Outreach and Distance-independent Learning
Associate Professor Maurita Holland, also director of the Office for Academic Outreach and Practical Engagement Programs, has spearheaded the School's efforts in outreach and distance-independent learning. The goals of the School's program in these areas are to:
- Explore and evaluate various technologies available for outreach and distance-independent learning.
- Adopt or invent cost-effective, scalable models which meet the needs of information professionals.
- Consider how the School of Information can become a school without walls, globally promulgating its new discipline.
- Enlist distance-independent technologies to reverse advantage -- bringing the best of the world into our classrooms.
Holland and former faculty member Howard Besser experimented with distance-independent learning in separate courses in the 1994-95 academic year. Faculty stretched existing technologies (especially using desktop video for a whole-room application); they also expected ISDN technology would be more stable and easier to deploy than it proved to be. Documenting their experiences is a World Wide Web presentation which provides a rich legacy of course materials and evaluation for the frequent requests these faculty receive regarding their efforts. Besser and doctoral student Maria Bonn (at the time a master's-level student) edited an entire issue of the prestigious Journal of the American Society for Information Science (JASIS) and collected over a dozen papers for inclusion in this special issue. Besser, Holland, and Bonn documented their experiences using distance-independent technologies in SI classrooms in separate articles in this issue, and in articles and proceedings in other publications, and have given oral presentations on their experiences at conferences across the country.
M-VISION is developing as a window into the School of Information. Using Real Audio as a audio communications tool and slides as visual material, the M-VISION web site currently includes two presentations with more planned. One site was authored by masters-level graduate Stacey Donahue, and features her talk about distance-independent learning presented in October 1995 at the EDUCOM Conference in Portland, Oregon. Future work will include brief interviews with guest speakers at SI and possible extension to modularized, full courses delivered in this mode. An explanation of the vision for this work is available in the form of a ten-minute videotape presentation entitled "Distance Independent Asynchronous Learning" produced in summer 1995. Maurita Holland also described M-VISION in "Multimedia meets the Web" at the Michigan Library Association's annual meeting in Grand Rapids, November 1995.
Our progress and experience to date with outreach and distance-independent learning has helped frame institutes which are planned for summer 1996, including one on Collaborative Technologies for Academic Libraries, planned jointly with the University of Michigan Library. Further work on modularization of course material will be reflected in the emerging foundations course and in instructional modules for students and faculties on specific information technologies on a need-to-know basis.
