Home    Multimedia   Follow:   Subscribe    RSS   Facebook    Twitter   Share:        Delicious

search this site search web

Next Gen: "eLearning: Libraries increasingly help steer the ship" by Erika Bennett, Reference Librarian, Harold Abel School of Psychology, Capella University, Minneapolis, MN, USA

eLearning: Libraries increasingly help steer the ship
By Erika Bennett, Reference Librarian, Harold Abel School of Psychology, Capella University, Minneapolis, MN, USA

Erika Bennett

eLearning has traveled a long distance in a very short time. One can’t deny that, so far this Millennium, its impact has been enormous. In 2007, the Sloan Consortium reported that 3.5 million American college students (20%) were enrolled in an online course. The rise in online enrollments from 2005 to 2006 alone was 10%. From modest roots, to shoddy diploma mill notoriety, to academic esteem, to the status of economic juggernaut, eLearning’s rags-to-riches story seems almost Hollywood in scope.

How I became an eLearning librarian

My experience with eLearning has evolved at a similarly rapid pace. Though I am a member of the Millennial generation, I first encountered online classroom software in 2002 when Blackboard hosted half of my library cataloging course. Since I was also employed as a solo librarian at the time, and money for conferences was a laughable prospect, free webinars served up a lifeline for professional development opportunities.

Last year I dove into the heart of eLearning, accepting a position as a subject liaison/reference/instruction librarian for a wholly digital library inside a completely online university. My institution is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission and serves over 20,000 students in more than 100 degree specializations, primarily for postgraduates. Our librarian duties are surprisingly normal: help students locate, evaluate and use information resources effectively.

In the past military personnel were hesitant to start degrees while still active, since deployment meant they would have to withdraw. Now, from all over the world, we get phone calls peppered with the percussion of chopper blades and apologies for poor Skype reception.

I’ve since been completely immersed in eLearning, which may either be coincidental or a sign of the times. The coursework for my second master’s degree has been completely online, and I use multiple Web 2.0 technologies in my daily liaison activities. In April, I attended my first Off-Campus Library Services Conference (OCLS) in Salt Lake City.

Given this background, following is what I have learned.

Libraries and eLearning

eLearning has been both a ferocious ally and competitor to libraries, and the relationship was decidedly rocky at first. In the late nineties, librarians wrote with suspicion about distance education, treating the prospect like Goliath lumbering in over the horizon. Public libraries scolded distance learning programs for dumping their students on local libraries that could not support them. Alarmed academic librarians also warned of the challenge in giving off-campus students equal access to library services.

Now librarians have proven to be influential early-adopters for learning technologies of every variety. We’ve learned to distinguish between technological literacy and information literacy and teach others the same. In an age of user-generated content, quality information can be even harder to recognize. Our obligation to distance students includes helping them access scholarly sources and learn to discern credibility in a sea of pixel-based publications.

What librarians should know about online learning

The first advantage to education online is its asynchronous nature. The learners at my institution are predominantly middle-aged and female, with careers and families to support. Their lives make traveling to physical classrooms inconvenient at best. They squeeze their coursework into the early morning hours and often work far ahead of assignment deadlines just to guarantee that they’ll keep up. (If there’s a course reading with a broken link, we’re sure to hear about it weeks ahead of time.)

The second advantage to online education is its portability. 16% of the students at my institution are in the armed forces and many are currently deployed. Educational benefit programs are a significant perk of military service, and technology allows personnel to collect those benefits while serving. In the past military personnel were hesitant to start degrees while still active, since deployment meant they would have to withdraw. Now, from all over the world, we get phone calls peppered with the percussion of chopper blades and apologies for poor Skype reception.

As eResources increase, we will continue to serve as navigators at the crossroads of scholarly information and technology.

Of course, connections are not always stable and broadband can be inconsistent on the front lines. At OCLS in 2007, Edward W. Murphy of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University told of Navy submariners who might only surface in an icy sea one day a month. During the 24 hours of signal reception, they download their entire courses in audio WMP4 format and upload their assignments and discussion posts. His library monitors the file sizes of participating personnel’s course guides to ensure speedy downloads in hectic settings.

In online learning, students may face more than one challenge in trying to learn library skills. Precise database searching offers its particular learning curve, but, for many of our learners who are returning to school after years or even decades in the workplace, the challenge is more fundamental. Some tell me “I’m not very good with computers,” even though their education program’s conversations, assignments and readings all occur in a digital environment. Meanwhile, online course rooms are built to be self-contained. So it’s no wonder that instead of seeking out disconnected library research tools (those foreign new replacements for the print indexes and card catalogs of memory), many adult distance students default to the research tool that has helped best at work through the years: their friendly Internet search engine.

The role of librarians in the online course room

Though it’s easy to be at the heart of a university when your impressive Gothic library building sits at the center of a brick-and-mortar campus, distance librarians have discovered innovative ways to underpin online learning spaces too. Embedded librarian involvement poses some of the most exciting library forays into strengthening online course rooms. York and Vance‘s Ten Best Practices for Embedded Librarians (2007) draws from a comprehensive literature review and survey responses from 159 professionals. According to these authors, including a prominent link to the library inside the structure of a course room serves as a first step in extending the library but “a link is not a service.” Links are not active enough.

In the physical environment, instruction sessions must be carefully scheduled, though librarians can still rely on the whims, goodwill and memories of faculty members to allow ongoing point-of-need research instruction. In contrast, the online environment allows librarians’ participation to be more flexible and systematic. Screencasting software, which lets librarians easily record online demonstrations, brings library instruction into distance learners’ natural environment. Once a tutorial is linked to a course assignment, it continues to perform library instruction until it is willfully removed or expires.

As embedded librarians, we can evangelize inside the native space of remote learners. My library has three models of embedded library pilots, available for implementation depending on each liaison’s preference. In one model, the librarian monitors an “Ask a Librarian” discussion thread throughout the length of a course. This thread is detached from the main conversation boards, which means less traffic and more scalable involvement in multiple sections of a course. The second model consists of synchronized guides that a librarian posts at helpful intervals during a course.

The model I’m implementing is the most brief but intense. I participate fully in a week of discussion, answering any and all questions about a reflective research assignment. While this model requires significant effort, my April involvement alone generated 76 extra reference questions from my students inside the course room. As we know, students often need encouragement and guidance to form the questions that can help them most.

What does the future hold?

It’s hard to predict how far eLearning will go. Opinion polls provide equal dismay and hope for libraries. Students (89%) are overwhelmingly more likely to start their research with Web search engines than library websites, according to De Rosa, Cantrell, Hawk and Wilson (2006). Yet, Pew Internet & American Life (2007) reports that more than 50% of American adults used public libraries in the previous year and that number was highest among young people.

Assessment remains an important issue. How should we gauge the effectiveness of library instruction in the online course room? Online tutorial analytics? Surveys? Tests? As eResources increase, we will continue to serve as navigators at the crossroads of scholarly information and technology. User-generated media will continue to cast light and muddy the water for information literacy. Learning spaces may start to look more like social networks. In any case, wherever distance education leads, doubtlessly libraries will follow and increasingly steer the ship.