The Self-paced Course Challenge – Case Studies from the Library CE Training Institute

Betha Gutsche /

In an ambitious effort to create new courses on high priority topics for building library staff skills, 12 seasoned library trainers learned just what it takes to work collaboratively to produce one-hour, self-paced courses on topics for the library field. It takes creative thinking, strong teamwork across time and distance, lots of time, and a resolute determination to see the process through to completion.

The Library Continuing Education (CE) Training Institute was part of the Strengthening CE Content for Libraries project, funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). WebJunction and Infopeople partnered to design and deliver the training program, with a focus on the strategies and techniques for producing quality, cost-efficient, self-paced learning content that can be built, shared and sustained via online tools and platforms.

The intrepid cohort of 12 rode the steep learning curve to sharpen their online instructional design skills and technical manipulations in the course creation tool Articulate Storyline. As teams and as individuals, they succeeded in creating five quality, interactive self-paced courses, now available to all in the WebJunction catalog.

Learn how each team selected a topic, sourced content, designed the course, and then implemented the design in Storyline. These case studies are derived from interviews with the creators at the end of the Training Institute. There are lessons learned, reflections on the experience and recommendations for improvements in the future. The narrative style is conversational, apropos of the interview setting.

Case Studies