University of Wollongong and University of ... - UMass Amherst



Course Management Systems, Libraries and Teaching:

a presentation and discussion of sabbatical research

Christine Turner, University of Massachusetts Amherst

(for copy of research paper, Course Management Systems, Libraries and Teaching: Exploring Relationships for Learning, go to )

Australia

[pic]

U.S.A.

[pic]

Basic research question

• How are librarians collaborating with faculty, information technology staff, instructional designers and academic support staff to integrate library resources and information literacy skill-building within course management systems?

Research method

• Literature review

• Case studies: 2 in Australia (University of Wollongong, University of South Australia); 2 in New England (Boston College, Connecticut College)

Australia, United States and higher education

• Australia and continental United States are roughly the same geographical size

• Australia has a population of 20 million; United States has 295 million

• Australia has about 40 degree granting universities (see Australia Education Network for listings and rankings - ); United States about 4,000

• In Australia:

o “College” refers to vocational or preparatory institution.

o Universities get substantial funding from federal government which works in consort with state and territory governments to authorize universities. See Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training - (Higher education sector).

o State/territory governments responsible for university governance; federal government, “Canberra”, produces frameworks and mandates audits, e.g. Copyright Australia Ltd. (“CAL”), Quality Assurance Framework, Research Quality Framework, and allocates funding on the basis of assessment of framework criteria.

o Students have restricted access to the greater Internet, outside campus network. Each student has a quota. Implications for use of Google as research tool?

• Both countries have experienced similar demographic trends in their student populations over the past 35 years:

o More undergraduates

o More women

o More older and “non-traditional” students

o More distance delivery

• Educause reported that in 2004 90% of 890 institutions, including many Australian universities, had implemented course management systems.

• Information literacy standards:

o Australian and New Zealand Institute for Information Literacy, Australian and New Zealand Information Literacy Framework, 2nd ed. Adelaide, Australia: Australian and New Zealand Institute for Information Literacy, 2004. Available:

o Association of College and Research Libraries, Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education -

A little about the subjects

o With very few exceptions, all use CMS in hybrid environment, combining face-to-face teaching with online/CMS components

o Three use some version of WebCT; one (UniSA) uses “homegrown” system

o At none of these colleges or universities do faculty have a mandate to use a CMS

University of Wollongong –

• About 21,000 students at 8 campuses, mostly Sydney and south coast, one in Dubai.

• Programs are offered through 9 “faculties” or divisions: Arts, Commerce, Creative Arts, Education, Engineering, Health & Behavioural Sciences, Informatics, Law and Science.

• The Australian national newspaper ranked the University of Wollongong first among 37 Australian universities in 2005 for teaching performance based on five criteria used by the Australian Government’s Department of Education Science and Training.

• University of Wollongong Graduate Attributes - - #7 “A basic understanding of information literacy and specific skills in acquiring, organizing and presenting information, particularly through computer-based activity.”

• EXCELLENT Information Literacy segment of library’s web site - with links to tutorials, subject guides, curriculum examples, current projects, etc.

• Library is part of Academic Services Division, as are Learning Design and Learning Development. Together they are collaborating more and more with each other and Academics through faculty service agreements and project to map tertiary literacies across Faculties (schools and/or divisions).

• Have licensed Digital Commons for institutional repository and are investigating content management system for learning objects.

University of South Australia (Adelaide) –

• About 30,000 students at 5 campuses with significant “remote” population. Five to six thousand students are “off-shore” and 49% of students come from Equity Groups - . Historically a leader in distance education in Australia.

• Curriculum is offered through four academic divisions: Business; Arts and Social Sciences; Information Technology, Engineering and the Environment; and Health Sciences. Each Division has a team of Academic Service Librarians that work with it.

• UniSA was first among universities to articulate Graduate Qualities - . Second quality addresses information literacy under lifelong learning.

• 1998 UniSA developed its own learning management system based on priorities of interoperability, scalability and functionality/features: UniSANet - . Version 2 released in 2001.

• Library and Flexible Learning Center in same administrative portfolio. Academic Librarians work with FLC/Learning Connection - - professional developers, online advisors, career advisors, study advisors. FLC/Learning Connection negotiates service agreements with Deans based on program needs. FLC works with Library within service agreements. Requests for librarian collaboration also come directly from Academics.

• Released first version of Student Portal in January, 2005; second version under development. My Services tab of portal has option for My Resources/My Library which includes borrowing, catalogue, reserves, federated search. Uses active directory and single sign-on.

• Also evaluating learning object institutional repository and e-research repository.

Boston College –

• BC enrolled 14,500 students in 2005, about 2/3 as undergraduates and 1/3 in graduate or professional programs.

• BC’s main campus is in the Chestnut Hill suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, and the Law School is on another campus in nearby Newton, MA. The School of Social Work has off-campus sites in Maine, Worcester and southeastern Mass.

• Its academic programs are offered through 7 divisions: the College of Arts and Sciences: Carroll School of Management; Lynch School of Education; Connell School of Nursing; Graduate School of Social Work; Law School; and the Woods College of Advancing Studies.

• A separate department from the Library under the purview of the Academic Vice President, Instructional Design and eTeaching Services (ETS) assists faculty integrate technology into their teaching through instructional design, consulting, training and project management. ETS consults with librarian subject specialists on alternative content sources, and the strongest relationship is with the Libraries’ Media Center which digitizes or acquires digital content.

• ETS runs a Faculty Summer Workshop and faculty are encouraged to submit project proposals. Instructional designers facilitate connections with library services, staff and resources as needed to complete the faculty projects. Some of these projects involve WebCT course sites.

• BC Libraries support an institutional repository (Digital Commons) and a digital content repository (DigiTool) - . Digital content, such as language teaching audio aides, audio of speeches and videos, are stored on a streaming server and protected by access via WebCT

Connecticut College –

• CC is a small, residential liberal arts college located in the southeastern corner of Connecticut, on the outskirts of the city of New London.

• CC enrolls about 1,900 students who take courses produced through 30 academic departments. The College is predominantly an undergraduate institution, though it offers three graduate programs with a current enrollment of 25 students.

• In the 1990’s Connecticut College restructured its computing and library services. Now Information Services (IS) includes teams for instructional technology; research support and instruction; information resources; technical support; and special collections and archives. Administrative computing, desktop support, media, telecommunications, and web support are among the campus services offered by IS, in addition to traditional library functions. From this division comes support for the course management system, library services and the information literacy program.

• In the Fall of 2002, member libraries of the CTW Consortium, Connecticut College, Trinity College and Wesleyan University, were awarded a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support collaborative programs in information literacy. This grant supported some faculty-librarian CMS content development.

• Information Services and the Center for Teaching and Learning jointly produce the Temple Summer Institute, a two week program for 10-15 faculty to learn about and create a course in WebCT. Seminar sessions address pedagogy and course objectives and design, as well as copyright responsibilities and library services.

• CC is piloting the Digital Commons institutional repository.

Libraries and course management system connections

Templates or “Pre-Sets”

• University of Wollongong - VISTA template for Readings and Library Resources includes:

o E-readings (),

o Catalogue

o Databases

o Resources by Faculty (),

o Teach Yourself (),

o Ask Your Librarian (),

o What’s New

• University of South Australia - UniSANet has many templates but the pre-sets allow for flexibility. Academic Librarians choose to use these in different ways, some populating them extensively with content and learning objects which they can turn on and off, others working with common elements across programs.

• Boston College – WebCT course site automatically includes link to library.

E-Readings/E-Reserves

• University of Wollongong - Copyright Officer on library staff. Academics (faculty) must submit readings through the Library. Articles and book chapters are scanned and saved as PDF files. Brief MARC records are created for them, housed in catalog, with links to PDF files on server in Information Technology Services (ITS). No longer any print article or book chapter reserves, though there are some books. Last year converted contents of “Books of Readings” or coursepacks to e-readings. Links to e-reading records in MilCirc (III catalog) from course in learning management system are constructed by ITS, a standard query string with a unique item number.

• University of South Australia - E-readings managed by Library are part of course pages.

• Boston College – If faculty has both WebCT site and e-reserves site, library reserves staff will make a link to e-reserves in WebCT site, then notify faculty. BC employs a streaming server to deliver copyright protected media to students via WebCT.

• Connecticut College – Faculty are responsible for creating and maintaining electronic course reserves. Information Services division includes Digital Curriculum Center where faculty can get help creating digital objects. WebCT is only means of collectively offering electronic course reserves and this is incentive for faculty to adopt WebCT.

Standalone tutorials

• University of Wollongong - Pre-requisite online tutorial, ILIP, for all entering students administered by Student Services, content produced by librarians. When students have completed tutorial with assessments successfully, they no longer have access to content (). Also, Research Edge, stand alone, generic online tutorial revamped last year in collaboration between librarians and faculty/learning developer. Piece of this on evaluating information is linked from subject in Wollongong University College curricula ().

• University of South Australia - Academic Librarians link to a stand alone tutorial InfoGate - - or elements of it, from UniSANet subject page.

• Connecticut College – Research 101, in WebCT, is assigned to all incoming freshmen with recommendation that they complete prior to arrival -

• Boston College – In process of developing Academic Integrity Tutorial which can be presented in its entirety or selected modules (documentation, plagiarism, re-use, planning for research, ethical use) can be incorporated in other formats.

Links to subject/course/assignment guides

• University of South Australia - May use links to subject guides - - from UniSANet or “Need Help With Your Assignment?” guides for specific subjects - .

• University of Wollongong – CMS course sites have links to library produced subject or assignment guides - - e.g.:

o Science/Human Geography links to “Refugees” page –

o H&BS subjects link to “Statistics” page -

“Embedded” content and assessment

• University of South Australia - Business core course “Communication & the Media” has module in UniSANet for “Writing the First Essay” – – which uses progressive skill-building and video on how to search.

• University of Wollongong - Subject specific course integration of information literacy building tasks and assessment is result of Faculty Librarian collaboration with Course Coordinator and Academic, e.g.:

o Faculty librarian has worked with Nursing Academics (faculty) to include sequence, with assessment, on citing resources and styles within module of VISTA subject Midwifery and Population Health. She sees new nursing students within first few weeks of their first year to introduce them to CINAHL and demonstrate a model search strategy. Support documents and presentation are included in LMS.

o Faculty librarian’s work with Informatics Academic to integrate information literacy skills into Information Technology and Citizens’ Rights, a compulsory subject, was cited as Good Practice Case Study for University.

o Faculty librarian for Law is involved in three weeks, two hours/week, of compulsory first year subject, Legal Research & Writing. See supporting tutorial at . Tutorial was formerly part of WebCT, but librarian and faculty found students were so focused on assessment that they didn’t learn content thoroughly. Now, just quizzes are in WebCT, and students do them apart from class time.

• Connecticut College – Music faculty and librarian and anthropology faculty and librarian have collected guides and materials in WebCT modules which complement in-class instruction. These materials support students’ completion of assignments.

Discussion

• Are CMSs content containers or learning systems?

• Does information literacy education have a place in CMSs? If so, where?

• Are there effective incentives to encourage collaboration between faculty, instructional technologists and librarians to advance teaching and learning?

• Does federal and institutional policy have an affect on the quality of higher education?

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download