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Monday, May 07, 2007

Informs

Informs is "a flexible adaptive tool for the creation of interactive online tutorials. It consists of easy to use software and a database of tutorials. These tutorials have been created by users as a shared community resource, which can be re-used by other registered users". Its typical layout has an instruction frame on the left, with a second frame on the right that might e.g. be occupied by the source you are learning to search.
Informs started off as a JISC project some time ago, and almost disappeared because it wasn't clear who was going to continue to maintain it. However, a good number of people had found it useful and created tutorials using it, so fortunately now Intute have taken on its support. There is a new logon site and a little documentation. It is free to use for UK higher and further education. The Informs website is at http://www.informs.intute.ac.uk/ One article that mentions using Informs is: Fiander, W., Peters, L. and Sinclair, C. (2003) "Taking the pain out of network induction: using INFORMS to induct new first year students." SCONUL focus, (30), 17-19 . http://www.sconul.ac.uk/publications/newsletter/30/8.PDF
Examples of tutorials are e.g. at http://www.informs.intute.ac.uk/
informs_perl/portfolio.pl?folio=58

Photo by Sheila Webber: Pink hawthorn, April 2007.

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