SILRC Retreat -- Session 2

Our second session was "A Few Seconds a Day Keeps the Tech Guys Away," given by Tom Bell of John A. Logan College.

He shared an idea that has proven very successful at his institution--emailing a 30-second tutorial to faculty each Friday morning. Each one has four or five screen shots and a little text. It covers one small thing like how to get a signature in your Outlook email or how to burn a CD. Each tutorial takes an hour or so to prepare, but only thirty seconds (or maybe a minute or two) to understand. Tom designed a nice graphic logo banner so that the Friday tutorial is easily recognized from the branding.

He says that he gets a remarkable amount of positive feedback--more than a dozen thank-yous for the first couple and two or three from different people each week even after several months of sending them.

He uses SnagIt for the screen captures, Photoshop to optimize the size of the graphics and add arrows and text, and Microsoft Word to put it all together.

I don't believe that sending tutorials out to faculty from the library would be possible in our environment, but we could do something similar that goes to library staff.

Labels: conferences, instruction, screen capture

June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007