As a librarian, you have the expertise to cover topics related to library resources and services; however, how you present the topics and scaffold the content can (and should) vary based on your learners’ needs and preferences. Here are some tips on how to conduct learner and contextual analyses to ensure a more targeted approach to developing instructional videos:
Talk with the instructor about their goals for the class and their learners’ information needs
Collect feedback from a small sample of learners who represent the target audience (e.g., undergraduate students taking history classes).
Use individual interviews, observations, focus groups, and/or surveys to collect learners’ input about the topic.
Include questions concerning what topics they would like to learn about and how they would like the content to be delivered (e.g., via case studies, graphs).
Use a combination of multiple-choice and open-ended questions in surveys to help you gain more in-depth knowledge about your learners. This knowledge will also help guide the design of your instructional videos.
If you have time constraints, there are other ways you can gather some of this information. For example, you can re-use data from existing surveys where learners provided feedback on how they would like to learn about the topic.