Coordinator of Library Systems

Auraria Library, Serving the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State College and the Community College of Denver

  
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Poster Session

ALA Conference

June 28th 2008, Anaheim, California

Working Smarter, Not Harder: Teaching Students and Staff with Screencasting
Presented by Karen Sobel, Meg Brown-Sica and Denise Pan
Perspectives from Meg Brown-Sica, Coordinator of Library Systems
 

Who is your audience?

As the head of technology at our library I have a wide audience. I need to make sure everyone can use everything that we have. This could be students, faculty, or the employees of our library.

Why a screencast?

As in many libraries there aren’t enough of us to do the kind of training we would like to do. Also, many of the questions we are asked are the same ones over and over. In addition, there are questions which people don’t or can’t ask, because it is midnight and they are at home, or  they are too shy to contact us. We need to provide information for these situations.

What do you use to create your screencastss?

I use Adobe Captivate, then embed my tutorials in a Web page using Macromedia Dreamweaver.

What are some best practices?

I am slowly developing some preferences such as making sure there art start and repeat buttons, making sure I’m doing it right before I start to record, etc. The speed is very important. Make sure that the person using the tutorial has time to read any text but that it goes fast enough not to be too boring.

How do you find topics for the screencasts?

I try to identify common questions for future tutorials by noticing which questions I answer again and again.

How do you publicize your screencasts?

This depends on who my audience is. When I did the library instruction scheduling tutorial I was lucky that this advertised itself. It was placed on the library instruction page where  the link is for the new software and was highlighted by some of the bibliographers in their communication to faculty. For others that are targeted to library employees I link it near where one would see it when using the subject of the tutorial and/or tell people about it on the main library list.

How do you know whether your screencast is effective?

This is still a work on progress. I am working on developing a short survey at the end of the tutorials and would like to use hit counters to see how many times these are accessed.

I have also gotten great feedback and suggestions from my colleagues and have a select group of people I sent them to initially for the first round of feedback. It is common for me to miss some small detail which is obvious to others to this is an important step.

 
  Instruction Scheduling Study Room Scheduling Supply and Equipment Request Form
Identify Need We purchased Evanced "Room Reserve" software and needed a way to show the teaching faculty how to use it. We needed to show people how to schedule study rooms using the new software. This is a question we get often. Where is this form, what information is needed, etc.
Create Screencast example: Scheduling Library Instruction. Screencast example: Study Room Scheduling Screencast example: Equipment Supply Tutorial
Market This tutorial is currently on my website and will be linked from the instruction page. It was also sent out in an informative email to the teaching faculty The scheduling of study rooms using this software has not yet been implemented, but my tutorial is on my website and will be use to train people and linked where there is access to the software from the library's website. This will be linked from our new intranet and from the System's home page.
Assess I got feedback from colleagues and am continuing to tweak it. I'm sure I'll get more feedback once the faculty start using it. I also plan to use a hit counter. I have gotten some feedback, but will get more and use a hit counter when it is in wider use. I plan to get feedback and use a hit counter.