About Iris 4-2
We didn't want to reinvent the wheel...
We just wanted to modify it a little bit. The concept of these tutorials was inspired by TILT: The Information Literacy Tutorials. Having used modified TILT modules in our library for nearly five years, we know the value of the TILT tutorials as well as the drawbacks and limitations. We listened to comments and requests from both students and faculty; we also knew that we needed a more versatile tool to meet the growing demand for information instruction. We also needed a tool specifically for meeting the information needs of community college students.
During Fall quarter 2008 Librarians at Cannell Library (Clark College) are giving IRIS a shake-down cruise. As we use it in our library sessions, and as our faculty and students use it for classes, we're working out the final bugs and refining the content and quiz. The content is generic, however, not college-specific, so students anywhere can start using it.
A central feature of the tutorials is the Quiz: 30 questions that many WA librarians contributed to via the CLAMS listserv. Currently the quiz is set up so that students at Clark can take the quiz and have scores sent to their instructors. But anyone from anywhere can take the quiz and print their score.
The project was funded by a grant from the Distance Learning Council of Washington. Grant Coordinators are Tom Moran, Interim Dean of Library, Media, and Distance Learning at Shoreline, and Lynn Chmelir, formerly the Interim Director at Clark College.
Credits:
- The site design was inspired by Clark College students of Robert Hughes' GRCP 210 (Interface Design and Interactivity) class. For several years these students have performed usability testing on library interfaces and tutorials and provided valuable feedback about what works (and doesn’t work) for students.
- Kitty Mackey managed and coordinated the project, built the site, and continues to oversee the modifications.
- Major parts of the content were written by Kitty Mackey (Clark College), with some parts adapted/modified from the TILT modules. Meryl Geffner (Shoreline Community College) also contributed content.
- Pavel Popov, IT Specialist at Cannell Library is entirely responsible for the programming, design, documentation and everything else associated with the quiz workings.
- Tyler Chen, Secretary Senior in the Office of Instruction at Clark College, took photographs that are used throughout.
- Clark College English instructors: several have provided valuable proofreading.
IRIS is built and designed completely using the box-model and style sheets, meeting current design standards. Anyone with server space and a little know-how can adapt IRIS to a specific institution. At the end of Fall Quarter we hope to make the files available to librarians for downloading and modifying.
As much as IRIS 4-2 has going for it, there are many things that I had to put on the wish list of future modifications. You can see the list, plus all the other notes and documentation I kept track of, at my (very messy) wiki: IRIS42wiki .
The results are a set of modules that helps meet the information instruction needs of community college students, faculty and librarians.
Resources for Librarians
Open Publication License
- IRIS 4-2 is available for adaptation under the terms of the Open Publication License
For more information, please contact Kitty Mackey (kmackey@clark.edu)