Tutorial Best Practices

The purpose of this guide is to support UNL librarians and staff with their tutorial and online learning efforts. In this guide you will find:

• Tutorial Evaluation Criteria
• Digital Accessibility Guidelines
• How-to resources and best practices for UNL supported tools
• Suggested Maintenance Schedule

If you have any questions about the information in this guide or want to talk about your learning/object/tutorial ideas, contact Melissa Gomis (melissa.gomis@unl.edu).

Before you start creating content, it is important to ask yourself a few questions. 

Learners

• Who is the audience for your content? What constraints or unique considerations do they have?
• Do you have a user group in mind?
• Have you talked to faculty and other stakeholders?

Learning Outcomes and Assessment

• What do you want your learners to be able to do or understand? What concepts or ideas should they retain?
• How will you assess your impact? How will learners demonstrate what they know?

Storyboard

• What will you design to help learners learn?
• What activities will equip learners with the knowledge and skills they need?
• What is your content and how will you chunk it to make learning easier?

Library Tutorial Criteria

The Teaching & Learning Team has come up with some best practice criteria to follow when creating, adapting, or adopting tutorials and learning objects. These criteria are also useful when reviewing and updating learning objects you have previously created.

Criteria

Production Quality and Usability

- layout and interface are easy to use
- sound quality good, audio pacing can be adjusted
- menu to skip to sections of interest, or tutorial broken into multiple short videos
- interactive elements provide instruction

Accessibility

- transcript and accurate subtitles
- high contrast text and graphics
- images contain alt text
- hierarchical organization (text headings, subheadings), consistent
- does not rely on color alone to delineate sections

Pedagogy

- learning objectives clearly stated
- prerequesite knowledge stated at beginning
- concepts built progressively

Assessment

- any built-in assessments relate to stated learning outcomes

Content and Language

- no spelling / grammar errors
- summary of content provided
- context provided as appropriate
- a conversational style and tone is used in text and speaking

Accuracy and Relevancy

- provides accurate information
- content is current
- can be reused in multiple contexts (class, workshop, etc)

Technical

- works on a variety of platforms (multiple operating systems, browsers, etc)
- does not require plugins or disabling pop-up blockers, etc
- tutorial can be embedded in multiple platforms

Licensing and Attribution

- creator can be identified and credited
- information provided about terms of reuse, revision, and redistribution