Cubberley Education Library has developed a series of orientation modules for incoming students available on the Stanford University Libraries YouTube channel. We created these videos because of faculty interest in online instruction and response to student feedback about the deluge of information provided to them during orientation.

Students have access to Stanford resources starting August 1. However, some, especially masters students, need to start their research as soon as possible. The hope was that if we could supply them with all the information they need to get to these resources, the students could begin their exploration even before they arrive on campus.

The result is a series of short modules that deal with topics such as the Library homepage, SearchWorks, off-campus access, databases, and setting up a Google Scholar account to access Stanford resources. We produced these using Camtasia 2 and learned a lot in the process.

The last piece was to create captions. One faculty member wanted her students to use captions since many are from around the world and English is not always their first language. YouTube does its own automatic closed captions but they leave a lot to be desired. We learned how to go in and edit them and how to create captions in Camtasia. Joseph Makokha, who worked with me on this project, figured out how to get the closed captions from Camtasia into YouTube.

Please take a look and let us know what you think. We will soon need to make revisions because SearchWorks will undergo a redesign and is featured in several videos. Based on all we learned that should not be difficult.