Day 2 - "How Do I..." Create a More Useful Guide

Springy_Will · 2023-08-07T18:22:51+00:00

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Session information: https://training.springshare.com/springycamp/2023/how-do-i

These days, users are demanding help that is relevant, timely, and easily consumable. So, in order to meet that need, we created “How Do I” guides – guides that were meant to help students answer a specific research question, such as how do I find a SWOT analysis or research a company. However, in reviewing our original "How Do I" guides, we found that they fell short of being the kind of help we envisioned. Instead, they were lists of resources with little context on how to use those resources and, in most cases, didn’t provide an answer to the question users were asking. So, with that realization, we took a step back and reconceptualized these guides.

Example LibGuide: SWOT Analysis

Have any questions for Alexis Soard and Nicole Tassinari?

Post them here! 💬

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Comments

Springy_Meg

Here are some questions from the session that we didn’t have time to answer live:

Maria asks: Was the final result for the SWOT guide, a top tab libguide?
Anonymous asks: How did you make collapsible boxes?

Groomej

I'd be interested in hearing from people who serve ALL levels of researchers - school students, state agencies, college students, way advanced researchers. I have often suggested we have beginner and advanced guides

Groomej

NicoleT

Maria - Yes, it was a single-page top tab guide

alexissoard

In response to Maria's question, the template is technically a top-tab guide, but I'm not a fan of using tabs across the top. We used a tabbed box to keep the text shorter on the page rather than tabs across the top.

alexissoard

In response to the second question, I don't remember where I got the code from, but I remember it was in a conversation with @Teresa. I'll paste the code below (I cut out some of the text for brevity); we added it into the source code of a rich text / HTML content section and then styled it with CSS.

<div id="collapseSection"><button aria-controls="collapseExample" aria-expanded="false" class="btn btn-primary" data-target="#collapseSWOTAnalysis" data-toggle="collapse" type="button">Before you start: Things to consider<i aria-hidden="true" class="fa fa-chevron-down"></i></button>
<div class="collapse" id="collapseSWOTAnalysis">
<div class="well">
<p>Here are some things to think about before you start conducting a SWOT analysis.</p>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>

alexissoard

@Groomej, we've had similar discussions as it can be challenging to cover some topics comprehensively yet simply. Our SWOT analysis guide was an easy(ish) place for us to start because this guide is primarily used by master's level students, so we could add a bit more than we would if it was a guide for new undergraduate students. We are currently drafting a guide targeted to doctoral students to cover the more in-depth help they need, which is our first foray into a research guide for specific users.

kclaunch

I was also wondering about creating collapsible boxes; especially within a tabbed box.

Springy_Meg

Thanks so much for presenting, @alexissoard and @NicoleT!

We get asked about collapsible boxes a lot. 🤓 If you'd like to see a built-in collapsible box in LibGuides, please vote on it here in our Feature Request category: Innate Collapsible Box Type

In the meantime, you can create a collapsible box aka an accordion using Bootstrap. We cover this (and link to examples you can copy/paste) in our recorded training, More Fun with CSS & Bootstrap. The accordion section starts at minute 45:15.

There are also a number of discussions right here in the Lounge about help with accordions — take a look through these for ideas, or feel free to start your own discussion! 😎