CIT Infobits

Issue 20
February 2000
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.

Students' Distress with a Web-Based Distance Education Course
Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe
Short Online Course on Web Searching
Learning Technology Publication
Building Websites for Science Literacy
Cambridge History of English and American Literature Online
Recommended Reading

STUDENTS' DISTRESS WITH A WEB-BASED DISTANCE EDUCATION COURSE

Rob Kling, professor of information systems and information science at Indiana University at Bloomington School of Library and Information Science's Center for Social Informatics, studies the social aspect of computerization. Kling and Noriko Hara (doctoral candidate, Indiana University Bloomington School of Education) have published a case study of the problems that arose in a distance-education course. In "Students' Distress with a Web-based Distance Education Course" Hara and Kling describe two areas that caused frustrations for the students: technological problems, compounded by no access to technical support; and the course content and the instructor's practices in managing her communications with her students. "Unfortunately, a large percentage of the popular and practitioner articles about computer-mediated distance education emphasize the potentials of new technology, and understate the extent to which instructors may need to develop new pedagogies as well as different approaches to communication practices in their on-line courses." The authors believe that educators "have much to learn about the conditions that create the good, the bad, and the ugly in Internet-enabled text-based distance education," and they offer some suggestions for how new pedagogies and practices can be implemented to improve these conditions.

"Students' Distress with a Web-based Distance Education Course" is available on the Web at http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/wp00-01.html

An interview with Rob Kling (The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 21, 2000) is available at http://chronicle.com/free/2000/02/2000022101u.htm

Related article: "As Distance Education Comes of Age, the Challenge Is Keeping the Students," by Sarah Carr, The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 11, 2000, p. A39. Online at http://chronicle.com/free/v46/i23/23a00101.htm

LOTS OF COPIES KEEPS STUFF SAFE

While the Web can be a far more effective medium for scholarly communication than paper, so far it lacks the essential property of permanence. The Stanford Libraries LOCKSS project (Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe) will provide "persistent access" to online works that is closely modeled on the paper system. Freely-distributed LOCKSS software, running on small, cheap microcomputers, will allow libraries to preserve Web-published academic material. The prototype is currently being tested at Stanford University, the University of California Berkeley, Harvard University, Columbia University, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

For more information about LOCKSS, go to http://lockss.stanford.edu/ or contact Vicky Reich, Assistant Director HighWire Press, Stanford University Library; email: vreich@stanford.edu

Also of interest: "Digital Preservation: Everything Old is New Again," by Andrew K. Pace, Computers in Libraries, vol. 20, no. 2, February 2000, p. 55. Online at http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/feb00/pace.htm

SHORT ONLINE COURSE ON WEB SEARCHING

"So, you're still getting those 1,670,000+ responses to your search queries on the Web, and you're still too busy to do anything about it, like reading the lengthy, and sometimes confusing, 'help' screens to find out how to improve your searching techniques." With "Bare Bones 101: A Basic Tutorial on Searching the Web," users can improve their Web searching with a minimum investment of time and effort. The tutorial was created by Ellen Chamberlain, head librarian at the University of South Carolina at Beaufort, for professors and students who just want a quick overview to get them started. Lessons include basic search tips, creating a search strategy, evaluating Web pages, and overviews of several popular search engines.

"Bare Bones 101" is on the Web at http://www.sc.edu/beaufort/library/bones.html

LEARNING TECHNOLOGY PUBLICATION

Learning Technology reports on the activities of the IEEE Computer Society Learning Technology Task Force, including various announcements, work in progress, projects, and participation opportunities. Recent issues included the following articles:

"Teaching Virtual Reality Using Internet Distance Delivery," by Veronica S. Pantelidis and Lawrence Auld, Co-Directors, Virtual Reality and Education Laboratory, School of Education, East Carolina University

"Features of Online Discourse for Education," by Anita Pincas, Lecturer in Education, Institute of Education, London University

"Educational Technologies: A Mythic Quest Beyond Megabytes," by Alan Altany, Associate Professor, Department of Religious Studies, Marshall University

Learning Technology [ISSN 1438-0625] is published quarterly by the IEEE Computer Society Learning Technology Task Force (LTTF). It is available at no cost in HTML and PDF formats at http://lttf.ieee.org/learn_tech/

LTTF has been founded on the premise that emerging technology has the potential to dramatically improve learning. The purpose of this task force is to contribute to the field of Learning Technology and to serve the needs of professionals working in this field. For more information, link to http://lttf.ieee.org/

The IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers] promotes the "engineering process of creating, developing, integrating, sharing, and applying knowledge about electrical and information technologies and sciences for the benefit of humanity and the profession." For more information, link to http://www.ieee.org/

BUILDING WEBSITES FOR SCIENCE LITERACY

In "Building Websites for Science Literacy" [Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship, no. 25, Winter 2000] Victoria Welborn and Bryn Kanar (Science Library, University of California, Santa Cruz) provide guidelines for evaluating Websites and organizing "webliographies" on scientific topics. The authors' guidelines are developed from "definitions of science literacy and science information literacy and illustrated by a sample webliography and a sample search strategy on the topic of acoustical oceanography." Although targeted towards reference librarians, the article is of interest to others who are creating resource guides in the sciences. The article is available on the Web at http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/00-winter/article2.html

Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship [ISSN: 1092-1206] is a quarterly publication of the Science and Technology Section of ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries). The journal is available on the Web at no charge at http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/

ACRL, a division of the American Library Association, is a professional association of academic librarians and other interested individuals. It is dedicated to enhancing the ability of academic library and information professionals to serve the information needs of the higher education community and to improve learning, teaching, and research.

CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE ONLINE

Bartleby.com publishes classics of literature, nonfiction, and reference free of charge for the classroom and home use. They recently announced the online publication of all eighteen volumes of the Cambridge History of English and American Literature. "Originally published in 1907-1921, the volumes include 303 chapters and more than 11,000 pages, edited and written by a worldwide panel of 171 leading scholars and thinkers of the early twentieth century." The English literature chapters begin with Old English poetry and end with the late Victorian era. Coverage of American literature ranges from colonial and revolutionary periods through the early twentieth century.

The Cambridge History is on the Web at http://www.bartleby.com/cambridge/

Link to http://www.bartleby.com/ for access to other online literary works.

CIT Infobits

Issue 20 February 2000 ISSN 1521-9275

Issue 20
February 2000
ISSN 1521-9275