Event: Tools and Technologies for Distance Education at SJSU - Friday, February 26, 2010

 

Steven Kaye, Senior Researcher, Novarica and Cliff Mills

Debbie Faires, Assistant Director for Distance Learning at San Jose State University (SLIS '91) and Scott McCord, a current student, took twelve people through the distance learning tools available to SJSU's School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) students using Elluminate Live on February 26th, 2010. The Elluminate tool has a broad range of functionality including audio chat (without the need for dialing into a phone conference), file transfer, real-time polling and display of poll results, text chats, video and a whiteboard. Jean Bedord, San Andreas Chapter member and part-time instructor acted as host and began with an introduction to the SLIS program, almost 3000 students participating entirely through distance learning.

Debbie took over and talked about distance learning generally and the various tools available with their uses. In general attendees were interested in the experience of younger students and how they could use the Elluminate technology in other settings. She asked participants when they received their MLS degrees and what kind of experience they had with the Internet in their schooling. The SJSU MLIS program is ALA-accredited and ranked by U.S. News and World Report, and includes a Master of Archives and Records Administration and Gateway Ph.D. programs.

Tools used by students include ANGEL, Elluminate, and SLISLife (a closed social networking setup). Students are predominantly located in North America, but there are students in Europe, Asia and Oceania as well. People enjoy the flexibility of distance learning programs and Debbie cited a U.S. Department of Education meta-analysis study indicating that online teaching is more effective than purely face-to-face learning in terms of improving student results as well as several other studies pointing to widespread use of online learning.

Scott talked about the use of both synchronous (chat, IM) and asynchronous (e.g., discussion forums, e-mail) tools - many students assume classes will be asynchronous, but many sessions are in fact synchronous (talking to professors during online office hours, group discussions, etc.) and Jean expanded on the pros and cons. Even synchronous sessions may be recorded so that people can review the recordings at their leisure.

Debbie continued with a discussion of ANGEL. ANGEL is a learning management system where most course communications and materials are stored, similar to Blackboard or Moodle. Debbie played a video for us to illustrate what a learning management system is like. Students can find and add classes, look at class calendars, participate in class exercises, build e-portfolios of their work and communicate with other students online using chat, e-mail, IM or whiteboards. Course materials can include assignments, blogs, grade books, RSS feeds and transcripts for audio and video materials. Instructors can view downloads and logins and track grades online. Instructors may provide lectures via discussion forums, Elluminate session, PowerPoint with narration, YouTube, etc.. Other asynchronous tools include blogs, Google Docs, quizzes and wikis.

Meredith Farkas is running an open course site (with some parts requiring logins), so not everything is conducted via ANGEL.

Synchronous tools include Elluminate and other web conferencing tools for class discussions, class presentations, drop-in centers, online office hours and student group meetings; IM, Second Life, Skype and text chat. Students use libraries for online resources (journal articles and databases), obtaining books via LINK+ or ILL and talk to library liaisons via e-mail, online meetings or using customized resources.

Jean took over and asked for questions for Debbie. Topics included online reference pros and cons and free tools to investigate, whether there were ways people could learn more about LMSes, whether classes had teaching assistants to help with gradings and questions.