CIT Infobits - July, 2003
Issue 61
ISSN 1521-9275
About INFOBITS
Infobits is an electronic service of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ITS Teaching and Learning's Center for Instructional Technology. Each month the CIT's Information Resources Consultant monitors and selects from a number of information and instructional technology sources that come to her attention and provides brief notes for electronic dissemination to educators.
U.S. Distance Education Survey
Distance Learning Resources
Information Visualization Tools Are Improving
Commercial vs. Research Library Online Reference Services
Perennial Plagiarism
Spam Wars
Recommended Reading
U.S. DISTANCE EDUCATION SURVEY
This month the U.S. Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released the report "Distance Education at Degree-Granting Postsecondary Institutions: 2000-2001." The report includes data on the number and proportion of institutions offering distance education courses during 2000-2001, distance education enrollments and course offerings, distance education technologies, and factors that keep institutions from starting or expanding distance education offerings.
Some of the findings that the data reveal include:
-- Public institutions were more likely to offer distance education courses than were private institutions.
-- In the 12-month 2000-2001 academic year, there were an estimated 3,077,000 enrollments in all distance education courses offered by 2-year and 4-year institutions.
-- Among institutions offering distance education courses, the majority (90 percent) reported that they offered Internet courses using asynchronous computer-based instruction.
The report is available online, at no cost, in PDF format at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2003017.
NCES is the primary U.S. federal entity for collecting and analyzing data that are related to education in the U.S. and other nations. NCES is located within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences. For more information, contact NCES, 1990 K Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006, USA; tel: 202-502-7300; email: http://nces.ed.gov/webmail/; Web: http://nces.ed.gov/.
Bernie Sloan and Sharon Stoerger, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, have compiled and maintain "Library Support for Distance Learning," a website listing links to distance education organizations, websites, articles, and policies. The resource is available at http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/~b-sloan/libdist.htm.
INFORMATION VISUALIZATION TOOLS ARE IMPROVING
Patterns in large amounts or in complex data are often better understood and recognized using visualization techniques, such as spreadsheets, charts, and graphs. More sophisticated information visualization ("infoviz" in geek speak) tools have been around for over a decade, but never entered the mainstream of computer applications. According to author of "Grokking the Infoviz" (The Economist, June 19, 2003), the situation has begun to change because the structuring and marking up of data has improved and because the commercial market for visualization tools is heating up. The article is available online at http://economist.com/science/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1841120.
The Economist [ISSN 0013-0613] is published weekly by the Economist Group. For more information, contact: The Economist, 25 St James's Street, London, SW1A 1HG UK; tel: +44 (0)20 7830 7000; fax: +44 (0)20 7839 2968; Web: http://www.economist.com/.
COMMERCIAL VS. RESEARCH LIBRARY ONLINE REFERENCE SERVICES
"Academic librarians must become more savvy in articulating their value to the educational enterprise in order to prosper in a rapidly changing information environment. Commercial enterprises determine their services in part by assessing their competitors and going one better." In April 2002, the popular Google Web-based search service introduced "Google Answers," an expert answering service staffed by several hundred freelance researchers. Is this an example of "going one better" than the academic librarians? To find out, the Cornell University Library (CUL) conducted a brief study to compare Google Answers with CUL's own online reference services.
CUL's study "provided an opportunity for librarians to shift their focus from fearing the impact of Google, as usurper of the library's role and diluter of the academic experience, to gaining insights into how Google's approach to service development and delivery has made it so attractive." A summary of the study is available in "Google Meets eBay: What Academic Librarians Can Learn from Alternative Information Providers" (D-Lib Magazine, vol. 9, no. 6, June 2003), by Anne R. Kenney et al. The article is available online at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june03/kenney/06kenney.html.
D-Lib Magazine [ISSN: 1082-9873] covers innovation and research in digital libraries. D-Lib is published, online and free of charge, eleven times a year by the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) and is sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). For more information, contact: D-Lib Magazine, c/o Corporation for National Research Initiatives, 1895 Preston White Drive, Reston VA 20191 USA; tel: 703-620-8990; fax: 703-620-0913; email: dlib@cnri.reston.va.us; Web: http://www.dlib.org/.
While the Web provides unique resources for student research and papers, it also increases the ease with which students can plagiarize. In "Perennial Plagiarism" [Web Tools Newsletter, July 7, 2003], Graeme Daniel and Kevin Cox revisit the topic and provide links to articles on why people plagiarize, how students can avoid plagiarism, and how instructors can detect it. The article is online at http://webtools.cityu.edu.hk/news/newslett/plagiarism2003.htm.
Web Tools Newsletter is published weekly by Web Tools for Learning, a teaching development project of the Division of Computer Studies at the City University of Hong Kong.
See also:
Although written primarily for faculty and students on our campus, the UNC-Chapel Hill Center for Instructional Technology's resource guide, "Plagiarism: Detecting, Preventing, and Understanding," may also be of interest. It's available at http://its.unc.edu/tl/guides/plagiarism/.
Spam: everyone gets it; everyone hates it. The July/August 2003 issue of Technology Review (http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/focuson0703.asp) reports on the increasing spread of spam and includes links to spam-blocking tools. (Some articles in the report are available only to subscribers.)
Technology Review [ISSN 1099-274X] is published ten times a year by Technology Review, Inc., a Massachusetts Institute of Technology enterprise. For more information, contact Technology Review, One Main Street, 7th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02142 USA; tel: 617-475-8000; fax: 617-475-8042; Web: http://www.technologyreview.com/.
See also:
"Why Am I Getting All This Spam? Unsolicited Commercial E-mail Research Six Month Report"
In 2002, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) began a project to determine what attracts spammers and what methods work to avoid getting spam. The CDT's March 2003 paper explains the study's methodology and reports on their findings. The report is available online at http://www.cdt.org/speech/spam/030319spamreport.shtml.
The Center for Democracy and Technology in an Internet public policy organization that "seeks practical solutions to enhance free expression and privacy in global communications technologies." For more information, contact: The Center For Democracy & Technology, 1634 Eye Street NW, Suite 1100, Washington, DC 20006 USA; tel: 202-637-9800; fax: 202-637-0968; email: feedback@cdt.org; Web: http://www.cdt.org/.
"Recommended Reading" lists items that have been recommended to me or that Infobits readers have found particularly interesting and/or useful, including books, articles, and websites published by Infobits subscribers. Send your recommendations to kotlas@email.unc.edu for possible inclusion in this column.
The Virtual Student: A Profile and Guide to Working With Online Learners by Rena M. Palloff and Keith Pratt. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003; ISBN: 0-7879-6474-3) $29 paperback
To see the table of contents, to read an excerpt, or to order review copies: http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787964743.html.
To purchase the e-book version: http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787971197.html.
"This book combines an overview of the key issues affecting online teaching and learning with practical teaching tips and resources for instructors in online courses. In describing the typical online student, the authors tackle some basic questions: What makes a successful virtual student? How do the needs of distance learners differ from their traditional-classroom counterparts?"
-- The Chronicle of Higher Education review
(CHE subscriber access: http://chronicle.com/teaching/books/2003061001b.htm)
