradition of doing red out
Fridays, you know, one of our colors is red so everybody wears
red. So this post on the right is us doing our read out Friday
showing us working from home on and working with our kids and
things like that so that's me in the corner there. And then on
the left are the staff member who does our ILL requests, did a
fun post where she made a sort of song about to the distance by
cake, except it was about social distancing and about how she's
quarantine doing ILLl, and we reposted it and and you know yes
we are still fulfilling digital ILO requests or working remotely
get questions message us or visit, you know, our website.
Step three, I made a series of videos that were meant to
imitate the most common types of lessons that you do in one shot
instruction, and I'll show you these videos, and it's on
YouTube. Now I will say that setting up a YouTube channel I
had done right when I got here, and I had made the two videos on
your right you can see on the right there, the oldest videos
and they're just one minute videos so one is just how to
chat with a librarian use our chat service, how to find books
using the library. But then I made these other videos and I'm
gonna show you an example of these. And notice I tried to
keep consistent branding, the branding does change just
slightly as it goes over time but um so that if somebody comes
to our YouTube channel that our videos are identifiable. I did
one on three strategies for better searching and discovery
discoveries like our EDS it's our main way that students look
for sources through our website, one that's the top five
databases to jumpstart your research on how to access
scholarly sources using Discovery, and this last one was
one that I did by requests how to create a literature review,
which one of our grads classes here asked, Do you have any
resources on how to create a literature review and I kind of
did a search on online and incorporated a lot of resources
from there but I wanted one that was specifically targeted to
this professors class, so I made my own video. A couple of the
elements of these videos, want to have the opening and closing
screen that I make using Canva. The content imitate imitates one
shot instruction, but I use fun topical References So you see in
the video I'm about to show you how to talk about the Tiger King
to demonstrate Boolean which at the time was like, I mean it's
still popular but that was like exploding at the time I did this
video. And then I use this program called
Screencast-o-Matic which I'm going to talk about in a minute
as well to make these videos.
Here's a video, and I'm going to play sort of bits of it just so
you get a sense of the types of video, and the power of
Screencast-oM-atic and what I can, what I could do. Um, you
can see this is the one about search strategies for better
searching and discovery, and hopefully you'll be able to hear
the audio, but if you can't, I'm not sure what I'm going to do
about that. If you can't I don't have a solution but you'll at
least get the visuals here hopefully you'll be able to hear
it.
And you'll hear it.
Today I'm going to teach you three search strategies to
improve your searches and our Discovery Database, which is
like the library's Google, where you can find books and scholarly
research for your papers. So that's me narrating and I don't
know how loud the audio is, um, Screencast-o-Matic has options
to put music underneath your video. So I use one of
Screencast-o-Matic songs there, which I think kind of keeps it
upbeat and fun for students so the watch on that particular
song I think sounds like a Nicki Minaj song I'm not sure why that
is but I thought that was fun for students that they might
enjoy that. Um, I use topical things that I said do my search
here for Super Smash Brothers to explain it. And I want to get to
a part so I'm using Screencast-o-Matic which allows
you to capture your screen and everything I'm doing here I'm
actually doing on my computer and just having screencasts and
medical record it, it's recording my voice and the
screen so that when I make this video, and can post it on, and
I'll show you an example what I do I do some searching in our
databases and explaining what I'm looking for. So, just show a
brief clip right now. Those aren't as useful they have the
words tiger and Kingdom but not together so they're not
necessarily looking for that documentary. But if I search for
Tiger king in quotation marks. Well, I'll have fewer results
only 800 results but all of these are going to have the word
tiger and King next to each other so you're more likely to
be looking for the document. So there I'm explaining how to use
quotation marks, to group things together in a search is a pretty
common thing you might go over in a one shot class. And then,
um, this is my favorite part of the presentation of the video, I
explained Boolean operators using Microsoft Paint, which
maybe makes me ancient, but still Microsoft pain is
wonderful. Here, but I want to show you what each of those do.
If I search for tiger and King. I'm gonna get all the results
that have the words tiger and King. I search for Tiger not
King say I want to filter out information about that
documentary I might start Tiger not King. And obviously now get
all the results about tiger and leave out any that have the word
King Tiger or king is actually going to be the one to give me
the most results because it's going to look for the word
tiger, or king in any that have both of the words. So that just
gives you a sense of sort of information that I'm conveying
I'm doing it with, you know, a really fun and easy program with
a reference that I thought, most of them would understand. And
hopefully I'll be able to click here and go to the next slide.
Sometimes it thinks I'm clicking the YouTube link, when I do
this, I have to xo.
So, um, the program we use for this is called
Screencast-o-Matic. And if you go to Screencast-o-Matic.Com.
It's a free program although they do have a professional
license, I just got really excited and found out, two days
ago that Nicholls is providing that license to teachers, so I'm
going to be using that in the future but I use the free
version to make this on the free version, I'm not sure of all the
differences I know that there's more music with the better
version there's more editing, and I think you can take the
little stamp off that says Screencast-o-Matic on the
screen. Um, but basically, if you look at this image This is
Screencast-o-Matic website on the top left on the bottom
right, this is the screen recorder, you can record just
the screen, you could actually just record your webcam if you
just wanted to talk to a webcam and report, or you can do both
kind of like I'm doing now with a little square at the bottom.
and you can also tell it what size you just drag this like you
would drag like a box on to tell it where you want to record on
the screen, and it's just going to capture anything in that one
spot on the screen. I found it really user friendly and easy to
learn um quickly. I basically just googled, a program that can
do this when I was trying to make these videos and this is
what I came upon. And I, I can't suggest it enough I think it's a
great tool on the way in which I went to different tabs as I just
had them all open and ready to go so I had that Microsoft Paint
tab behind the library databases tab and once I was on the
library databases tab I just like alt tab over. I mean all
window over whatever to the other screen. So it would show
Microsoft Paint. And that is kind of a brief sort of
introduction, this is my contact information feel free to email
me if you have any questions about the things we did on
social media, the things that we did on on YouTube and how to set
up an account setting up a YouTube account can be a little
bit of a process on there's a lot of like verification and
things that go on. I think it's definitely worth doing because
students know YouTube they're on there, it's really easy to give
a professor, a link to a YouTube video and say here go ahead and
embed this in your class. If you need help with any of that, I'd
be more than happy to assist you with that. But thanks so much
and thanks Laurie for having me, and excited to hear what Khalil
says,
Thanks Rob. Are there any questions for Rob before we move
on to Khalil's section, you can feel free to unmute your
microphone or type it in the chat and I can ask it.
I have yeah I've got the chat up too.
All right, well, y'all think of your questions, we'll move on to
Khalil and then we'll have more time for questions at the end.
I'll turn it over to you now.
Hi Everyone, so. Double check, make sure you can see my screen.
Okay.
Let's see, let's see. I think that's a yes I don't have that.
Yes,
thank you. Um, so I'm just going to talk about some of the
learning design principles that I try to employ when I'm making
videos or designing libguides. You know I should have
introduced myself. My name is Khalil El-Bathy, I'm the
reference instruction librarian at SOWELA Technical Community
College. And so, I want to start with video learning. We have
Camtasia. That's, that's just the, the software that our
institution, bought a license for, and it was lucky for me
because that's all. Also the program that I used when I was
earning my MLS I was very familiar with it, coming in, it
just it made learning process or, it made producing videos
much easier for me, which I'll explain why that's important in
just a minute. So as I said, we have Camtasia, and Camtasia, is
it's considered one of the more heavier heavy hitting video
production software's out there. So as a lot of great features
such as advanced animation features that include call out
tools. So you can zoom into parts of the screen if you're
doing screen capture you can circle it or draw a box around
it. If you want to highlight that part of the screen. It also
lets you animate basically anything that you're going to
put up on the canvas or the, the, whatever whatever it is in
your video that you're adding in there. And what makes Camtasia
so powerful is that you can combine and edit a lot of
different types of media together you can do picture and
picture, you can do screen capture. You can splice
together, together different audio tracks or layer them on
top of each other. And what's really great also is that
Camtasia interfaces with PowerPoint. And that's important
because my computer has certain limitations, if I try to do too
many animations on Camtasia using Camtasia, it won't render
correctly in the video. The video will be really choppy. And
so what I try to do is supplement Camtasia, with the
animation features that are available in PowerPoint and
PowerPoints actually been really good about expanding those
features and making them more usable and more advanced. So
this is just sort of an example of one the animations that I
made for one of my videos about teaching students the iterative
process of research right you don't search once you don't read
once you don't write once you're gonna do this multiple times
right and so it was just a very basic animation where I'm saying
each time you go through, you collect more evidence you know
and your search gets more refined. The next time through
it, and it was much easier to create this in PowerPoint,
instead of Camtasia but it's a good supplement, and it's great
that Camtasia interfaces well with
with PowerPoint.
So these are some of the design principles that I try to use.
Number one, I want to make sure that I include graphics and
animation in there. Number two, I try in my videos to state the
learning objectives upfront, I say look you're watching this
video, this is what you're going to learn. And then I try to
limit the videos to anywhere from three to five minutes
that's sort of the sweet spot. Now if if what you're teaching
is very basic like here's a few quick tools on using the
databases, and you can get it down to one minute two minute,
that's great, but the sort of best practice is. If your video
is longer than five minutes, your students are going to start
to their attention span is going to suffer. And so I try as much
as possible to keep my videos within, within that three to
five minute range, although I have a couple times broken that
rule. And the last thing I try to do is include a learning
summary at the end of the video right so I'm just saying, This
is what we learned today I'll give you an example of what I
have in our database search video. I say here's four things
I showed you and the reason I have the summary at the end is
because I want these ideas to be a bit more stickier right they
saw me do it. And now I'm just going to quickly summarize it
they can hear me talk about it they can see the text, and
hopefully that's just sort of an affirmation of some of the
things that they learned today. So those are just some of the
basic design principles that I use when I'm creating videos
with. So I'm also going to talk about LibGuides and so we just
acquired LibGuides, at the end of March, and which was, it was,
I think, literally the same week that they said okay. Everyone's
going home next week, and so you know we were working hard to
make sure that we could use this tool to provide our students and
our faculty with as much support from the library as possible.
The first thing that we did sort of that week is to develop a set
of best practices and we developed our best practices,
just by looking at the best practices of other libraries, a
lot of them will they do the same thing their first LibGuide
is the best practices LibGuide so we looked at a lot of them,
and I don't have all of ours listed but these are I think
some of the sort of the the main ones that we use. And the first
one is minimize scrolling, and that actually informs a lot of
the other, best practices that we have in our guide, some of
them included here, because the more information that's on the
screen you potentially overload the students with that sort of
information so you want to make it really manageable and that's
why we have that second best practice of when you can use
bullet points and limit your sentences to I'm sorry limit
your paragraphs to three sentences, five sentences max
but you're really stretching it there. Again, you just want to
have. You want to boil down the information that students need
to just the bare essentials, and then the same thing with lists
so for example one where we're saying hey here's some books
that we have in our catalog. You want to limit those lists to
five to seven items and then have a link if you want to
browse more if you want to explore more follow this link
hop into our catalog hop into the database. But again, if any
more than that you're increasing scrolling and you're just you're
overloading the students with too much information. And the
last point we have on there which is sort of a separate
point is that we try to not use library jargon and the best
example is we try not to say reference materials, we just say
encyclopedias, and that's because you know it's that it's
that mantra in tech, the user is not like me and we know it's the
same thing as librarians our patrons are not like us, they
don't think like us, they don't organize and access the
materials like us. And so we want to think how they think and
design are our learning objects in our tools that's more helpful
for them and more intuitive for them. So once we set up our best
practices. These are some of the principles that we use to design
our LibGuides. The first conversation that we had was
understanding the difference between browsing and search, and
this sort of relates to the second point there.
If we're not exactly sure what students need or what faculty
are requiring for their students. You, we might opt more
for browsing so we want broader coverage we want a list of
materials and resources that will help the students find more
on their own. But a lot of the research on LibGuide says that
when you create a LibGuide, you're going to get more use if
you can make it course specific, and even better, assignments,
specific, they get higher use and they seem to help students
more than the broader Subject Guides. And so what we do for
that is, I hound our faculty for syllabi and for assignment
descriptions and I feel like I've gotten a fair bit, not as
much as I want, but it's helped us, help me tailor both our
LibGuides and also my library instruction sessions when I go
into those classes. Now when faculty don't share those
resources we have some other options we look at our course
catalog list and say, Okay, what courses are taught in that
program and that gives us an idea of the topics or. We also
have on our website, every program, I'll say most I haven't
looked at all of them yet but most programs have a set of
program learning outcomes that say, this is what we want our
students to be able to do once they graduate and a half a
degree and some programs will say, this is the course and this
and this is the assignment and that again sort of helps us
tailor our LibGuides toward the specific needs of students in
those courses and in those programs. And the last principle
that we have is we are trying to make our LibGuides learning
objects. I think it's easy, or easy to fall into creating a
LibGuide that is a library in miniature, or it's just a
digitized library it's a warehouse right here are all the
resources. But, and that's important we definitely want to
make sure that we have the resources available for the
students and it makes it easier to find easier to access. We
want the students to walk away. Having learned how to search or
having learned some concept that's relevant to their
assignment so what I'm going to do is sort of go over a couple
of our guides and just sort of talk about how I've tried to
make these principles, come to life. And so I'll start with
this is our business administration guide. And this
is one of those instances where I didn't get an assignment
description. I see there's something in the chat here let's
see. Oh, okay. Excellent, excellent. Rob saying he's also
use Camtasia and it's great. This business administration
guide is one of those cases where we did not get a syllabus
or assignment description so I use those other routes for
getting as much information as I can about the about the courses
or about the program, and so on our landing page, I have this
first box just to support browsing which is really popular
that you'll see a lot of libraries do doing in under
normal circumstances if students could come into the library.
That's that those are the shelves that they would go to
that's what they would look at and then we have popular
business magazines databases, etc, etc. But looking at the
program learning outcomes looking at the list of courses
in the business administration program. I also saw that they're
looking at creating business plans marketing plans, and
they're addressing all of these other topics and so I was able
to create sub pages that dive more deeply, or I get resources
books. Encyclopedia entries, or ebooks that are about
specifically each of those topics and it's just helping me
dive a little deeper into, into that course and providing a more
tailored experience for their research. I just want to show
you our history guide now I work very closely with our history
department they're great. They love the library we love them.
But the crux or the backbone of their course least as far as the
library is concerned, is the students are reading primary
sources and secondary sources, and that is exactly how I've
structured, this guide, right. The front page the landing page
is well okay what's the difference. And I have a video
right and again I want this to be a learning object, not just
not just a digital library or a Digital Archives, etc. And then
the same thing right so the second page is all about primary
sources, I have search tips. Right. And I'm going to also
have this list of books here, and I have this note at the top
that says, Okay, here are some suggested primary sources that
we have, but it's not everything. If you want more,
you know, check out our catalog. And then I'm just going to hop
quickly to the secondary sources page. Because, again, I've
embedded a video because I want it to be a learning experience.
And I found working with the students that they really
struggle to pick relevant secondary sources. Oftentimes
say they'll, they'll read the narrative The Life of a Slave by
Frederick Douglass, they'll come in and say okay I need a
secondary source. I need another book on Frederick Douglass, and
I'm like, Yeah, you can go that route. But you could also think
more broadly about maybe the Abolitionist Movement as a
whole, the Civil War, etc. Right, so this video for example
just goes into a little bit of that discussion of how to think
about selecting your secondary sources so I'm trying to tailor
this guide to what those students need. And then the last
one I'm going to show you here is for our Nursing Concepts II
course. So again, this is an example where I did get an
assignment description from the instructor. And one of the
things that students have to do is create educational material
for their for their patients. Right. And I've seen in the
library when students work on this assignment, they're trying
to use Microsoft Word to make a brochure, and that's not the
best software for that. You can do it but publisher is better
suited. So I say okay, here's a quick tutorial on using
publisher, so I don't think a lot of the students that I've
seen, they're not aware of this program, even though they have
access to it. Shout out to Rob I have Canva on here, because it
is a great tool, and I also say, if you do want to go the route
of using Microsoft Word. Here's some tips you experienced what
the students need, and making this more of a learning object
that really goes beyond the library, not just what, what is
our connection. And I think that is about all I have for you
today. So I'm gonna stop sharing my screen.
And I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Looks like y'all got a lot done since you've had LibGuides. a
lot of progress.
We've been working hard.
Hey, I have a question. Thanks both Rob and Khalil that was
really helpful and interesting to hear about one question I had
is so campuses at this point for the most part are looking like
they'll be
in-person so much as we know in the fall, and you all have done
a lot in the last couple of months to, you know, build
virtual outreach for information literacy. So moving through the
rest of the summer and into the fall. Are you thinking you'll be
investing more and more in these type of virtual information
literacy pieces or kind of stepping back and doing more of
the face to face. Stuff How are you balancing those things with
the uncertainty of the fall at this point.
That's a really tough question to answer because I'm not. I
guess you said it looks like they're going to be in-person
but I mean, that seems to be the plan but yeah we're trying to
plan for both Brandy my coworker just put it, so for example
Brandy and I are actually developing a group of
information literacy classes, and we're making sure that
whatever we design we could do. Either way right now. Um, so
that hopefully we can make, we're actually using Canva
because of the live presentation mode on something we've been
talking about to make sort of these presentations or we're
planning to I should say, so that if we need to do it on Zoom
Or another way we can but if we want to present them in the
classroom we can you know there's not a really great
answer to that, unfortunately, and I'm also the Outreach
Coordinator and even like some of the activities I've planned
like our open house at the beginning of the semester you
know I'm like videoing a tour of the library. The way I look at
it though is best case scenario for the world is that we're all
back and COVID's gone in the fall, you know, it's really
optimistic but we're all back and COVID's gone. And then I
have these online resources that are still useful for students
and still useful for classes, you know, if for some reason you
know I can't make it into a class or an instructor just
doesn't have me they're there for them to embed into their
class on the LibGuides that Khalil was showing I would
imagine you know they're the same thing they're still useful.
And nothing replaces a librarian stepping into the classroom, I
think, but those materials are still useful and maybe Khalil
has a different outlook than I do, but that's kind of the way
we're thinking both ways. I mean it's really hard right now to
know what to do. And I'm, I guess, you know, end of July,
which is coming closer you know we're going to be just getting
more information all the time and trying to plan as best as we
can.
Yeah, I don't know if I have any, any too much more to add
just that they these digital tools can easily compliment
in-person instruction. So, you know, and whether it's, whether
it's if it's a professor who says, Yeah, I'd love to share my
video with, you know, some of your videos with my class so
that they can watch before you come in. Also the LibGuides
again, they help students like wade through a lot of our
collection that they just don't need, they're not looking for.
Right. And so I think I. The video even the videos I've made
like they're based on either entire or I should say rather
there's some of the points in my, in person instruction
sessions. And so they're, they're really interchangeable.
And one of the successes I've had Emily is that I've had, just
like one or two professors do this but who I'm already
starting to brainstorm with about the fall and get try to
get really clear it sounds like Khalil works really hard with
his you know faculty member as well but try and get really good
expectations of like what they want from us for their class and
what we can offer and trying to develop game plans best as best
we can. I'm in the middle of communicating with a professor
like a lot about that right now just trying to, you know, have
two plans in place so that we can, and sometimes even more
than that because she might be doing asynchronous she might be
doing synchronous and those are two are very different because
you know synchronous we can do Zoom, but asynchronous, you
know, watching videos and things like that so it's it's gonna be
a challenge, I think, yeah.
Any other questions for Khalil around.
Khalil I have a question, I'm about your presentation, or
about kind of the way that you guys approach so have you made a
LibGuide. Then, my understanding and kind of the is that you've
made one for every class, or every at least sort of
department that you are working with,
with still in production. Now yes,
that is the plan though.
Ah, right now is just sort of been trying to think about who
are, who do we know are like biggest customers, so to speak,
and we've been trying to get those out first, and then so for
example the business administration guide. I didn't,
I didn't hear anything. And then so I made the guide and I sent
it out an email again and I said, Okay, here's something I
can show you, you know, and I'm hoping trying to get more back.
I think like a lot of our technical programs. They're just
they just they don't use the library. And so right now
outreach has been sort of very targeted very piecemeal, and we
think towards as we get closer to the fall and one of the
faculty start checking their emails, possibly back on campus,
we're not sure we're going to put out this tentative plan,
just a bigger solicitation saying hey you know we have this
platform. We'd love to work with you and then anyone, any faculty
gets in touch with us we can sort of create those guides but
yeah right now it's been it's been just trying to think about
who are the programs that will do us a library that do use
these resources and then try to get a guide together for them.
Great.
So, I have a question for Khalil. When I started using
LilbGuides like about three years ago they were extremely
hard to use. Have they improved them like is it is it easier to
create the LibGuides now, because they have a lot of
tutorials I know that but
is it still through SpringShare was it.
SpringShare. Yeah. Um,
I'm trying to think back to library school because I had
this annoying thing in library school where like every other
course I took the final program was create video or create a
LibGuide and it was just like every, every other semester I'm
like I'm doing this again. Um, so I've used it for a few years.
But I think if you're familiar with just some of the basics of
some basic blog platforms like WordPress, for example, I think
the interface is is pretty easy to use. And then they do have a
lot of tutorials that once you get an account with them or
subscription, that you can you can sit it on webinars and you
can even just go into YouTube, and try to find some tips for
that I think is pretty easy. I think the real challenge is sort
of what I was talking about, is just designing them to maximize
usability and and sort of maximize the easiness of using
them I think that's where the challenge comes in because
starting in library school when I did start looking at the
software. You saw just some some guides, because they have you
look at them where they throw every link they could find on
any subject into a guide and it's just it's information
overload is too much for the students.
So I think that that's the real challenge of using the software.
Do each one of your librarians create their own LibGuides or do
you create them for everybody.
I have created the bulk of them, um, however, because we, we have
a sort of a small team here. We're always giving each other
feedback soliciting feedback just to make sure that we're all
on the same page in terms of implementing these design
principles. Okay. Thank you. Sure.
All right, well I think we'll wrap it up now. thank you so
much to Khalil and Rob that was very useful. We will get this
video uploaded and sent out to everyone for anyone who missed
the presentation today. Thanks again guys,
thanks for coming.
Thank you.
If I do that, you won't be able to get back in.
Oh really. Yeah,
it tells you that. Okay.
I'll just I'll just go do it.
Well, it ended up messing up your recording or the otter that
transcription and all that.
And I'm gonna, I'm going to turn that off now. Everyone.