How Utah State University's Library Instruction Sessions Went From 1,300 to 35,000 in Just 1 Year Without Hiring New Staff

Our Story

Niche Academy Founder & CEO, Jeromy Wilson, didn’t choose the library life. It chose him. Jeromy was only 4 years old when his father, Jim Wilson, helped found Dynix, a software company responsible for the integrated library system that replaced the need for physical card catalogs. Growing up, he tagged along to countless library conferences and events, before eventually taking a job at Dynix after graduating. But after a few years, as the world was going digital, Jeromy began to notice a problem: despite the increase in available online resources, they just weren’t being used.

Jared & Jeromy

So in 2013, Jeromy set out to find a solution, and that’s where the idea for Niche Academy was born. He started out on his own, adding to the platform in his free time and taking advantage of the industry contacts he’d already made, but he soon realized that he wasn’t going to be able to do it alone. That’s when he decided to recruit the help of former Dynix co-worker Jared Oates. Together, they were able to get Niche Academy off the ground and it wasn’t long before they found a whole team of people who believed in their idea. 

Seven years later, we are now a team of 34 (and counting!), and are trusted by over 800 library systems (including state libraries, local libraries, and consortia) all across the world. 

After getting our start with just a few short library tutorials, we’re now helping to build the future of online resources and e-learning. 

Old Approach

Live instruction is time constrained with limited options for real interaction. Online instruction is static with no interaction options. 

New Approach

Library instruction is always available online (including ) AND offers interactive elements like quizzes, response prompts and applied learning activities.

Old Result

Static instruction and time-constrained group instruction limit the ability of library instructors to pose questions, evaluate learning, provide direct feedback and build relationships.

New Result

Library instructors directly measure their impact on student learning outcomes. They can proactively follow up with students, both those who are struggling and those doing well.

Library instructors can have the greatest impact when they can deliver instruction on the learner's schedule and still offer individual feedback.

Old Approach

Library instruction requires teaching faculty to interrupt their own instruction and preparation time to accommodate it. Learners see it as tangential or have to go out of their way to get it.

New Approach

Library training is easily embedded as an assignment directly into regular online course material within the campus learning management system.

Old Result

Library instruction is usually an anomalous event in a student's academic life. Knowledge retention is limited, only a few topics are covered, and the perception of the library as an essential learning resource is limited.

New Result

Library instruction enhances discipline-specific learning without requiring dedicated class time or additional preparation time from teaching faculty. Library instructors can take ownership of broad concerns like plagiarism and copyright compliance.

Resistance from faculty and disinterest from students evaporate when library instruction becomes an embedded assignment within a course.

Old Approach

The "one-shot" approach means that library instruction is one-size-fits-all. There is little adaptation across disciplines and almost never from course to course.

New Approach

Library instruction is tailored to support specific courses. Course-specific interactive instruction can include research techniques, citation best practices, and other essential information literacy skills as well as database introductions when necessary.

Old Result

Faculty within disciplines perceive library instruction as a marginally relevant offering rather than a direct support for their own course-specific objectives.

New Result

Library instructors deliver more impact. They spend more time on interactive information literacy, and less time doing database introductions. Teaching faculty see library instructors as valued partners offering direct support for course objectives. The perceived value of instructors and of the library itself increases dramatically.

The most effective ways a library can support High Impact Educational Practices is by providing course-specific library instruction.

Old Approach

One-shot training offered by the library changes very little between semesters and from year to year.

New Approach

The range of library instruction offerings is continually expanding and being refreshed.

Old Result

The library offering is perceived as being stale and marginally relevant.

New Result

Information literacy and research support instruction reflects emerging trends and innovations. Database instruction reflects the most current user interface and functionality changes. 

Fresh, up-to-date training offerings show that the library is adaptive, innovative and relevant.

Do It Yourself

You will need:

• Professional quality interactive information literacy tutorials,
• A collection of database introductions, and
• a library-specific LMS to deliver tutorials within the campus LMS and still have your own reports.

Result: If you already have instructional designers, illustrators, and video editors on staff, and a good sound recording equipment, you can create tutorials yourself. If you have to outsource this, you will need to budget per finished minute of video.

Price: Niche Academy's cost for creating a single tutorial is about $1,200. If you can match our efficiency and start with just 24 tutorials, the cost for an initial offer would be $28,800.

If you have to outsource the video creation, a minute of finished video will cost around $1,000. If you include just 10 minutes of video in each of your 24 tutorials, you're looking at a cost of $240,000.

DIY or outsource, you'll need a staff librarian to guide the content creation project. Salary.com indicates that the average salary for a college librarian starts at around $60,000/year.

LMS subscription prices vary widely. A typical price is $3,000/year.

You will need someone to configure and manage the library's LMS. An employee to manage the LMS costs $30,000-$40,000 a year.

Finally, you will need to customize/adapt tutorial content for individual courses. If you spend 4 hours per course, and spend $25/hr, you can service 20 courses for $2,000.

Timeframe: With an efficient process a professional quality tutorial would take about a month to produce. 24 tutorials will take 2 years to complete.

A Niche Academy subscription includes a rich set of information literacy tutorials covering topics like research essentials, search techniques, source evaluation, & appropriate citation methods. It also includes continually updated introductions to discipline-specific databases from publishers like JSTOR, EBSCO, ProQuest, and Gale.

The Niche Academy platform is also a robust Learning Management System.

You can also tap into an enormous marketplace of training content maintained by a community of practitioners and library experts. As a customer, you’ll be able to influence Niche Academy’s content creation queue.

Result: The instructional design, video, and audio quality of Niche Academy tutorials are top notch and exactly matched to the needs of academic libraries. The tutorials are completely white-labeled for each institutional library. Faculty members can simply select what they need from a collection of available library training.

Niche Academy integrates with your campus LMS with the industry standard LTI protocol. This gives you real-time usage stats and learner reports. This make it easy to evaluate learner outcomes, provide targeted feedback, and demonstrate your own direct contribution to student success.

Every Niche Academy subscription includes unlimited access to Niche Academy technical support experts. You can rely on their extensive experience to help troubleshoot technical questions and to support your setup.

The Niche Academy platform lets you create course-specific tutorial experiences with a small fraction of the effort, and the library tutorial marketplace lets you select, adapt, and customize material for your own library to continually offer fresh training options.

Price: Subscriptions starting at just $1,200.

Timeframe: Academy setup takes less than 2 hours.

Niche Academy is for academic librarians who want to contribute to student success.

Dramatically increase the number of online library instruction sessions you can report

Obtain measurable evidence of your own direct contribution to student success

Deploy limited resources more effectively by not building everything from scratch and spending more time on high impact IL instruction.

Strengthen the library’s position as a dynamic, highly professional, and indispensable resource within the broader institution