User-Centered Design of a Library Tutorials Page: A Solution to Digital Hoarding

Abstract

Library tutorials offer on demand and as-needed instruction, a necessity as higher education continues to extend the reach of online learning. Our institution has increased its online course offerings alongside a university-wide shift in pedagogical and student-centered philosophy. To align our library tutorials webpage with these advances, we achieved a comprehensive redesign through a survey, student usability study, and librarian focus group. Guided by user-experience design, web accessibility, and Universal Design for Learning principles, we organized the new web page to better support our learning community.

Keywords:

• Tutorials
• information literacy instruction
• universal design for learning
• user-centered design
• online learning
• digital learning objects
• web accessibility
• distance learning
• usability
• academic libraries

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our colleagues Andrew Stevens, Jasmine Spitler, and Ashley Blinstrub for their assistance with the usability study and focus group. We are also deeply grateful to the members of the Teaching & Learning Team, with whom we could not have completed such an extensive redesign project.

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report.