Poster Board Number: 25
Title: Rethinking Online Tutorials: Using Software Simulation to Create More Interactive Tutorials
Objective: Online tutorials demonstrating different aspects of database searching have become a common tool for librarians to help instruct users how to search. Many of these tutorials are online videos that show what is happening on the instructor’s screen with narration or text boxes, but few include any kind of interactive features to increase active learning. The goal of this project is to create a PubMed tutorial that would include many interactive features to enhance active learning.
Methods: The professor of a public health course taken by all first-year medical students at West Virginia University requested an in-depth, online tutorial that he could insert in his curriculum that would focus on PubMed. After reviewing many online tutorials, it was decided to create a simulation of PubMed to make students interact with PubMed from within the tutorial. Adobe Captivate 4 was determined to be the best software option that would allow the most interactive features to be included in the tutorial. The tutorial incorporates quizzes, interactive text boxes, and clickable and rollover areas to recreate the experience of searching PubMed.
Results and Conclusions: My results and conclusions are not complete yet.
Author: Anna K. Crawford, Information Services Librarian, Health Sciences Library, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV
