This document discusses research into delivering online library instruction through webinars. It begins by introducing the authors and background on offering instruction to off-campus students. The research questions focus on how to best deliver one-time library sessions online and student/faculty perceptions of online webinars. Methods included interviewing past webinar participants. Results found that interactive demonstrations worked best and webinars provided opportunities for participation. Recommendations included keeping webinars user-friendly and intuitive with features like polling, archiving, and time for later questions. Future research areas were enrollment, changing technologies, and distance student needs.

1. Instruction on the go: Reaching
Out to Students from the
Academic Library

2. Who Are We?

3. Heather Moorefield-Lang and Tracy Hall
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA
Image Courtesy of http://www.sxc.hu/

4. Image Courtesy of Place it By Breezi

5. Problem/Background

6. Background
• 5 off-campus
locations
• Students across
the state of VA
• How to deliver
library instruction
anytime, anyplace
• Student interests
• How long should
“classes” take
place
• What technology
should be used

7. Wimba Now Blackboard

8. Image Courtesy of Dim Dim
Dim Dim

9. Image Courtesy of
Join Me Join Me

10. Google
Hangouts
Image Courtesy of
Google

13. Research Questions
• How can “one shot” or single class library
sessions best be delivered online to students
and faculty in higher education?
• How do students and faculty perceive online
education or webinars delivered from the
library?
• When online or distance library sessions are
not attached to a credit bearing class how can
they best meet the needs of students and
faculty in higher education?

14. Past Literature

15. When coming to campus is not an option:
Using web conferencing
to deliver library instruction
Barnhart and Stanfield (2011)
• Wimba Web Conferencing Software
• Pilot Program
• Challenges and successes of using web
conferencing with students at a distance
• Discussion is still going on at the time of the
article as they reflect upon their pilot
project, how the initial web conferencing
instruction went, and where they should go
for the future

16. Virtual delivery of electronic resources and
services to off-campus users: A
multifaceted approach
Bower and Mee (2010)
• Created “Meet the Librarian” web pages to
connect students and faculty to their subject
librarians at the Rochester Institute of
Technology.
• Used Adobe Connect to offer research tours and
demonstrations from librarians’ desktop
computers
• Worked with virtual Web 2.0 tools to create a
library presence in their university’s Second Life

17. Methods

18. Sample
• Purposeful Sampling
• Students and faculty who had taken part in
the webinar
• Emails were sent to webinar participants
• Interviewed those who responded to emails
• It was hoped to have ten interviewees, had
five.
• Reached data saturation with five

19. Final Sample
• 4 of the participants had taken part in the
webinars live/synchronously while 1
participant had observed an archived webinar
after its recording.
• Before taking part in the library
webinars, interviewees had participated in
anywhere between 2-60 webinars depending
on the respondent

20. Previous webinar topics were across
the spectrum
• Personal finance
• How to teach webinars
• Academic affairs in higher education
• NVivo Qualitative and data collection software
• Online options that were integrated with
credit bearing graduate courses were included
in the discussion.

21. Interviews
• Two interviewers
• Five participants
• Signed Consent forms
• Interviews were face to face, via phone, and
Skype (distance ed. students)
• Interview had ten questions
• Took anywhere from 15-30 minutes

22. Sample of Questions
• Can you provide a description of the experience, teaching
techniques, overall educational value?
• What were your expectations of the webinars? And were they met?
• What did you like about the webinars? What didn't you like?
• Why did you take the library Webinar?
• Are there topics that you would like to see covered in the future?

23. Data Analysis
• Nvivo 10 Qualitative Data Analysis Tool was
used to pull out themes, commonalities, and
discussion points.

24. Image Courtesy of qsrinternational.com

25. Results

28. Webinar Sessions Offered
• Endnote, Mendeley and Zotero
• The Dissertation submission process
• Great Technology tools and apps for teaching
and learning
• Library database training (Basics and
Advanced)
• Summon (Search Discovery Tool)

29. Participant Comments

30. Techniques from Past Webinars
• …the one that I kind of connect with the most .. is
when there is something that is demonstrated on
a slide but the entire webinar is not just on slides
and then the individual is executing or showing
by example of what it is that they are talking
about. That method works a lot better for me. I
have been to many webinars … where it’s just the
slides and it’s like there is no reason for me to be
on the webinar. I could just listen to a recording
of this, print out the slides and boom boom …
that is usually a lot easier to access and a little
less firm of a location that I have to be in.

31. Library Webinar Preferences
• What I like about the webinars in general is
that they give me the opportunity to
participate where I might not have the
opportunity, particularly the ones that you
did. I am a part time student … and I don’t
really feel part of the community or have
opportunities to use some of those resources
and participating in the webinar gave me the
opportunity to do that.

32. Other Side of the Coin or Screen
• I still think as good people think they
(webinars) are, they have limitations. You are
still kind of sitting there, and you don’t always
get, some of the time that you spend you
don’t always get that much back. So I still
think they feel a little bit alienated, they’re
better than not having anything at all, but I am
still not sure they’re as good as live interaction

33. Expectations
• My expectations were…I really wanted to make sure that I
had a firm grasp on APA formats and citations and things
like that. And so my expectations of the webinar were that
it would help with that, help me achieve that goal. Not
necessarily learning how to cite but manage and make it
less cumbersome. You know versus having this really messy
word document full of citations. I was not really familiar
with the library webinar format or the program itself but
going to the webinar helped me to become more familiar
with that. And I still use it, I just did a point of law paper for
one of my second year classes and … its very nice to know
that I have this firm system that I can put all of my citations
into. And know that they are there….

34. Conclusion

35. Recommendations for Webinar
Instruction
• User Friendly
• Intuitive Environment
• Modeling/Demos
• Quizzes
• Polling
• Tutorials
• Live Chatting
• Archiving
• Materials sent out
ahead of time
• Clear and detailed
connection instructions
• Time to meet online or
answer questions later

36. Recommendations for Future
Webinars
• Dissertations
• Citation Tools
• Databases
• Tech Tools
• Digital Humanities
• Grant Writing
• Institutional Repository
• How to Get Published
• APA and other citing
tips
• Writing for Scholarly
Journals

37. Future Research and Areas of Concern
• Enrollment: Webinars are not tied to a class
• Changing technologies
• Connectivity across the state
• Capacity
• Needs of distance education students

38. Questions for Me

39. Contact
• Heather Moorefield-Lang
• hmlang@vt.edu
• @actinginthelib