Dianna E. Sachs, Carrie C. Leatherman, Kate A. Langan Western Michigan University

1. Building Bridges: Restructuring Online Library Tutorials to Span the Generation Gap and Meet the Needs of Millennial Students Dianna E. Sachs, Carrie C. Leatherman, Kate A. Langan Western Michigan University

2. Overview • Our Study: Compare 2 Online Research Tutorials • Millennial learning outcomes • Millennial satisfaction • What is a “Millennial”? • Working on a tutorial? • Strategies for “Millennial-friendliness” • What happens next?

3. Background • “Searchpath” • Created 2001 – award-winning in its time

4. Today • Seen as: • Text-heavy • Clip art • Visual only • Too linear • Not very interactive • Overwhelming content • Awkward quiz reporting structure

5. What is a Millennial?

6. What is a Millennial? • Millennial Generation/Generation Next/Gen Y • Born 1982-2002 • “Digital natives” • Lifelong internet and technology users • Multi-taskers • Like graphics • Non-linear thinkers

7. Activity • Think back to when you were 12 years old. • Did you…

8. Four Generations

9. Current Events Sources

10. Literature Review • Millennials… “A Vision of Students Today” Source: “A vision of students today”. Michael Wesch, Kansas State University. YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o.

11. Literature Review • Millennials' life experiences • "Digital natives" • Process information differently • Learning Style: experiential, interactive, authentic • Multi-tasking, graphics, hyperlinked, networked, games, interactivity, fast-paced

12. Learning Preferences: Multi-tasking Graphics Hyperlinked Networked Games Interactivity Fast-paced Literature Review

13. So what did we do? • Summer 2009 – created ResearchPath!

14. ResearchPath • Used video, audio, and kinesthetic • More concise content • Interactivity throughout • Student narration • Photos of actual WMU students • Up-to-date visual components

15. Did we succeed? • Conducted 4-part research study • Student comfort and satisfaction survey • Student focus groups • Student responses to tutorial quizzes • Student learning outcomes for IL & research skills

16. Study Methods and Procedures • HSIRB • Advertise, Advertise, Advertise! • Incentives, Incentives, Incentives • Multiple session times  • Proctored sessions

17. Participants • Student Satisfaction Survey  – 13 participants • Focus Group  – 11 participants • Quiz Results – 23 participants • Research Project – 6 participants and counting

18. Student Satisfaction Survey • 11 questions – ResearchPath vs. Searchpath • 4 multiple choice • 7 open ended

19. Quantitative Results • Preferred ResearchPath to Searchpath: • 85% more interesting • 78% easier to understand (retained more information)

20. Open-Ended Responses • 4 main areas of student comments: • self-pacing = good! • audio vs. non-audio • interactivity and engagement • up-to-date content

21. Focus Groups • 9 Millennial participants • 8 “Compare and contrast” questions • Student-driven discussion

22. Focus Group Quotes: • A buffet of information! Tutorials à la carte!

23. Focus Group Highlights • What they want: Conversational; informal; self pacing; get more if you want more;  audio; simpler, straight to the point; hands-on; broken-up into “chunks”; neutral color scheme; enthusiasm; options for visual or non-visual, audio or non-audio; larger screen; different formats and presentations

24. Focus Group Lowlights • Things to avoid: Cheesy; distracting/loud color schemes; small screen; bad logos; lack of control over content; not enough meaningful graphics and images; too much information all at once

25. Quiz Analysis • Which tutorial was more successful? • Each tutorial measured different things • No direct comparison possible • Identified areas of weakness in tutorials • Consistent trouble with certain concepts • Reevaluate presentation of those concepts

26. Learning Outcomes Analysis • Still in progress… • Take tutorial & “hypothetical research project” • Compare results with control group • Preliminary results: • Students become IL equally from both tutorials • Taking tutorials increases IL compared with control group

27. What’s Next for ResearchPath? • Technical difficulties • Go further! More interactivity, customization • ADA compliant “text only” version • Continue study • More participants = more representative sample • Phase 5: use identical quiz questions for both tutorials

28. Future • Food for thought – what will the next generation look like? ? ? Clip art obtained from www.clker.com

29. Your turn! • What can you do to make your own online tutorials (or other materials) more Millennial-friendly? • Learn from others • Invest time and technical expertise to do it right • Ask your students! • Ask many students • Listen to what they say – and what they don’t say

30. Your Stories Created online resources for Millennials? Share your experiences!

31. Bibliography • Millennials' life experiences (Tracey Moon) • Oblinger, D. (2003). Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millennials: Understanding the new students. Educause Review, 2003(July/Aug), 36-47. • Reith, J. (2005). Understanding and appreciating the communication styles of the millennial generation. Vistas (2005). • Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5). • Prensky, M. (2001b). Digital natives, digital immigrants, part II: Do they really think differently? On the Horizon, 9(6). • Pew Research Center. Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next. http://pewsocialtrends.org/assets/pdf/millennials-confident-connected-open-to-change.pdf • ResearchPath: http://www.wmich.edu/library/researchpath • Searchpath: http://www.wmich.edu/library/searchpath

32. Presentation is… • Available at: http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cjm8593/

33. Questions?