Creating Online Tutorials : A Practical Guide for Librarians

Today’s students rely heavily on using electronic resources; they expect to be able to access library resources from any location and at any time of the day. More and more schools, from K-12 through graduate level universities, are offering online education, and libraries must be prepared to guide learners in how to use library resources when and where they are needed. Online tutorials are the library’s answer to providing this immediate instruction, and today’s learners are expecting to have these guides available.

Many librarians don’t have the technical expertise needed to create online tutorials.

Creating Online Tutorials: A Practical Guide for Librarians will help guide them through the basics of designing and producing an online tutorial. Through practical examples, the book will guide librarians just starting the process of creating an online tutorial from start to finish and will provide tips that will be useful to librarians with more experience in designing online tutorials.

This detailed roadmap for designing and producing online tutorials covers:

• When to consider a tutorial
• Needs assessment
• Choosing the right technology
• Selecting and organizing instructional content
• Planning—script, images, narration, other design elements
• Assessment as a primary design element
• Maintenance and updating
• Online tutorial resources

After reading this book, new tutorial developers will have a practical, customizable blueprint that will enable them confidently address the creation of their first online tutorials, and experienced developers will learn efficient techniques to create and enhance future tutorials that are attractive, effective teaching tools.

Hannah Gascho Rempel is an associate professor at Oregon State University Libraries in the Teaching and Engagement Department. Since joining OSU in 2007, she has spearheaded the development of OSU Libraries’ services for graduate students and has been deeply involved in the Teaching and Engagement Department’s transition to a more strategic focus on instruction activities. She earned her bachelor of science in Biology from Eastern Mennonite University, her master of science in Horticulture at Oregon State University, and her master of library and information science degree at the University of Washington. Prior to working at OSU, she served as an adult reference librarian at the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library.
As an instruction and science librarian, she has created a variety of tutorials for a range of audiences. Her Zotero tutorials are widely used by members of the OSU research community, as well as researchers beyond OSU. More recently she has been involved in creating do-it-yourself tutorials for first-year students. She has written and presented on the barriers to creating and managing tutorials. In addition, she writes frequently on providing library services targeted at graduate students’ needs, as well as on how to strengthen the library’s mobile presence. She helps shape the conversation about technology and web use in libraries by editing the peer-reviewed publication The Journal of Web Librarianship. She lives in Corvallis, Oregon, where she is involved in raising two fine daughters.

Maribeth Slebodnik is the Biomedical Sciences Information Specialist and an associate professor in the Purdue University Libraries. She is the liaison to the departments of Biological Sciences, Food Science, Nutrition Science, and the School of Nursing. She contributes to a campus-wide course transformation program called IMPACT as an expert on active learning pedagogy and information literacy. She has created tutorials for a variety of students including beginning biology students and graduate nursing and nutrition science students. Her series of seven tutorials for undergraduate biology students was a template for a similar series for education students. She is a member of the Association of College and Research Libraries division of the American Library Association, for which she has served on the Information Literacy Standards Committee, the Instruction Section PRIMO Committee, and as chair of the Science and Technology Section.
Maribeth earned a bachelor of science in Nursing and a master of Library Science from Indiana University. After twelve years as a neonatal intensive care nurse, she returned to school to retool as a medical librarian. She worked as a corporate librarian at Mallinckrodt Medical and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, MO, and as an academic librarian at Indiana State University and Purdue University. She lives in Lafayette, Indiana, where she is a Master Gardener, knitter, and enthusiastic cook.