Take Library Instruction to the Next Level

Niche Academy's ready-to-use tutorials let you focus your time on the priorities you choose. The platform lets you deliver training anywhere AND still measure your contribution to student & staff success.

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Trusted by 1500+ Library Systems

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More Engagement with Library Instruction

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In 2019, Utah State University used Niche Academy's LTI bridge to add library assignments to courses within the campus LMS (Canvas). Because Niche Academy lets librarians measure learning no matter where students interact with library instruction, they could still measure their impact. Tutorial views went from 1300 before the integration to over 35,000 in one semester.

 

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Get more of what you want, less of the stuff you don't

Info Lit Tutorial and Learner Report

You want to help more students acquire essential lnfo-Lit skills and measure your impact on student success.

Niche Academy's information literacy tutorials deliver bite-sized instruction that's aligned with the ACRL Framework. Niche Academy's learner reports let you measure student learning outcomes no matter where students interact with the tutorials.

Curious to see how Niche Academy compares to other Information Literacy tools?

Download a Side-by-Side Comparison

JSTOR and EBSCOhost Tutorial Images (1)

You want to help more students and faculty discover and use library research databases. 

Niche Academy maintains up-to-date introductions to databases from EBSCO, Gale, and JSTOR help people discover and learn how to use these resources. This lets academic librarians spend less time on repetitive introductions and more time on higher impact activities.

Authoring Tools

You don't want to spend a lot of time fiddling with training authoring tools.

The Niche Academy platform makes training creation as simple as sending an email, but it's also flexible enough to create quizzes, activities, and surveys.

Want to see how easy it is to use? Set up your own 14 day free trial.

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DEI Training

You want to create inclusive collections, services, and spaces.

Niche Academy's training collection includes professional development on DEI essentials creating diverse spaces, curating diverse collections, and supporting transgender customers and staff.

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Case Study

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Niche Academy Helps You...

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Spend less time on low-impact tasks (like database intros and creating videos)

 

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Spend more time working with students

 

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Measure your direct contribution to student success

 

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Deliver (a lot) more library instruction

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How It Works

Interactive Instruction for Students

Most online library instruction is static and doesn't allow for students to really participate actively. Niche Academy allows librarians to interact with and provide instruction to students virtually using activities such as quizzes, exercises, and prompts.

Offering Instruction Within Campus LMS

Niche Academy makes interactive library instruction available within existing campus LMS and gives librarians the opportunity to act as the instructor for specific assignments within academic courses. This means that students don't have to log in outside of the campus LMS and their progress is automatically tracked.

Targeted Database Introductions

Resource database introductions are a huge part of how the library is able to support student learning, but can often be repetitive. By offering this instruction online and allowing students to complete it asynchronously, library staff can focus their time on other tasks to support student learning.

Report Learning Outcomes

With Niche Academy, academic libraries can focus on core values & essential skills, and provide proof of their measurable impact on student success through detailed usage reports.

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Our Guarantee: If you use Niche Academy to offer interactive library instruction within your campus LMS, we guarantee results. If you’re not completely satisfied with your results in the first year, we’ll credit you a full year’s subscription.

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Questions?

Q: Do Niche Academy's tutorials align with the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education?

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

Q: How is Niche Academy different from CREDO Info Lit - Core?

A: 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

Q: How is Niche Academy different from LibGuides?

A: 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.

Q: What does Niche Academy offer beyond what an LMS like Canvas does?

A: 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

Q: Are accessibility features available?

A: 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.

Q: Are we limited to a certain number of training and support hours?

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

Q: What maintenance and support is included with a Niche Academy subscription?

A: 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.

Q: What’s the process for reaching Niche Academy support?

A: 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.

Q: Will this tool replace me?

A: 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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More questions? Check out our FAQ page.

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