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TopicPresenterNotes

Your experiences with libguides: wins, failures, and in-betweens

Reanna
  • Recap for new members from last year - alternatives, whether students are engaged, etc.
    • Suggestions to develop best practices for libguides
  • Feedback
    • overall subject libguides are useful (i.e. athropology, broader subject), but course-specific guides aren't very necessary for instruction sessions... optional.  Better to teach students how to find these resources for themselves in the library catalog.  More effective to remix past slideshows and instructional materials.
    • Less is more, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."  Likes libguides.  Only makes course-specific guides if there is significant content specific to the course that wouldn't be appropriate for a general topic libguide.  Often teaches from the general guide.  Can embed slideshows, youtube videos, screencasts, link to other institutions' content, databases as assets, etc.
    • Use libguides a lot, most sessions taught will incorporate a libguide. Confusion from students in nvaigating the library website, like that the databases link is at the bottom of the page for accessing the list of databases.  Ask students to connect to the LibGuide so it's in their history and connect back to it. Librarians can "pre-select" resources for students.  If classes don't repeat, they often un-publish until needed again.  LibGuides are searchable on Google.  Helps to systematically teach the research process. Good usage stats of course guides after.  Likes side-banners of contact information.
    • Libguides "feel" dated and reinforce the idea that libraries are dated or archaic, even if the content is good.  Often get overfull, and then there's the issue of maintaining them.
    • GoogleDocs alternative-- make editable so that students can add links.
    • Libguides are really helpful for reference assistance, chat, etc.
    • Some faculty really love that a librarian made a website for a certain class.
    • 2/12 people actively teach from libguides, and 3/12 sometimes teach from libguides.
    • Consider using libguides for remote instruction or asynchronous supports, and make the most of face to face instructional time.
    • Already part of workflows
    • LibGuides have LTI integration with Canvas (can be added to lefthand menu if faculty are able to take those steps), keeps users in the Canvas environment.
  • Question - How do we know how much the LibGuides are used?  What other tools can we use? How helpful are we being if we hand things to researchers.
    • Can see how many views a LibGuide has-- more details are turned off due to privacy.
    • Box offers usage counts if prefer to distribute a PDF or other file type.
Libguide best practicesReanna
Alternatives to libguidesMultiple?
  • H5P (Lauren)
  • Slides instead of Libguide, upload PDFs to Canvas and download them their own computers to carry the content with them past their class and even past Cornell.
    • Students have shared that videos are not helpful (too much time), prefer slides or screenshots that they can scroll through.
    • creating a canvas module that can be directly uploaded to a canvas site
    • Powerpoints or outlines as PDFs that can be downloaded/uploaded
    • Image guided tutorials
      • with screenshots
      • students prefer this to videos
  • GoogleDoc instead of Libguide for sessions
  • Canvas modules to be uploaded directly to Canvas (Christian)
    • If designated as an assignment, can see statistics on how much time has been spent on an activity.
Next steps for CULReanna
  • Try out some alternatives and report back
  • Try out incorporating some best practices
  • Reach out to CTI for their thoughts?
  • REMEMBER the tool should come secondary to the pedagogical outcome/goal
  • Members should try some of these options and report findings back to the group and/or
  • incorporate accessibility best practices for LibGuides and report back.
  • Should we involve the CTI in this conversation for feedback? They are focused on the student perspective.
  • Closing thought: pedagogy should be primary, tool secondary-- less about the platform as how you use it for instruction.
Questions, Updates, announcements, and next stepsall
  • Devin now the BEE rep

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