This poster takes the audience through the 18 month process of redesigning George Mason University Libraries’ former tutorials page. Taking the user-centered approach, our team surveyed university students, librarians, and faculty about their feelings, usage, and learning preferences related to the library tutorial page. First, using a technology-free method, we immersed ourselves in the tutorials webpage to understand the user experience. Along with the pre-design survey data this method helped us to see the scope of our webpage and how overwhelming it was to our users. We visualized how the new page could be designed in order to be inclusive of our students’ varied learning needs and our librarians’ and faculty’s instruction responsibilities using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as our framework. Through this work, we redefined the scope of acceptable content. We weeded outdated tutorials, identified instruction gaps, and created new content to address those needs based on UDL principles. We built a completely new page to include sustainable coding, improved navigation, universal icons, and user-centered language. To test the efficacy of the new page we conducted librarian focus groups and a post-design usability study with 39 students. This data informed additional changes, including tutorial title and description wording clarification. The most recent version of our tutorials page may be viewed here. Valerie Linsinbigler, George Mason University
Janna Mattson, George Mason University Anna Murphy-Lang, George Mason University Christopher Lowder, George Mason University
8 Comments
Garrison Libby
4/23/2021 12:47:24 pm
We've been trying to revamp our tutorials at my library as well, so this was a fantastic poster. I'm curious about the comment "The word “tutorials” was problematic for our students." I hadn't really considered that before. Can you talk a bit more about students' reactions to the word "tutorials?" I do like the "How Do I?" phrasing on your website, which does seem a lot more user-friendly.
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Valerie L.
4/23/2021 02:33:11 pm
I'm glad you enjoyed the poster! We have a large population of international students at Mason, so the word "tutorials" was unfamiliar to many who spoke English as a second language. We had a conversation with an English Language Learner faculty member about it and they helped us find more appropriate language to use. In our usability study with students, student familiarity with the word "tutorials" was really inconsistent. Some students knew what the word meant and were able to find the page, but more often students passed by the tutorials page because they didn't associate it with a place to view videos or learn more about research.
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Alex Harrington
4/23/2021 01:29:23 pm
Great poster! I'm curious how you recruited students for your usability study. (Was it pizza? I've heard pizza works.) Based on a glance at your new site, this must have been such an undertaking... you have a lot of videos to work with!
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Valerie L.
4/23/2021 03:57:25 pm
We do have a lot of videos and it's still growing! We recruited live in the library during the days we scheduled for usability testing. We raffled off a private study room in the library during finals week which students really seemed to love. We also had a bowl of candy just to make things a little more fun. I'm sure pizza would've worked as well!
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James M.
4/27/2021 11:30:53 am
Excellent poster and a good reminder to be wary of confusing library jargon. I sometimes worry that our tutorials are not getting the visibility they need and wonder about ways to reach students at their point of need. Was this a concern?
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Christopher
4/27/2021 03:01:12 pm
Hi James. We did find some issues with students being able to navigate to the page. Some ways we did fix this was through integrating more of these tutorials into online modules that we create for asynchronous classes, introduce tutorials in information sessions, and refer to the new page in virtual reference chats.
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Tarena Caffee
4/27/2021 04:07:08 pm
I think when you take the User Centered Approach everyone is included. This opens opportunities for more inclusivity, equity, and diversity. The more I work on teams I find how tangible it is to the outcome of projects. Great work George Mason! This past year with the pandemic has taught us all how to be more user centered in projects and services.
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4/28/2021 08:49:01 am
Exactly Tarena! What's the point of making a tutorial if the people you make it for don't find it helpful or relatable? We were so lucky to have our entire Teaching & Learning Team help out in some way. The project would not have been as successful without them!
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