Building a Best Practices Team: Creating Stronger Online Tutorials Together

Purpose: The purpose of this poster is to demonstrate the value of having a best practices working group to explore software programs and develop policies and procedures for the creation of online instructional materials. In addition, we would like to emphasize the importance of partnering with the other libraries within a University or other organization to share ideas and avoid duplication of effort.

Methods: In order to determine the best software for creating tutorials, the University libraries put together a taskforce to investigate Jing, Panopto, Camtasia and Captivate. After deciding which products to purchase and support, a new team formed to create policies for tutorial creation as well as training materials for other library staff. In addition, a chart was created to suggest which software programs are best suited for specific types of projects.

Results: The best practice tutorials group decided to use Camtasia rather than Captivate for projects requiring more editing, Panopto for lecture capture and tutorial creation and Jing for short videos requiring little editing like those used for answering email reference questions. In addition, the group developed standard opening and closing screens for all formal video tutorials, guidelines to follow when creating tutorials, and training materials for the different software programs. The group will be planning training sessions on the software programs for interested library staff. Conclusion: By inviting librarians from all the different libraries on campus to work on this project, the University libraries will have unified efforts to create better materials for their users.