The theme of the seminar was "Web resources on the cheap: using free and low-cost Internet resources for learning and teaching: a seminar for HE and FE librarians and information managers' Speakers were from HE and FE institutions. The delegates were mostly from HE, but also FE.
There is a presumption among many academic librarians that information which is paid for (and is often expensive) is the most important, useful and recommendable to users. But our users may often find that free information - be it free e-journals, e-books, or just Web sites - is often much more appropriate and is certainly more easily available. The FE sector is particularly forward-looking in the sharing and dissemination of free resources, including the development of learning objects. This meeting brought together some of the people who are working on exploiting these free resources.
ALBEDA is one of the JISC Exchange for Learning (X4L) projects. The X4L programme is exploring the re-purposing of existing and forthcoming JISC funded content suitable for use in learning. The programme also encompasses content created by other bodies and agencies active in this area where intellectual property rights allow for educational use in FE and HE, or can be negotiated. More information about the X4L projects can be found at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=programme_x4l
ALBEDA is the A Level Biology : Epidemiological Data Analysis project, based at York College. Details are at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=project_epidemiology
The aim is to produce a suite of web-based learning objects, located within the Blackboard VLE. Glyn Jones is the main tutor on this project, and makes use of interactive worksheets, quizzes and online group discussions. He also makes use of suitable quality free Web resources such as the CDC WONDER -- Wide-ranging OnLine Data for Epidemiologic Research at http://wonder.cdc.gov/ and the Wellcome Institute at http://www.wellcome.ac.uk . Glyn demonstrated many of the course units and showed how assessments are carried out. The students have adapted very quickly to learning via a VLE.
Glyn's words of advice were:
Don't use online learning as a substitute for books, where students just click through screen of text and data. Interaction - including online interactions with their co-students - is essential to promote real learning and interest.
The need to cater for and cope with different IT skills of students
Glyn has used some of the output produced by the students themselves as a further resource for other students. He had some criticisms of national portals and other projects: BIOME and OMNI for being too research-focussed, NLN for being impractical. He did, however, recommend Infotrac.
Glyn declared this method of learning as "the future of independent learning and homework.'
Andy introduced Biz/ed's ( http://www.bized.ac.uk/ ) newest sections, including the Virtual Worlds, a dedicated AVCE (the Advanced Vocational Certificate of Education) section, and a guide to free Web resources. The aim is to provide hands-on materials for use in teaching and learning. There are lesson plans geared to AS/A2 and VCE Business and Economics, supported by activities and presentations. Each page is meta-tagged according to course type and level.
Customisation is possible using the "Quick Jump' option, and there was a discussion amongst the meeting participants about adding to this feature. Copyright restrictions need to be overcome.
The Resource Discovery Network (RDN) is a JISC-funded service dedicated to providing effective access to high quality Internet resources for the learning, teaching and research community. Originally funded by higher education (HE), since Spring 2000, the JISC has been supported by both the further education (FE) and HE funding councils in the UK. The RDN for FE project ( http://www.rdn.ac.uk/projects/rdnfe/ ), is developing two products:
The RDN Virtual Training Suite for FE (VTS4FE): after a ten month project, in June 2002, the RDN launched eleven new tutorials in the Virtual Training Suite aimed specifically at FE users. It includes the "RDN Include' search engine,
RDN Case Studies for FE (RDN Case Studies): the RDN is currently working with a group of FE practitioners who are evaluating the content of hub catalogues for particular FE curriculum subject areas and are producing case studies aimed at FE staff based on RDN resources (available end 2002) "RDN Include' is the RDN for FE's search engine.
The Enhancing the RDN for Further Education (RDNFE) project - part of X4L - plans to significantly develop RDN services for post-16 users, by increasing the number of resources in hub internet resource catalogues relevant to the FE. The project is gathering records enhanced with FE level and subject information from two major college collections. In addition, selected existing RDN resources will be mapped to FE level and subject information. These mapped resources will then be linked to the curriculum through the production of a number of subject-based showcase teaching packs.
The project works with other producers of materials, such as the National Learning Network (NLN) and FERL from Becta. The JISC JORUM+ is also contributing. There is the emergence of third-party packages pulling in RDN materials.
The Oxford Text Archive is part of the distributed Arts and Humanities Data Service based at Oxford, and covers languages, linguistics and literature. The Archive works to identify, collect, and preserve high-quality, well-documented electronic texts and linguistic corpora, which it then makes available to others. In addition to this archival function, the Oxford Text Archive fulfils a vital educational role, advising the creators and users of digital text resources on the importance of adhering to particular standards during resource creation and documentation, and helping them to make the most effective use of the high-quality resources that are available.
The Archive now holds several thousand electronic texts and linguistic corpora, in a variety of languages. Its holdings include electronic editions of works by individual authors, standard reference works such as the Bible and mono-/bilingual dictionaries, and a range of language corpora. It does not produce digital resources, and relies upon deposits from the wider community as the primary source of high-quality materials.
The OTA's services are:
Access to an extensive collection of high-quality electronic texts, reference works, and linguistic corpora
Expert advice on text preparation
Professional documentation and cataloguing of texts
Standardized encoding of core texts
Expert information on text availability
Archival and distribution management service
Cataloguing and documentation of texts to recognized standards
Long-term preservation of resources
Usability across technological change
Free promotion and publicity for scholarly resources, using well-established and recognized channels
Maximizing investment in resource creation
Continued accessibility for community-created resources
Expertise in the development and application of key standards
Provision of Guides to Good Practice in its areas of specialization
The Archive is more relevant to HE than FE, and is focussed on research-level materials. But future developments are likely to encompass a greater range of levels and types of material. There is, however, some distrust of e-books in higher education, based upon persistence (will it still be available in 10 years' time?) and versions.
The question "what is an e-book?' is often asked, and Martin referred the meeting to the definition on the EBONI site ( http://ebooks.strath.ac.uk/eboni/documents/definition.html )
The many formats of e-book, from proprietary PDA formats, requiring special readers, to simple PDF and HTML were discussed, and there was agreement that the proprietary versions were less likely to succeed in the long term. A survey of post-16 e-book usage has concurred with this view.
Other major producers of free e-books are Project Gutenberg ( http://promo.net/pg ), the Electronic Text Center ( http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ ) and Blackmask ( http://www.blackmask.com/ ).
EEVL is the RDN's guide to engineering mathematics and computing resources. Linda introduced some of EEVL's new services including:
ePrints UK: Metadata harvested from OAI archives (data providers), enhanced and presented through subject interfaces. The ePrints UK project is a service through which the higher and further education community can access the collective output of e-print papers available from compliant Open Archive repositories, particularly those provided by UK universities and colleges.
EEVL One Step: Searchable RSS Feeds which will make it much easier to scan the latest industry news and jobs announcements from top sources in engineering, mathematics and computing. The new services are so easy to use that they have been named OneStep Industry News, and OneStep Jobs News. Both services employ RSS (Rich Site Summary, aka Really Simple Syndication) to gather together, or "aggregate", the latest headlines in news and careers in engineering, computing, and maths. Sources used for One Step Jobs are limited to UK sites, but more sources are to be added in the future, hopefully including those in North America.
Linda also demonstrated SearchLT, which is part of the JISC Failte project ( http://www.failte.ac.uk ). This is an Internet resource catalogue with "extra value' services, to help lecturers in UK HE and FE engineering select and access suitable computer- and web-based learning materials for their courses. It is cross-searchable form EEVL.
EEVL is planning more collaborative work with RDN and LTSN hubs to add more teaching and learning materials, and is asking teachers what resources they use. Generally, the aim is provide learning resources rather than just links to Web pages.
Zoe did a very practical - and lively - demonstration of the many ways in which she has used free Web resources in teaching linguistics undergraduates in HE. Zoe uses a whole rage of different types of resource including:
Portals and sites of organisations such as the Linguistics Society of America, and the LTSN Subject centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies, and the British Academy Portal for Linguistics and Philology
Online tutorials provided by other universities such as Manitoba in Canada
Publishers sites, including some e-books
Free news services such as news.google.com
Conference and other event sites
Blogs
Mailing lists
Online newspaper reports
Free databases such as PubMed
Electronic journals
Free online surveys can be set up at various sites including http://www.surveymonkey.com and http://free-online-surveys.co.uk/ . For inspiration, students can visit bone fide research sites using online surveys - perhaps even taking part themselves. An example is at http://hyde.park.uga.edu/survey.html , which is a Linguistic Atlas Surveys exploring American dialects, focussing on pronunciation. Another survey - on child language learning - includes audio clips: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~khasky/ .
The Web can be used as language corpus which students can use for "quick and dirty' research first hand using something as simple as Google. For example, examining the use of the three terms:
Different from?
Different to?
Different than?
Shows the following occurrences on Google:
Different from |
Different than |
Different to |
8,110,000 |
2,240,000 |
1,080,000 |
There is an interesting article on using the Web as a corpus for linguistic research at: http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/cl/volk/papers/Oim_Festschrift_2002.pdf
The Web can also be used for accessing corpora, for example the British National Corpus site on English language corpora and corpus resources at http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/corpora.html
Many minority / indigenous people have a web presence - and often an online radio channel - to promote their language and culture, and these sites can be used for research. Students could contact the producers / web masters of these sites and ask for an interview about their language and what it means to them.
In summary, Zoe has found that not only can the Web be used as a useful and entertaining resource for teaching, but it can stimulate greater knowledge than other teaching methods.
Electronic Services Librarian
J.B.Morrell Library
University of York