Sponsor/year: Library, 2015.

Project leads: Sabina Robertson, Christine Oughtred.

Aims:

• Help all students develop foundational digital literacy skills, using an engaging format
• Build staff understanding of how to develop digital literacy

Underpinning theories/literature: Universal Design for Learning: website explaining UDL and providing examples.

• Concise information: Information provided in the videos is concise yet comprehensive, covering specific tasks step-by-step. This makes them simple to use while completing a task, and easy to navigate for specific information.
• Multi-sense and engaging: Animations with an engaging voiceover, cheerful music and simple text instructions engage multiple sensory channels with a unified message and light humour, making the content easier to understand.
• Positive tone: The tone of the videos is up-beat and cheerful, and presents the need to learn these skills as a natural part of university life, rather than something of which a student might be ashamed.
• Accessible: All videos are captioned and use accessible fonts, colours, etc.
• Always available: The videos are always available online, via various Deakin sites as well as a YouTube channel, so students can access and re-watch them whenever they need.
• Easy to find: Numerous teachers have embedded links to videos in their CloudDeakin study materials, assignment instructions, and class and seminar slides, to help them scaffold research tasks efficiently. Students can also use links to the videos on numerous sites where they might find themselves needing help with researching information, including on DeakinSync, Library search pages, in Library tabs on CloudDeakin unit sites and on course hub sites.

'Borrowing material'

• Viewings: By August 2017, the videos had been viewed 20 589 times (internal report).

From ‘Finding a known journal’