Meeting Research Demand in a Limited Resource Environment: Streamlining with Technologies

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Meeting Research Demand in a Limited Resource
Environment Streamlining with Technologies

• Pacific Northwest Higher Education Teaching and
  Learning Conference, 2007

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The Challenge

• Continued growth of business program
• High demand for research assistance with
  intricate core business assignments
• individual group consultations with business
  librarian
• reference desk, email, and chat
• Information explosion and increase in online
  resources

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What We Did

• Piloted a collaborative effort with business
  faculty, students librarian to develop
  web-based tutorials for complex core business
  assignments
• Step-by-step process
• Helpful guidelines
• Embedded annotated source links

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What We Hoped to Accomplish

• Accommodate more students with effective learning
  tool
• Foster enrichment of student reports with library
  resources
• Provide helpful teaching tool for faculty
  librarians working with students on core
  assignments
• Leave time to experiment with other instruction
  techniques
• Continue to improve tutorial based on feedback
• Students who complete and submit a survey
• Faculty who suggest how the tutorial complements
  class assignments
• Reference librarians interacting with students

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Timeline of Marketing Plan Tutorial
2003 2005 Held initial discussions with
faculty to develop marketing plan tutorial
2006 Pursued discussions with faculty to develop
tutorials supporting core assignments
Summer 2006 Began creating marketing plan
tutorial with business student library intern
Fall 2006 Continued developing marketing plan
tutorial with same business student as a library
employee
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Process of Marketing Plan Tutorial
7/20/2006 Began gathering marketing plan
information examples
8/01/2006 Began drafting a generic marketing
plan template
8/15/2006 Began locating resources for each
section (e.g. print sources, free websites
proprietary databases)
10/25/2006 Designed a survey decided to
provide candy bars as incentive for survey
completion
10/31/2006 Submitted tutorial draft to
interested marketing faculty for feedback
11/1/2006 Introduced the tutorial to students in
introductory marketing classes
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Some Concerns

• Sustainability
• Time needed to develop tutorials
• Training time and learning curve
• Collaboration time
• Time needed to maintain the tutorials
• Support needed from library, faculty and students
• Other issues
• Cookie-cutter reports
• Usability - more generic, encompassing approach
• Proper design needed
• To create learning environment
• Students cannot always ask questions get
  immediate results

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Some Tutorial Advantages

• Self-paced receive instruction at point time
  of need
• Self-directed learning aids in assimilation of
  knowledge (Dewald,1999)
• Distance delivery platform
• Convenient available 24/7 on the Internet
• Reaches a wider audience
• Accessible to simultaneous users

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More Tutorial Advantages

• Source of centralized information
• Helps increase awareness use of library
  resources
• Point of referral for librarians faculty
  working with students
• Meaningful for students who do not always ask for
  help
• An effective learning tool that can be revisited
• Accommodates numerous users who prefer online
  instruction (Silver Lisa, 2007)

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Tutorial Benchmarks
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Tutorial Demonstration
http//library.uwb.edu/guides/Tutorials/MarketingT
utorial/FramedMarketingPlanIndex.html
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Survey Results
Yes, it was helpful to get the guidance and link
to the specific part, for example the Situational
Analysis-there are few examples that help clear
things up. And, every step is easy to understand
and straight to the point.
Most of the difficulties I have observed in my
initial use of this tutorial are not relevant to
issues with the site. I am just learning and this
has been a valuable tool.
There are alternate requirements for a marketing
plan, depending whether it's for one of our
classes vs. doing it for a real live business vs.
starting a business. For example, I like forcing
people to derive the "magic number". Anyways,
kudos to both of you. This is far better than
many things that come across my desk! BTW,
where's my candy bar???!!!

• Sample size is 16 people
• 2 Faculty
• 12 Students from UWB
• 2 Community members

Solid site.
There's a ton of information here and it's kind
of intimidating at first. Information seems to
be in more than one place too. Maybe simplify
the links? Maybe take away the chart/box look?
My initial instinct was to just randomly click
one of the many links rather than try to find the
beginning. Does that make sense? Thank you for
the resource.
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Please indicate your status
Comments Two community members
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How easy was it to use this Marketing Plan
Tutorial?
Comments Not easy, it was very complicated and
fuzzy to write a marketing plan. I had no idea
how to start and where to start.
We tried to address this by laying out the steps
and numbering them on the left margin.
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Would you recommend the Marketing Plan Tutorial
to others?
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What Would Have Helped

• Obtaining more student feedback
• Doing more research on tutorial design
• Engaging someone with web design skills
• Gearing the tutorial for one assignment
• Having a complementary example

• Having more time

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Future projects

• Tutorials
• Creating a Business Plan (work-in-progress)
• Analyzing Financial Statements
• Doing Business in Other Countries

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Group Activity

• Break into smaller groups of 4-6 and discuss
• Tutorial Integration How might you
  integrate(or how have you integrated) tutorials
  into curriculum at your institution? For which
  classes assignments might tutorials work, or
  how might tutorials be used to enhance student
  learning?
• Collaboration How have faculty, librarians,
  students staff collaborated on tutorials at
  your institution? What has been done or
  suggested?

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Questions Answers

• Presenters
• Doreen Harwood
• Reference Instruction/Business Librarian
• University of Washington Bothell
• Cascadia Community College
• dharwood_at_uwb.edu
• Charlene McCormack
• Business Program Undergraduate
• University of Washington Bothell
• mccorc_at_u.washington.edu