Reach More Students & Measure Librarian Impact 

Yes, you can see how our tutorials align with the six ACRL frameworks: ACRL Framework Map.

Both Niche Academy and Info Lit-Core accomplish some of the same things. Both products offer, for example, tutorials aligned with the ACRL frames that teach essential information literacy skills, integration with campus LMS systems like Canvas, robust reporting on usage and student progress, customization options that let you adapt instruction to the needs of your institution, metrics to demonstrate the impact of Info Lit instruction to other campus stakeholders, and compliance with accessibility and privacy requirements. 

The differences are based on fundamentally different business models. Infobase is a publisher that licenses content. Niche Academy is a software company whose revenue is tied to a simple platform subscription. As a result, you'll notice that Niche Academy offers: 

• More open educational resources available through the platform, including content created by other libraries and experts in the community. 
• No additional charges based on which tutorials you use or how much you use them. 
• More attention to the quality of the user experience for learners, instructors, and content creators. It's easier to create and customize training on the platform. It's easier to find and generate reports. 
• More options for interactive instruction with Niche Academy including activities, open-ended response prompts, polls, etc. It is a fully baked LMS in its own right. In fact, staff training is a primary use case for most of our customers, and you'll find lots of professional development instruction available on the platform. 
• More ways to embed tutorial experiences within websites and online tools like LibGuides. 

LibGuides is a library-oriented Content Management System that is used to present information and count the number of views.  

Niche Academy is a library-oriented learning management system that is used to create interactive tutorials and measure learning outcomes. Niche Academy lets you provide feedback to individual learners and offer library instruction directly within the campus LMS. 

Niche Academy customers will often embed tutorials within LibGuides to enrich the information presented there. Niche Academy offers a number of visually appealing embed options for this use case. 

Niche Academy and Canvas are both learning management systems (LMS) that allow instructors to create training and track learner progress, but Niche Academy offers additional advantages for academic libraries that are already using Canvas or another LMS as the main campus system including: 

• A large collection of ready-made, professional quality tutorials teaching essential research skills, information literacy concepts, and introductions to academic databases. 
• The ability for teaching faculty in any department to add tutorials created in Niche Academy as assignments to any existing course and allow a librarian to directly interact with students and evaluate. learning outcomes, even if they don't have access to the full course. 
• A much simpler interface for creating tutorials. 
• Learner reports that provide direct evidence of student learning outcomes. 
• The ability to add database introductions to research-inclusive courses to significantly increase usage of library research databases. 

Yes. Niche Academy is compliant with the WCAG 2.1 standard at the AA level. This is something we work hard to maintain as we continuously update the platform.  

If you spot anything that’s slipped through our testing, please let us know. A thorough enumeration of our compliance level is available in the Niche Academy Accessibility Conformance Report.

No. A Niche Academy subscription includes unlimited professional support. See the answer above on what’s included in the price.

Niche Academy provides live technical support during business hours. There is no additional charge levied for Niche Academy support and there are no support tiers. Small customers get the same thoughtful attention as everyone else.   

All aspects of initial onboarding are included in the Niche Academy support offering including: 

• The creation of customer academies and initial population of appropriate tutorials from the Niche Academy marketplace. 
• Basic configuration of tutorials within each customer academy including invitation of learners, the addition of custom links, and showing or hiding available tutorial elements appropriately for the intended audience. 
• The implementation of LTI integration with your campus LMS. 
• Live training calls with all customer staff that need to learn how to use Niche Academy. 

Niche Academy support specialists can be reached by phone, by email, or through questions submitted within the platform itself. In addition to the live support, Niche Academy provides a searchable knowledge base and a collection of self-paced help tutorials covering basic administrative tasks and the process for tutorial creation.

If the security of your job is enhanced by measuring the direct value you provide, Niche Academy will help, not hurt. You'll be able to deliver more training and richer library learning experiences because the Niche Academy tutorial marketplace means you don't have to create training from scratch. You'll have more opportunities for direct interaction with learners. Niche will also make it easy for you to deliver reports on instructional outcomes.