YouTube For Library Instruction?

Here's an interesting article from the Chronicle of Higher Education on the use of YouTube for educational purposes. Has your library considered YouTube for library instruction?

Free Online Instruction/Presentation Tools

Last Friday, District III of the NCCCLRA held it's winter meeting at Rockingham Community College. I did a presentation on the use of free instruction/presentation software to support library instruction and for publicity purposes. Some of the tools require a download to your computer, and others are completely web-based. Here's an expanded list of the software grouped into categories; all are free, and most allow you to include audio along with the presentation:

Screenshots, Screen Recorders: Webinaria, ZDsoft Screen Recorder, Jing

Power Point-Style Presentations: Thumbstacks , AuthorPoint Lite

Public Platforms for Power Point-Style Presentations: AuthorStream , SlideShare

Short Publicity Videos, Slideshows with Music: Animoto, SlideStory, RockYou

Co-Browsing Tools: Spreed, Share-It-Now, Vyew

Summary of ILI-L Listserv Discussion on Mini Instruction Sessions

There has been a pretty good discussion going on at the ILI-L listserv for a week or so about mini instruction sessions, which we have also referred to as "one-shot" presentations on this blog. Mary Murray, Instruction Librarian at Juniata College, was nice enough to post a summary of the discussion with lots of great ideas as an easily accessible MSWord document.

One-Shot Workshops: New Reference

Several comments on this blog have mentioned the need for ideas and resources to create short, one-shot library instruction presentations. If your library has a subscription to Marketing Library Services, you might want to read the full review of Jerilyn Veldof's Creating The One-Shot Library Workshop: A Step-By-Step Guide in the September-October issue. As of today, Alamance CC, Craven CC, Pitt CC, South Piedmont CC, and Wake CC all have copies on their shelves.

Ideas For Developing Interesting Research Assignments

The following resources may be helpful in developing new ideas for one-shot instruction sessions or creating assignments with faculty:

Ideas for Library Related Assignments
Collins Memorial Library, University of Puget Sound

Ideas for Research Assignments
Library, Spokane Community College

Sample Library Assignments That Meet Information Literacy Goals
Lakeland Community College

Oregon Library Instruction Wiki
Oregon Library Association’s Library Instruction Roundtable

More Resources for "One Shot " Instruction

Here are some other resources for improving "one-shot" instruction classes. You may have to register as a member first before searching listserv archives:

• Search the LIBREF-L Listserv Archive
• Search the ILI-L Listserv Archive
• Search the FYE-LIB Listserv Archive
• take a look at PRIMO (Peer-reviewed instructional materials online, from ACRL)

Improving the "One-Shot" BI Class

• Make sure the teacher attends the class if possible; this stresses the importance of the class to students.
• Try some type of pre-test (paper or online) to get a sense of student's research skills and what to stress in your presentation.
• Tie any book/database searches to current events. This is really effective when you are researching a breaking news story somewhere in the world.
• If your class is in a computer classroom, include one or two searching exercises as part of the presentation. Students can email article citiations or catalog bib records to their instructor complete the exercise for credit
  
• Introduce a seemingly reputable web page at the beginning of class (you probably already have some of your favorites bookmarked like this and this) ... then use some evaluative criteria or compare to web pages on the same topic to show that the page is a fake, or at least dubious ... good segueway into evaluation of web pages and the use of subject directories like LII.
• Evaluation and feedback from students and the instructor can be useful in refining your presentation and deciding what should be stressed in a 50 minute class. We use an online form at RCC.