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[Grace Agnew]

I read this article on Flash because we are just beginning a new initiative
to develop interactive tutorials, primarily for students, at the library.
I think his concern needs to be taken in context.  Flash, in the general
World Wide Web, can be overwhelming to a 56 KB modem, particularly during
peak use hours.  Flash is also heavily overused as a way to add cool
animation as a site opens which can cause a long download time or even
freeze your system without adding any real value to the website. 

I don't think we should discount Flash as a tool, among other tools, to
create tutorials and online help that are intuitive, interactive, and
appealing to busy students who don't want to wade through masses of text to
figure out how to use a journal aggregator service, for example.  I first
got intrigued by Flash when we were looking at production replacement
scanners for  electronic reserves and document delivery.  I stumbled on a
Flash demo for the HP digital sender (9100), which showed how a multipaged
document was scanned and either faxed or encoded as PDF and sent to the
recipient via email depending on whether you entered a fax number or an
email address.  The demo showed graphically  how the 9100 digital sender
was incorporated into workflow and how it used the network cable or phone
line to send the information.  We weren't looking for that product but we
liked the look of it and bought it and at the same time, I started looking
into Flash as a possible library tool.

I don't think tutorials which use Flash, Java, digital video/audio,
animated powerpoint slides, or some other method to add interactivity and
flow, which are designed for use on a high-speed campus network, are
"gratuitous animation."   A key target audience for us will be first and
second year undergraduates living on campus and using the campus ResNet, a
high speed network with very generous bandwidth.  Quick tutorials that
demonstrate research principles, such a refining a term paper topic, or
that demonstrate how to search a complex database, will hopefully work very
well in this context.  We also, like most academic libraries, provide a
series of classes and workshops on general Internet and online library use
and online research for specific topics.  I am envisioning that the
tutorials our reference librarians will design and create might be used at
the end of a class, for example, so the students can practically test what
they learned and get a private "score" that shows them what they did or
didn't understand so they can focus their questions or even ask questions
privately after class.  It also reinforces what they have been shown
because they are interacting with the concepts and strategies themselves.
Later the tutorials can serve as a "refresher", emphasizing the key points
of the classroom instruction.  Short, well-done tutorials can also provide
"pont-of-need" assistance for online research.  

An example of a well-done interactive tutorial site that we are looking at
closely is:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/modern/

Grace Agnew
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Grace Agnew
Assistant Director for Systems and Technical Services
Georgia Tech Library
(404) 894-8932
(404) 894-6084 (fax)
mailto:grace.agnew at library.gatech.edu

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