Creating Interactive Course Assignment Pages The OSU Libraries ICAP Project Coalition for Networked Information Fall 2007 Task Force Meeting Kim Griggs, Jane Nichols, Margaret Mellinger

ICAP Starting Points Needs: –provide clear path to resources that help students complete their assignments – enable librarians to quickly create and manage course web pages Solution: –Interactive Course Assignment Pages (ICAPs) –ICAP Tool

ICAP Project Goals Connect students with quality library information when and where they need it for course assignments. Enable librarians to combine traditional library resources with Web 2.0 features in easily created and maintained web pages. Collaborate with faculty to contribute to and promote use of librarian created web pages.

ICAP Project Strategies Determine approach: how should we deliver content Get people with the right skill sets Use an agile development cycle

ICAPs: Connecting Students to Libraries Single access point to relevant library resources at a course or assignment level. ICAPs are dynamic web pages that integrate Web 2.0 features, chat and RSS feeds, etc. with traditional library content, such as catalogs and article databases.

ICAP Publishing System: For and By Librarians Librarians have enough to do and maintaining static HTML pages is tedious and time consuming. OSU Libraries developed the ICAP Tool, which enables librarians to easily create, manage and publish ICAPs through a web browser. The ICAP tool was developed using: Ruby on Rails, MySQL, AJAX (X)HTML, CSS ICAPs are ADA and W3C Compliant

ICAP Screencast /Users/Kim/ICAP/Jing/ICAP-screencast.swf

ICAP Project Assessment Reached our goal when we have: Converted Librarians Happy Students Faculty Buy-in

Lessons Learned People need time to adopt new software. Incorporating usability testing and training throughout the development facilitated communication and feedback. Built capacity, both for the team and the librarians who use the new tool. Learned about/how to employ software development practices in the library setting. Energy and excitement about a project is critical to its success.

Open Source Release available for download:

Thank You Questions? Contact Us For More Information:  {margaret.mellinger, jane.nichols, kim.griggs} at oregonstate.edu  ICAP Project Website: