At the University of California, Berkeley, the College of Engineering has launched a fully online Master's degree program in integrated circuits.  As part of this program, students are required to complete a comprehensive capstone project requiring access to the research literature and training on its use.

The Library plays an important role in providing the information resources and instruction to help students succeed in their capstone.  In response to student need, we designed an online instruction environment that supports common information challenges, uses rich and robust instructional videos to explain information concepts and demonstrate research techniques, accommodates different learning styles, and engages students through interactive and feedback-rich instructional resources.

This paper showcases the value that we derived from the use of popular digital and web-based formats and publishing sites and through experimentation with emerging instructional techniques.  It documents our team and technology-driven approach to developing the instructional modules, outlines our lessons learned, and discusses issues we encountered in supporting fully online degree programs.

Patrons often turn to the circulation desk for research questions. Student library employees serving at these frontlines are challenged to respond or refer when librarians are unavailable. To cultivate students’ reference skills, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Division of the UC Berkeley Library developed an active training program based upon a dynamic online reference manual continuously improved based on student feedback.

This program’s development was evidence based. After a systematic month-long audit of the reference questions asked at the libraries’ five service points, common questions were identified. Afterwards, a reference manual was written to codify procedures with stepwise directions and sample dialogue for response to these questions. Prepared in Google Docs, the commenting feature enables immediate capture of student feedback with notification to librarians of needed revisions. In a subsequent problem-based and active training session, student employees followed the manual to solve reference case studies with librarian feedback.

From the end-of-session instructional evaluations, students demonstrated accomplishment of the learning objectives and reported greater confidence and awareness of their reference and public service skills. A one-month post-session survey found consistent adoption of the reference manual as well as perceived value in the training program. 

Moving forward, this turnkey program for documenting and training on reference procedures will develop students’ skills to meet evolving reference services. This presentation showcases graphs of the reference audit and training outcomes; there will be a live demonstration of the online reference manual and training materials.