video versus online text tutorials: consideration of...
TRANSCRIPT
Jill Foust, MLS, University of Pittsburgh
Julia Jankovic, MLIS, University of Pittsburgh
OBJECTIVE
Online tools play an important role in educating library users.
Research has shown that adults mainly use tutorials to solve
specific problems, with learning as a secondary consequence
(Chen, 2010). This poster describes the results of a comparative
study undertaken at the University of Pittsburgh’s Health
Sciences Library System to determine the learning preferences
of novice library users using instructional video tutorials versus
online text tutorials to accomplish the same task.
METHODS
• Camtasia software was used to create three similar video
tutorials that instructed library users how to access full-text
articles in three databases: PubMed, Ovid MEDLINE, and
PITTCat (OPAC).
• Run time for each video:
• Ovid (2 min 38 sec)
• PITTCat (4 min 4 sec)
• PubMed (4 min 43 sec)
• Three similar instructional text tutorials were created for each
database.
• The text tutorials were available to users as PDFs.
• Each text tutorial was 2-3 pages.
• The videos and text tutorials were linked from the library’s
“How Do I?” Web site. (Figures 1, 2, 3, 4).
• Two librarians examined seven months (June-December
2012) of data that was compiled using Webtrends Analytics
software. The data was limited to the University of Pittsburgh
and its affiliated medical center.
Access Links for Instructional Videos and Text Tutorials
Figure 2 Figure 3
Figure 4
Video versus Online Text Tutorials: Consideration of Learning Styles
Figure 5 Total Video/Text Tutorial Views, June-December 2012
RESULTS
• From June-December, text tutorials were viewed 85% more
often than video tutorials (Figure 5).
• There was a significant increase in text tutorial views in
September and October. Video views remained fairly
constant, but decreased considerably in November and
December (Figure 6).
• From June-December, a preference was shown for text over
video tutorials for each database (Figure 7):
• The Ovid text tutorial was viewed 39% more often than
the video tutorial (Figure 8)
• The PITTCat text tutorial was viewed 222% more often
than the video tutorial (Figure 9)
• The PubMed text tutorial was viewed 19% more often
than the video tutorial (Figure 10)
CONCLUSION
This study is based on an informal usability test targeting
novice users. The overall results indicate that considerably
more users preferred to view online text tutorials over video
tutorials for finding full-text articles.
L ITERATURE C ITED Chen, J, Roys T. Motivations Behind the Use of Web Based Tutorials
[Internet]. 2010. Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL; [cited 2012 Nov 13]. Available from:
http://www.jasonchen.org/files/2011/05/tutorials_final-paper.pdf.
Figure 1
Figure 7
Figure 6
Figure 8 Figure 9
Figure 10
Text
Tutorials
65%
Videos
35%
23 18
21
32
58
25
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Ovid PITTCat PubMed
Total Video/Text Tutorial Views by Database
Videos Text Tutorials
11 11 13
8
16
1 2
9
3
12
35 34
15
7
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
June July August Sept Oct Nov Dec
Total Video/Text Tutorial Views by Month
Videos Text Tutorials
3 3 1
3
12
0 1
5 2
4
0
20
0 1 0
5
10
15
20
25
June July August Sept Oct Nov Dec
Ovid Video/Text Tutorial Views
by Month
Videos Text Tutorials
5 2
5 3
1 1 1 3
1 4
30
1
13
6
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
June July August Sept Oct Nov Dec
PITTCat Video/Text Tutorial Views
by Month
Videos Text Tutorials
3
6 7
2 3
0 0 1
0
4 5
13
2
0 0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
June July August Sept Oct Nov Dec
PubMed Video/Text Tutorial Views
by Month
Videos Text Tutorials
Example of the video tutorial screen for PITTCat (OPAC) Example of the text tutorial screen for PITTCat (OPAC)