Too Long, Didn’t Watch
This week’s reading covered screencasts, tutorials, and generally the idea of libraries putting instructional material online to help teach concepts such as information literacy, referencing, interfacing with course material online, and so on. While the feedback and assessment techniques used by the studies make it clear that this sort of instruction can be effective and helpful, I found one question reoccurring in my mind as I read: how can libraries motivate and encourage users to actually interact with these tutorials by choice?
Although the results of Johnson’s study seemed to indicate that students found the tutorial helpful, there were very specific circumstances involved. Not only were all participants required to complete the tutorial as part of their classwork, but Johnson also identified the students as “mature aged students who are often already working in the industry.” It seems likely that the students’ practical experience in the field, coupled with the mandatory nature of the tutorial, would serve as strong motivation–factors that would not necessarily be available when users are undergraduates or even patrons of a public library.
Tutorials and screencasts would not only be useful for teaching information literacy concepts, such as in Johnson’s study, but could be helpful for teaching technology literacy, as well. In fact, screencasts seem especially useful for this purpose, since technical skill levels vary so widely. Tutorials would allow users to work at their own pace, as well as to skip any steps or processes they already know. For example, a user who wants to learn how to format text in Powerpoint would not have to sit through an entire workshop to re-learn all the basics he is already familiar with, but could simply select the relevant screencast and save a lot of time.
How can users be motivated to make use of these tools if they aren’t required, though? Even in Johnson’s fairly motivated participant pool, some users “put in the minimal effort required to address the tasks and meet the assessment requirement.” Johnson’s feedback survey also had only about a 25% response rate, since it was not part of the mandatory assignment. I believe that, when viewing content online, many people expect it to be quick and not require a lot of concentration. I know from personal experience that I have sometimes chosen not to watch a Youtube video if it is over about 4-5 minutes in length (and that’s for entertainment!). We live in a society in which people struggle with the fractured attention spans brought on by multitasking, near-constant access to distractions like email or online entertainment, and the fast pace at which we are all expected to operate. If a tutorial seems too long or involved, I think it may quickly drive away users who are not being compelled to complete it.
I’m not sure I know what the answer is to this question, but I think it’s an important one. After all, it’s not exactly helpful for a library to offer an extensive collection of online screencasts and guides if they are not being used. I think that, as instructors, we need to assess not only how to teach the material, but also how to engage users with the material and with the methods we choose to present it. Aside from splitting content into smaller bits (such as in the Yelinek study), how can librarians present users with online help and training that users will feel interested in? How can these tutorials be designed so that users would choose to explore optional content on their own?
I'm a librarian-in-training at the University of Michigan, and this blog is where I'll be responding to classwork and readings for the course Professional Practice in Libraries and Information Centers.
linguomancer.wordpress.com 
I think your question about use is a good one. After all do we want to spend hours creating a document that will not be used. But I also think that we also have to admit to our selves that even we only read the required readings for most classes we treat the optional as things to ignore. Even the most gifted high school students often only do things for a grade. This is not just a librarians problem it is also a teachers problem. Maybe (and certainly at lower levels ) librarians and teachers need to work together to require students to attend workshops or view them online.
I also think that if online tutorials exist they must be easy to find. Students might not know about the tutorials if they are buried to deep in a website.
Maybe also there needs to be some non grade bribery such as a prize of sorts for those who view the screen cast and take the survey.
I wonder if this question doesn’t get back to the problem of students using Wikipedia simply because they don’t know where else to look. People go to YouTube for screencasts (and generally choose the shortest possible video that looks reasonably informative) because they don’t know where else to look. If libraries start cross-hosting on their sites and on YouTube, could they drive traffic back to their libraries where people might be able to find more, similar resources and therefore begin to understand where else they could look for information?
Yes! I definitely think that’s a good method of getting library stuff out there and helping people start to think of libraries as good sources of this kind of information. You could even put the library’s name and URL of a tutorials page on the actual library website at the beginning or end of each video to help people find their way back to the library’s resources.
The issue of length that you bring up here is always something I’ve thought is sort of a conundrum as well. The thing about videos is that you know you long they are and thus exactly how long it will take you to watch them at minimum before you even start. I do the same thing with not watching long YouTube videos– but then I’ll spend far more time reading something online than I would’ve watching the video. But you know exactly how long the video is. It’s a psychological thing. Until video is even more “embedded” in our online experience than it already is, getting people to watch screencasts is going to often be hard.