Darcye Lovsin
Librarian, Reference & Instruction
The Library is revamping our Blackboard Research Tutorial to make it more accessible and engaging for students. Using H5P and other EdTech, we are moving away from long modules full of dense block text towards a student focused, activity based, asynchronous tutorial.
AUTHORING TOOL(S) USED
WHY WAS THIS PROJECT NEEDED?
The Blackboard Research Tutorial was created in 2010 and has had no significant updates since. While updating the content, we took the opportunity to use available EdTech to increase accessibility and interactivity.
It was also brought to our attention in Winter 2022 just how inaccessible the tutorial was, when a student took part in RESM-2100 and could not work through the tutorial with their screen reader. Attempting to fix accessibility issues within the pre-existing Blackboard tutorial either didn’t work. We realized we were better off to scrap the original and start fresh.
HOW DOES THIS DEMONSTRATE INNOVATION?
Moving from walls of text to an interactive learning style. Students learn through completing small activities instead of reading descriptions of concepts.
LESSONS LEARNED
We are still working on the tutorial and I know there are more lessons to come, but we’re learning how to balance providing content with having students work on activities. What content do we need to explain in order for the student to succeed at the activity? Or does providing information above mean the information gets repeated within the activity.
We are looking forward to doing user testing as the project progresses to make sure our goals are being met.
PROBLEMS OR CHALLENGES FACED?
Making sure the activities are not all the same. The tutorial is quite long and the simplest solution for most of the content is to turn it into drag and drop activities. Our goal is to use a wide variety of activities to keep the content engaging
COURSE LINK
Join Darcye Lovsin virtually for DEMOFEST Day 1 on Tuesday, October 11, 2022 from 10:00am to 11:30am in Teams.
Or you can visit Library’s table for DEMOFEST Day 2 on Wednesday, October 12, 2022 from 10:30am to 12:00pm happening at JIBC’S New Westminster’s Main Campus.