Continuing library instruction via online tutorials

Abstract

At Colorado School of Mines, students are required to take an engineering design course their freshman and sophomore years (Engineering Practices Introductory Course Sequence or EPICS). The library provides face-to-face instruction to each of the freshman sections. This is our main point of contact with the students and often our only point of contact. In order for engineering students to be competent information consumers and life-long learners, they need more than one 50-minute instruction session. The sophomore engineering design course (EPICS 251) is student-driven with faculty acting as guides, unlike the structured freshman course (EPICS 151) where all sections follow the same schedule and faculty serve a more traditional role. Because of this, using traditional face-to-face instruction is not practical. However, instruction delivered via online tutorials is a realistic method. In addition to fitting the structure of the course i.e., student-driven, online tutorials allow students to learn at their own pace, to complete the lessons when it is convenient for their schedule, and to review as they need. Spring 2008, Colorado School of Mines' Trefny Institute for Educational Innovation offered curriculum development mini-grants. With approval from the appropriate constituencies, I sought and was awarded a mini-grant for adding an information literacy component to EPICS 251.1 proposed building on the skills gained in EPICS 151 as well as assessing the skill level of the student before and after the tutorials. To achieve this, pre- and post-surveys and six online tutorials were created using Adobe Captivate™. Spring 2009, several sections of EPICS 251 will participate in a study to test student's retention from EPICS 151 library instruction as well as determine the impact of the online tutorials. The surveys ask the students to self-assess their information literacy skills and to answer practical questions in the areas of the research process, using library resources, evaluating information, and copyright. This assessment data is critical as we currently lack any measurement of the effectiveness of the instruction delivered in EPICS 151. With the data, we will also be able to make a stronger case for the need of information literacy. Faculty often assume their students are savvy information consumers and typically this is not the case. A subsection of the sections participating in the study will complete the online tutorials in addition to the surveys. The online tutorials were developed around the previously mentioned areas. The tutorials start to delve into the engineering literature (where in EPICS 151 students use a general multidisciplinary database), focus on the use of technical reports or patents (dependent upon the project for the course), and discuss their professional responsibility in using information. Discussion will focus on the project e.g., the pitfalls of Captivate™, the assessment data and what it means, and future implications. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2009.