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LNDL Libguide Template & Toolkit

Best Practices

Nine Principles for Quality Content

  1. Content is in the right place. 
  2. Content is necessary, needed, useful, and focused on student needs.
  3. Content is unique.
  4. Content is correct and complete.
  5. Content is consistent, clear, and Concise.
  6. Content is Structured
  7. Content is discoverable and makes sense out of context.
  8. Content is sustainable (future-friendly)
  9. Content is accessible.

Nine Principles of e-Learning Design

  1. Multimedia Principle: Present content through a combination of words and graphics.
  2. Contiguity Principle: Align words and graphics.
  3. Modality Principle: Present words as narration rather than on-screen text.
  4. Redundancy Principle: Explain visuals with text or narration, but not both.
  5. Coherence Principle: Avoid adding extraneous content, images, and sound to tutorials.
  6. Personalization Principle: Use a conversational style.
  7. Embodiment Principle: On-screen agents should mimic human gestures.
  8. Segmenting Principle: Break lessons into smaller chunks of content.
  9. Pretraining Principle: Introduce key concepts and vocabulary at the beginning of instruction.

 

Accessible Design Standards

  • Accessible design is just good design. 
  • Use the default sans-serif font. Use bold (sparingly) if emphasis is needed.
  • Develop a style guide and use consistent formatting for pages and boxes.
  • Use Headings
    • The LibGuides systems defaults to Heading 1 for the page title and Heading 2 for box titles.
    • Within boxes, librarians should go to Format and select Heading 3 for in-box titles or Normal for all other text.
  • Use Bullets
    • Bullets allow users to skim and minimize the need to read long passages of text. Use headers with bullets to break up content.
  • In Gallery boxes, set auto-rotate to “off.”
  • Include alt text for images and provide captions and transcripts for videos.

Accessibility Best Practices 

Create Impactful Landing Pages

  • Landing pages have to be able to give students exactly what they're looking for immediately.
  • Students want clean, clear, concise, and QUICK.
  • Research shows that when students visit a LibGuide, they stay on the page for an average of about 1.5 minutes.
  • Students complain that guides are busy, cluttered, and use confusing library lingo.
  • Students complain that guides overwhelm them with information without providing them answers to their questions.
  • Students complain that guides are hard to navigate and dislike that each guide is different from the other.
  • Students rated guides and those that rated highest featured neither top or side navigation, but rather 1 tabbed box in the center of the page like William G. Squires Library's Research Starter - ENGL 448: Modern Literature also shown in the image below.
  • Additionally, William G. Squires Library's Topic Guide-Writing Resources features an example of side-nav with a tabbed box. 

 

Assess Usability

  • Regularly monitor usage statistics
  • Survey faculty and students for feedback.
    • e.g., "Was this guide helpful?"

Maintenance Schedule

  • Regularly update LibGuides to maintain currency of content!
  • Make adjustments based on feedback from instructors and students.
  • Implement a formal strategy to ensure their regular maintenance, especially as individual authors leave the institution. 
  • Regularly review guides to assess accessible design standards.
  • Regularly check for broken links.
    • LibGuides and videos should be checked every six months to check for broken links/images
      • In LibGuides, under Tools, you can select "Link Checker" to automatically build a report for all links on all LibGuides regardless of owner. You can find your links by typing your last name into the box below Owner.
      • Once you have a list of broken links associated with a LibGuide, you can click on Mapping Count link to see a list of which LibGuides contain that link.

 

Resources

Vanderbilt University LibGuides Maintenance & Publishing Checklist

Boston College Libraries LibGuides Standards & Best Practices: Maintaining Your Guide

Instructional Video Design

  • Segmenting Principle: each video should focus on a single concept or skill. Complicated processes or systems should be broken into multiple videos and linked via a playlist, giving learners the option to jump to a specific piece of content or watch the entire series at their own pace. 
  • Videos should offer quick access to information. Videos should be short and concise. Preferred videos are 30 seconds to less than two minutes. Minimize introductory information and ruthlessly edit nonessential information.
  • Cover the most important content first. Begin the design process by identifying their audience and writing a learning outcome that stipulates the knowledge or skill learners should gain from the video. Using the learning outcome as a guide, you can write a script that outlines the narration, along with the steps to be followed on screen (in the case of screencast videos) or the shots that will be needed (in the case of live-action and animated videos). 
  • Narration should be clearly enunciated, free of background noise, and evenly paced. A headset or desktop microphone will usually capture better quality audio with less background noise than built-in microphones will and can even smooth out harsh vocal sounds.
  • Graphics should be simple, consistent, and professional looking; boxes, arrows, and similar tools can be used to call attention to essential content.
  • Design content to be compatible with mobile devices. In addition, we should preview videos on a wide array of devices to ensure everything works as planned.
  • Create a system to track all of them, including when they were created and where they are linked, and occasionally review each one to see which need updating.
  • Make videos accessible to all.
  • When using videos created outside LNDL, be sure to cite appropriately.