Successful Trial

Earlier this term we trialled the resource with a group of nursing students at the Warragul campus. The feedback from this pilot was very positive.

The students found the resource easy to navigate and the information useful. They were engaged by the avatar.

The students reported that the YouTube videos included in the resource were very slow to load. We did observe this during the trial, however subsequent tests have shown that in most cases these videos commence within 30 seconds of clicking on the link so we expect that the long wait times were the result of so many students clicking on these resources at the same time.

We are now working on refining the resource ready for publication in the first week of November.

Trial Postponed

Unfortunately the trial of our resource did not go ahead yesterday as planned. The nursing students have had a busy time recently with various assignments and exams so their teachers rescheduled the session.

This was disappointing for the team however we have set a new date for a trial, Monday October 4. Given that we now have a couple more weeks to work on the resource it should be even more complete when do trial it.

Preparing to Trial the Resource

Jo and Sandy have been working very hard preparing the resource for a trial with a group of GippsTAFE Diploma of Nursing students on Monday.

Although the resource is not complete there will be enough there to trial and the feedback we get from this will provide us with valuable information as we work on completing the resource in the coming weeks. We will be using an automated survey to gather information during our trial and a link to this has been posted on the resource.

We have also added some short avatar sequences to the resource to assist the users to use and navigate the resource. Thank you to Dale for creating these. We plan to add more in the future.

Because we are using a LibGuide as a basis of for this resource we have encountered limitations in the way we can use the avatar. This quite frustrating but we are coming to terms with these limitations and working on the best way to combine the two types of technology.

Fingers crossed all will go well on Monday!!!!!

Time to update our Libguide to the Sixth Edition of APA Style

Finally... the package has arrived with all the sixth edition references for APA style.
Sandy has been waiting with great patience for this so she can get all examples updated to reflect the latest changes.
Although most aspects of APA referencing remain very similar, the Sixth Edition has seen APA style significantly revised in response to technological changes in publishing. Along with other changes there are revised guidelines for referencing electronic sources and reference examples given for a wider variety of on-line sources.

An interesting example of a LibGuide

Jo found this LibGuide

La Trobe Uni LibGuide

It is based on a template created by OIL and creates a learning sequence from a LibGuide.

Great idea!!!!

Sneak preview

It is still a work in progress but here is our resource
APA Referencing in 3 easy steps

Simplify, simplify

Having spent some time finding and adding links in our Libguide to some of the fantastic resources others have developed on APA style, I am now peeling it back a bit. Trying to get enough to be useful, but not so much as to be overwhelming and keeping those bower-bird tendencies at bay.
I am also looking to move things around within pages to get a more consistent look and more predictability in terms of where to look for information.