Outcomes
From May 1, 1995 to April of 1996, we have been in the process of evaluating and reporting on the experimental distance-independent learning class taught by Howard Besser in the Winter 1995 term. We have worked extensively with student responses and evaluations, had discussions with experts in the field of distance independent learning, reported at conferences, and prepared a special issue of JASIS: Perspectives, due out in September of 1996, on the theme of distance-independent education. We have maintained and met the goals set in the spring of last year.
Implementation
Howard Besser, Maria Bonn, and Stacey Donohue have completed the following distance-independent learning activities over the past year:
* Analysis of student evaluations from Winter 1995.
* Summary and analysis of student response papers from Winter 1995.
* Comprehensive description of the course content, methodology, and the technology required to support it.
* Preparation of several conference papers and journal articles reporting on various aspects of the distance-independent courses from Winter 1995.
* Survey of several universities and businesses about distance-independent learning programs in place.
* Identification of experts in the field.
* Solicitation of experts for articles for special issue of JASIS.
* Editing of articles for JASIS issue and preparation of issue.
* Continued experiments in distance-independent learning with Winter 1996 "Impact of New Information Resources: Multimedia and Networks."
Context
The School and Cristal-Ed have been supportive of distance-independent education activities, and have provided the resources to put together a faculty-staff-student team to evaluate the Winter 1995 course and to report on its findings.
More generally, we have come to conclusions about how the implementation of distance-independent learning environments provokes changes to the university culture that need to be considered for distance-independent programs to succeed and to be implemented on a large scale. The roles of instructors, research assistants, libraries, administrators, and computer support personnel all must shift. In addition, distant learning prompts a rethinking of the power relations between instructors, staff, students and administrators. Many of the challenges are logistical and administrative issues that will need to be addressed on a one-time, start-up basis. For example, academic calendars need to be adjusted (starting and ending dates, vacation and holiday periods, examination dates), different schools' student expectations need to be brought into line (workload, number of credit hours), and when an instructor teaches simultaneously at multiple universities new schemes for instructor compensation must be developed. Multi-site courses also require a rethinking of course support services such as those provided by libraries, media centers, and computing facilities. Having different collections and other resources, different types of assistance, and different access hours can give one set of students an unfair advantage over those in other sites. Other issues, such as those of curricular support and the nature of instruction will need to be renegotiated on an ongoing basis as the technological infrastructure, and our use of it, changes.
Future Plans
We will continue work on the JASIS Perspectives issue and will publicize our findings as widely as possible. We will also continue to meet with other parties involved in similar activities. In cooperation with other Kellogg-funded Community Networking initiatives within the School, Howard Besser will speak on Distance Learning at the Community Networking '96 Conference in May in Taos. In addition, he and Stacey Donohue will speak on distance learning at the May ASIS conference in San Diego.
The findings from these efforts will inform future School efforts in this area, which are being spearheaded by Maurita Holland.
Dissemination
We have tried to widely disseminate our findings from both the experimental distance learning courses we taught, as well as from the rest of our work in this area. Because of journal publication cycles, only one of these articles (authored by Dr. Besser) has thusfar appeared in print, but four others by Dr. Besser are in press (see below). In addition, Dr. Besser has given four talks on this subject to professional societies, and abstracts from the JASIS Perspectives issue are mounted on a Web site (http://www.sils.umich.edu/impact/JASIS/).
Publications
Multimedia and Networks Teach about Museums: Issues in Maintaining a WWW Site to Facilitate Distance Learning, in David Bearman (ed.), Multimedia Computing and Museums (Selected Papers from the Third International Conference on Hypermedia and Interactivity in Museums), Pittsburgh: Archives & Museum Informatics, 1995, pages 124-140
Interactive Distance-Independent Education: Challenges to Traditional Academic Roles, Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, (co-authored with Maria Bonn, accepted for review)
editor of Distance-Independent Learning, special Perspectives issue of Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Sept 1996 (co-edited with Stacey Donahue; in press)
Issues and Challenges for the Distance-Independent Environment, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Sept 1996 (in press)
The Impact of Distance-Independent Education, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Sept 1996 (co-authored with Maria Bonn, in press)
Talks Given
Hypermedia in Support of Distant-Independent Education Hypertext '96, Association for Computing Machinery, Bethesda, March 20, 1996
Interactive Distance-Independent Education: Challenges to Traditional Academic Roles Association for Library and Information Science Education, San Antonio, January 18, 1996
Using Multimedia and Networks to Teach about Museums: Issues in Maintaining a WWW Site to Facilitate Distance Learning Hands-On: The International Conference on Hypermedia and Interactivity in Museums, San Diego, October 12, 1995
Teaching With Electronic Documents American Society for Information Science, Minneapolis, May 25, 1995
Web Site
http://www.sils.umich.edu/impact/JASIS/