Comments on: When are we doing enough?

By: Peter Godwin

Peter Godwin — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 11:03:14 +0000

Once upon a time I used to worry about students not realising all the wonderful things we were providing them. Even worse they didn’t come to my Information Literacy sessions! Then I realised that they didn’t go lectures or seminars either..so I felt better. I’ve been in this “business” in academia over 30 years now and I can’t think of a better example than all the services and outreach you have provided for your students! So don’t worry so much! Some people just don’t seem to read what we tell them, and even if we were able to get them in a room and address them they have different learning styles and wouldn’t all grasp the relevant points.
Only this morning I overheard one of my colleagues who deals with DL students say “she just rung me up and I had to go over it all again- shows that even an e-mail doesn’t work”.
By the way, it was really good being able to see your presentation at Berkeley on YouTube!Thank you!

By: Rick

Rick — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 05:22:47 +0000

I really like your statement “I’m never going to stop trying to make things better,” a lot. I hope we all live by that rule. Thanks for the inspiration.

By: Andrew Liptak

Andrew Liptak — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:25:13 +0000

In regards to additional training, we do have an orientation classroom that’ll get people oriented with the basics, which seems to help, but the biggest thing that I’ve noticed is the age gap between people.
I think that people my generation who’ve used the internet extensively will intuitively follow up on links and recognize things for what they are without a whole lot of guidance.
I’ve had other students who are seemingly unable to follow directions and lead me to wonder why they’re picking a computer only course.
One thing’s for sure, the online experience will teach them about computers. It’s almost a trial by fire, because after a couple of weeks, they’ll start getting used to things within the classroom and the internet. But there are things, like not reading directions, that doesn’t really go along. I think that this system works pretty well, because the calls for help to my desk drop off after a couple weeks for most people.

By: Arnon Hershkovitz

Arnon Hershkovitz — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 08:09:42 +0000

Hi, Meredith (and all)!

Reading this post really reminded me a lesson I learnt from one of my lectures in a free-course-course I once had. He was a philosopher and the course was bout politics and ideology.

The one rule I remember, and I see it everytime I talk with people or hear people discussing is that: people don’t listen to the second part of a sentence; politicians don’t listen to the first part.

From my experience with people, I now know that this lecture was really optimistic about the people, and they often don’t listen even to the first part…

By: Meredith Farkas

Meredith Farkas — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 02:35:57 +0000

Yes, if we can reach at least a few students, we can feel good about the work we do. We should always strive to do better and to respond to feedback that we can act on, but yes, we should be happy when we have helped some of our students.

By: Nancy

Nancy — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 00:23:28 +0000

We just implemented the embedded librarian into many of our Blackboard classes this past semester and are now running into the same survey frustrations you are. I certainly feel better knowing that it’s not just me banging my head against a wall.

And I feel the same way that Georgia does. As long as my services were able to reach at least one new student each semester, I feel that it was a success. Of course, that doesn’t stop me from wanting to reach *all* of the students. And thus the frustration begins.

By: Karen Weis

Karen Weis — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:00:37 +0000

Unfortunately, web literacy is NOT a requirement for people who apply to and enroll in distance education programs. If it was, that might solve part of the ‘unmotivated learner’ problem. I suspect that the reason many people do online classes is because they think it’s easier and more convenient than going to in-person classes. They underestimate the time it takes to navigate through clunky WebCT and Blackboard interfaces, and they have little idea of how to do research besides typing a bunch of stuff into Google. Folks like this come into my public library all the time asking for help with their college homework. I wonder how they can justify their online Bachelors or Masters degree when they can’t even cite an article to save their lives. Case in point: a customer I helped last month who bragged that he had a 4.0 GPA in his online MBA program, but who didn’t have a clue how to search a database or conduct ANY kind of research! Makes you wonder about the standards of his online program, as well as his post-degree career prospects.

Meredith, it sounds like you’ve done an incredible job of putting the info where people can get to it. I wish all DE librarians were as thorough as you! If students choose not to take advantage of the information you’ve seeded your school’s DE site with, you can’t kick yourself too hard over it. The pursuit of an education is the STUDENT’S responsibility. The school, its staff and its library resources are meant to supplement a student’s pursuit of knowledge, but they can’t replace an individual’s motivation or override a student’s desire to be spoon-fed instead of taking the initiative in helping him-/herself. The problem with distance education is that there’s too much “get your degree in your pajamas” hype and too little attention to building web interfaces that are user-friendly, especially to those who have low levels of computer literacy.

By: Meredith Farkas

Meredith Farkas — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 20:48:50 +0000

Andrew, I totally agree in the case of your program (most programs have slightly more tech-savvy students). And I can’t disagree with you about WebCT either; I hate trying to do anything inside that beast.

I’m wondering… if students don’t have the basic computer skills they need to do an online course, should we be providing them with additional training on that? For them to be coming into an online program without those skills puts them at a serious disadvantage. It would be nice to have something like the pre-MBA seminar (but maybe only a few weeks long) where they learn the basics of using the Internet, using WebCT, using the online library, etc. Then they’d come into the class ready to learn the material, instead of learning the systems.

By: Andrew Liptak

Andrew Liptak — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 20:12:58 +0000

This, and that most of our students (In my department at least) are fairly computer illiterate, which doesn’t help things at all when you’re trying to get them to function within the classroom. They’re just relieved to get the basics, before they go onto things such as the library, which is weird for me, as I’ve grown up using computers – it just comes as second nature to me. Plus, WebCT isn’t the world’s greatest platform…

By: Jonathan Rochkind

Jonathan Rochkind — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:05:34 +0000

Some of those complaints that you can’t do anything about are interesting. You defintiely can’t individually do anything about them, but if widespread they are things that the library as an organization could take into account in it’s actions and decision making:

“I can’t make JSTOR easier to use”

But the library can let JSTOR know that users find it too difficult to use.

“I can’t make the eBrary reader not suck.”

But the library can make this known to the vendor; can evaluate other vendors for ease of use; or can tell all vendors that we NEED DRM-less PDFs for e-books, because anything else ends up being too hard to use for our users.

“I can’t make it so that every database has the same interface.”

But the library can purchase a metasearch product, to provide a single same interface that can be used to search multiple databases. (Certainly such a product brings it’s own challengse too).

None of these are things you can do something about individually, but they are all complaints that need to filter up to library actors and decision makers who CAN—and in many of our library organizations, they seldom do.