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Course Goal:
1. Acquaint students with strategies for effective Internet searching.
Course Objectives:
1. Students will be able to explain the differences between different search engines.
•
•
Yahoo
•
Altavista
2. Students will be able to define relevance.
3. Students will be able to construct a Boolean search.
4. Students will be able to explain the concept of stop-words and identify the more common
ones.
5. Students will be able to identify signs of unreliable information.
Planning Your Instruction
Instructional designers spend a great deal of
time planning instruction before actually creat-
ing any instructional materials. This step is vital
whether you are a teacher planning classroom
activities, a writer developing a textbook, or a
course developer for online instruction.
Before you begin creating your online library
instruction tutorials, take the time to thoroughly
identify and organize the information you want
to deliver. Remember that “library instruction
is best-recieved when it is course-related, and
specifially assignment-related.”
3
Assuming that
you have already identified a genuine need for
online instruction on the topic of your tutorial, the
next step is to analyze your learners and estab-
lish instructional goals.
Analyzing your Learners
Consider the age, experience, cultural back-
ground and technical expertise of your learning
audience. Are they a homogenous group with
similar goals or do they vary widely? What are
learners’ probable goals in completing the on-
line tutorial? What aspects of online instruction
might they prefer to classroom instruction? How
will they use the knowledge they gain?
Once you have successfully answered these
questions, you are in a good position to create
online instruction that will be both meaningful
and enjoyable for your learning audience.
Clarifying Instructional Goals/Objectives
Think about your instructional goal for the learn-
er. Does it match the probable goal of the learner
him or herself? Now determine
what the learner
will need to be able to do to
demonstrate that
the instruction has achieved the stated goals.
Write out instructional objectives in the form of
activities that the learner will be able to perform
when finished with the tutorial. This exercise will
help you structure your tutorial to the greatest
advantage of your learner. It will also assist you
in evaluating whether or not your completed tu-
torial meets all of its instructional objectives.
Finally, make an outline of the topics you’ll cover
over the course of the tutorial and think about
the most sensible order in which to present
them.
It may also be useful to list the skills that learn-
ers will need to master
before
they can success-
fully complete the different sections of your tuto-
rial. Looking at this list may bring attention to the
areas that require the most attention and may
even suggest topics of instruction that weren’t
in the original outline. For example, if students
must know how to construct a boolean search
string in order to complete a tutorial about your
library catalog, you may wish to include a sec-
tion or even a separate tutorial on the subject of
boolean logic.
Consult “Tips for Developing Effective Web-
based Library Instruction” by the ACRL for more
recommendations.
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1.1
3.1
1.2
1.1.1
1.1.2
