Interactive Online Tutorials Research Articles

A Guide to Excellent Creative Business Libraries and Business Centers

I had the opportunity to view the work produced by the American Library Association's (ALA) Emerging Leaders at the 2008 ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim. While I was impressed overall with the quality of work produced by these rising stars, I was drawn to the research that one group presented as a poster session. This project related to identifying best practices of innovative business libraries and business centers. Since I believed that these findings would be of interest to a broader audience, I invited the group to submit an article on their project for this occasional column.--Editor Leslie Burger, 2006-07 American Library Association (ALA) president, initiated the Emerging Leaders program. This program provides an opportunity for new librarians to serve the profession in a leadership capacity. Emerging Leaders participate in problem-solving workgroups, network with peers, and gain an inside look at the organizational structure of ALA. Beginning in December 2007, our workgroup from the 2008 Emerging Leaders program took on a project sponsored by the Business Reference and Services Section (BRASS) of RUSA. The goal of the project was to create a guide to excellent creative business libraries and business centers to provide examples of innovative and best To better understand the current practices of business libraries and business centers, we conducted a Web-based survey to identify innovation and best practice. The findings from the survey are discussed in this article. Note that we have used the term library to designate both business libraries and business centers. LITERATURE REVIEW Given that none of the authors are business librarians and lacked in-depth knowledge about business librarianship, we began with a broad literature review. Our review of the literature on business librarianship expanded to include current practices, innovative practices, marketing, and collaboration. We found a paucity of literature on current practices and nothing concrete on best Abels and Magi reported on current practices and trends in twenty top business school libraries. (1) While their research focused on academic libraries, their findings apply to other types of business libraries as well. They found that, despite the organizational structure of these academic business libraries, the needs of patrons drive the delivery of services and resources. Listening to patrons' needs and implementing changes to meet those needs are important for continued success. However, budgetary restrictions or constraints may play an important role in the delivery of services and resources. Abels and Magi identified the following trends: * Library websites offer access to a variety of services and resources * Library websites provide access to a variety of commercial online databases * E-mail reference service is increasing in popularity and use * User education sessions focus on topics instead of specific resources * Interactive online tutorials may become more prevalent but will remain as supplements (rather than replacements) to classroom instruction * Reference desk hours will most likely remain stable in the short term, but will likely decrease over the next five years * Materials budgets will reflect more spending on serials than on monographs Abels and Magi also found that a demand exists for in-person reference service. But they acknowledged that the emergence of new technology will require business school libraries to adjust their practices. (2) A follow-up or duplication of this study would be interesting, since Abels and Magi published their findings in 2001. The goal for this project was to create a best practices guide applicable to various types of business libraries and centers (academic, public, and corporate). More specifically, the task was to identify innovative The question therein lies, what is innovation and how is it defined? …

Assessing the TIP online information literacy tutorial

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to report on the results of a study that assessed whether students learned information literacy concepts after taking the interactive online Tutorial for Information Power (TIP).Design/methodology/approachThe methodology and design involved a pre‐ and post‐test assessment of students who completed an online tutorial.FindingsStudents who spent more time working through the tutorial had a statistically significant increase from their post‐test to their pre‐test scores.Research limitations/implicationsStatistically significant results reported from this study are of interest to the educational community involved with the teaching and assessment of information literacy.Practical implicationsThis study offers a successful model for evaluating student learning from an online tutorial.Originality/valueThis study is one of the few in the literature addressing the assessment of information literacy and online tutorials.

Making Generic Tutorials Content Specific: Recycling Evidence-based Practice (EBP) Tutorials for Two Disciplines

Librarians at the Boston University Medical Center constructed two interactive online tutorials, “Introduction to EBM” and “Formulating a Clinical Question (PICO),” for a Family Medicine Clerkship and then quickly repurposed the existing tutorials to support an Evidence-based Dentistry course. Adobe's ColdFusion software was used to populate the tutorials with course-specific content based on the URL used to enter each tutorial, and a MySQL database was used to collect student input. Student responses were viewable immediately by course faculty on a password-protected Web site. The tutorials ensured that all students received the same baseline training and allowed librarians to tailor a subsequent library skills workshop to student tutorial answers. The tutorials were well-received by the medical and dental schools and have been added to mandatory first-year Evidence-based Medicine (EBM) and Evidence-based Dentistry (EBD) courses, meaning that every medical and dental student at BUMC will be expected to complete these tutorials.

Designing an Interactive Multimedia Rich Tutorial for Medical Students: Beyond a ‘Book on a Screen’

This article describes the development of an interactive online tutorial that enables pre‐clinical medical students to develop and practice clinical skills such as history taking, examination, investigation and formulating a diagnosis. The development of this multimedia product consisted of four stages: (1) identifying the educational objective (2) content design (3) multimedia build (4) product testing, revision and incorporation into the curriculum. As a result of this development process, the tutorial was seen by students as genuinely student‐centred in design and innovative in the way it takes advantage of the technology of the internet.

온라인 정보문해 과목의 교육 효과 및 만족도 평가에 관한 연구

본 연구는 성균관대학교에서 교양과목으로 실시하고 있는 온라인 정보문해 2학점 과목의 교육 효과 및 만족도를 평가하고자 하였다. 이를 위해 쌍방향 온라인 튜토리얼 방식으로 정보문해 교수 학습안을 구안하였으며, 2006년 1학기 정보문해 과목의 수강생 284명 중 9개 계열 251명의 정보문해 교육 사전 사후 테스트 결과와 246명의 학기말 강의 평가결과를 분석하였다. 연구결과 5개의 일반적인 정보문해 능력이 모두 향상됨으로써 온라인 정보문해 과목의 교육 효과가 높은 것으로 나타났으나 계열에 따라 교육 효과에 차이가 있었다. 그리고 온라인 정보문해 과목의 교육 내용과 구성에 대해 비교적 높은 만족도를 나타내었다. 따라서 정규 교양과목으로서 온라인 정보문해 교육은 대학생에게 일반적인 정보문해를 가르치기 위한 매우 효과적인 방법임이 밝혀졌다. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of online information literacy instruction as liberal arts course offered at Sungkyunkwan university. For this purpose, Curriculum was designed in the way of interactive online tutorials. And the results of pre-and post-tests and the term-end student course evaluation data were analyzed. The results were as follows. Five basic information literacy competencies were improved through Online course. And the effect of Online instruction did show the statistical significance. but had a difference by department. Also, There appeared to be a relatively high level of Students' satisfaction with the curriculum. Therefore, this study revealed that online information literacy instruction as liberal arts course is a highly effective method for teaching information literacy to undergraduate students.

An Evaluation of On-Line, Interactive Tutorials Designed to Teach Practice Concepts

This paper presents an evaluation of two on-line-based programs designed to teach practice skills. One program teaches crisis intervention and the other teaches suicide assessment. The evaluation of the use of these programs compares outcomes for two groups of students, one using the interactive program outside a class context and the other using the program within the class. Additionally, the evaluation examines results of learning about crisis of these two groups in comparison to a group of students who did not use the programs. Outcomes suggest advantages in using interactive on-line tutorials in efficiency and objectivity. This paper hopes to encourage other faculty to develop similar programs that simulate various elements of social work practice.

Student Online Assessment Behaviors

Interactive online tutorials are used in an introductory circuits class as an adjunct to traditional educational delivery. The online behavior of the students was monitored using Web-based parameter-passing strategies and cookies. The authors found that most students repeated the tutorials a sufficient number of times to get perfect scores.

Learning and teaching online with the UK census

This paper describes the online learning and teaching resources that are currently being developed for the contemporary and historical UK censuses as part of a project that is being funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to support its ‘Information Environment’. The online resources are intended to support learners and teachers in the UK Higher and Further Education sectors who are interested in UK census data. A variety of resources is available including: interactive online tutorials with practical exercises, textual materials, web pages and PowerPoint slides. The materials have been designed to be as flexible as possible encouraging a ‘pick and mix’ approach to the use of the resources. The resources are also intended to facilitate the use of 2001 census data. Feedback from student piloting and consultation workshops is also considered. All the resources can be accessed at: http://www.chcc.ac.uk.