CIT INFOBITS August 2002 No. 50 ISSN 1521-9275 About INFOBITS INFOBITS is an electronic service of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Center for Instructional Technology. Each month the CIT's Information Resources Consultant monitors and selects from a number of information and instructional technology sources that come to her attention and provides brief notes for electronic dissemination to educators. ...................................................................... Faculty Attitudes Toward Electronic Resources More on Increased Faculty Workload and Online Technologies Tips for Online Instructors Future of E-Books Student Personalities and Instruction Delivery EDUCAUSE Announces 2002 IT Award Winners UNC-Chapel Hill's Accessible Electronic Content Website Recommended Reading ...................................................................... FACULTY ATTITUDES TOWARD ELECTRONIC RESOURCES In the article "E-Content: Faculty Attitudes toward Electronic Resources" (EDUCAUSE REVIEW, vol. 37, no. 4, July/August 2002, pp. 10-11), Bruce Heterick, JSTOR's Director for Library Relations, reports on a survey conducted in 2000 of over 4,000 U.S. humanities and social sciences faculty. The study's objectives and some of the findings include: (1) "to find out how U.S. academics perceive and use electronic resources for research": -- 62% of respondents "expect that they will become increasingly dependent on electronic resources in the future." -- while nearly 90% of humanists consider their library's online catalog "very important," only about 60% in economics felt the same. (2) "to learn about their attitudes regarding the current and future impact of technology on their use of the library": -- 54% of the economists believe that in the future they will conduct library searches online, but only 22% of humanists shared this view. (3) "to gain insight into their awareness of issues related to archiving": -- 65% of economists would not mind if hardcopy archives are replaced by electronic archives; only 26% of humanists agreed. The article is available online (in PDF format) at http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0248.pdf More results from the survey are available online (in Microsoft PowerPoint format) at http://www.jstor.org/about/faculty.survey.ppt JSTOR (Journal STORage) is a not-for-profit organization that began as an effort to ease the increasing problems faced by libraries seeking to provide adequate stack space for the long runs of backfiles of scholarly journals. For more information, go to http://www.jstor.org/ EDUCAUSE Review [ISSN 1527-6619], a bimonthly print magazine that explores developments in information technology and education, is published by EDUCAUSE, 4772 Walnut St., Suite 206, Boulder, CO 80301-2538 USA; tel: 303-449-4430; fax: 303-440-0461; email: info@educause.edu; Web: http://www.educause.edu/ Articles from current and back issues are available on the Web at http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm.html ...................................................................... MORE ON INCREASED FACULTY WORKLOAD AND ONLINE TECHNOLOGIES The CIT Infobits May 2002 article "Online Teaching and the 24-Hour Professor" (http://its.unc.edu/tl/infobits/bitmay02.html#1) described how the Internet is changing professors' workdays and workloads. John Messing, Director of the Research Centre for Innovation in Telelearning Environments at Charles Sturt University, continues this topic in "Can Academics Afford to Use E-mail?" (E-JOURNAL OF INSTRUCTIONAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, vol. 5, no. 2, August 2002). Messing reports on a study that began as "an attempt to quantify what many educators have suspected . . . that the workload associated with the use of online tools is considerably higher than with conventional technologies. In the process of trying to make sense of the data, it became clear that there are a number of issues such as increased expectations on the part of students and the disproportionate load that administrative use of e-mail places on academics that are rarely, if ever, considered as part of the debate." The study analyzed the author's administrative and course-related email messages from 1991-2001. Some of his observations: Regarding course-related email: "While the number of students in [his Graduate Diploma of Applied Science] course has doubled, the volume of communication has increased 11 fold. . . ." Regarding administrative email: "It might take a secretary 10 to 15 minutes to duplicate and distribute meeting papers to 20 people [via email]. If it takes each recipient just 5 minutes to read, extract, print and collect the meeting papers, that represents a total of 100 minutes. The secretary saves 10 minutes but the recipients collectively lose 100 minutes." He concludes, "Just how much extra time an individual is prepared to sacrifice in order to also receive the benefits of the use of such tools is debatable. From a personal perspective, the limit has been reached. With well over 3000 e-mails to contend with in one semester, the system has become a scourge rather than a blessing." The article is available online at http://www.usq.edu.au/electpub/e-jist/docs/Vol6No_1/messing_frame.html (HTML format) and http://www.usq.edu.au/electpub/e-jist/docs/Vol6No_1/Messing%20-%20Final.pdf (PDF format). e-Journal of Instructional Science and Technology (e-JIST) is published by the Distance Education Centre, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Queensland 4350, Australia; Web: http://www.usq.edu.au/dec/ Current and back issues of e-JIST are available at no cost at http://www.usq.edu.au/electpub/e-jist/ ...................................................................... TIPS FOR ONLINE INSTRUCTORS "Please Learn from my Mistakes" by David G. Brown SYLLABUS, vol. 16, no. 1, August 2002, p. 26 http://www.syllabus.com/syllabusmagazine/article.asp?id=6592 David Brown writes "Faculty Practice," a monthly Syllabus magazine column for faculty using technology. This month's article is full of tips gleaned from Prof. Brown's own experiences teaching with technology, including how he manages the increased workload caused by student email messages. He writes: "I have come to the sad realization that many of the innovations designed to keep my course fresh have failed. My memories of failures are so poignant that it may be constructive to share them here. They can serve as warnings to others." Brown's commonsense suggestions are especially useful for faculty just beginning to teach with online tools. Syllabus [ISSN 1089-5914] is published monthly by 101communications, LLC, 9121 Oakdale Avenue, Suite 101, Chatsworth, CA 91311 USA; tel: 650-941-1765; fax: 650-941-1785; email: info@syllabus.com; Web: http://www.syllabus.com/ Annual subscriptions are free to individuals who work in colleges, universities, and high schools in the U.S.; go to http://subscribe.101com.com/syllabus/ for more information. For more advice for online teaching, see also: "Salmon's E-tivities: The Key to Active Online Learning" by Brent Muirhead USDLA JOURNAL, vol. 16, no. 8, August 2002 http://www.usdla.org/html/journal/AUG02_Issue/article02.html The article includes tips from Gilly Salmon's forthcoming book, E-TIVITIES: THE KEY TO ACTIVE ONLINE LEARNING (London: Kogan Page Ltd, October 2002; ISBN: 0749436867). ...................................................................... FUTURE OF E-BOOKS "The e-book market is littered with the wreckage of failed ventures, and with some justification, one might think that it is approaching total collapse." In "Electronic Books: Reports of Their Death Have Been Exaggerated" (ONLINE, vol. 26, no. 4, July/August 2002), Donald T. Hawkins, editor-in-chief for Information Today, Inc. Information Science Abstracts and Fulltext Sources Online, charts the ups and downs of e-books and the market's successes and fiascos. Although e-book company failures have shaken the confidence of early-adopters, Hawkins believes that e-books still have a future. The article is available online at http://www.onlinemag.net/jul02/hawkins.htm Online [ISSN: 0146-5422] is published six times per year by Information Today, Inc., 143 Old Marlton Pike, Medford, NJ 08055 USA; tel: 609-654-6266 or 800-300-9868; fax: 609-654-4309; Web: http://www.onlinemag.net/ In the article "Students Complain About Devices for Reading E-Books, Study Finds" (THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, August 26, 2002; http://chronicle.com/free/2002/08/2002082601t.htm), Scott Carlson reports on a study of the usability of e-books and their acceptance by college students. The study was conducted by Richard F. Bellaver, Associate Director, Center for Information & Communication Studies, and Jay Gillette, Director, Human Factors Institute, Ball State University. The researchers concluded, that if future improvements are made in the technology, e-books could be acceptable devices for delivering and storing students' reading materials. The study's report, "The Usability of eBook Technology: Practical Issues of an Application of Electronic Textbooks in a Learning Environment," is available online at http://publish.bsu.edu/cics/ebook_final_result.asp The Chronicle of Higher Education [ISSN 0009-5982] is published weekly by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc., 1255 Twenty-third Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037 USA; tel: 202-466-1000; fax: 202-452-1033; Web: http://chronicle.com/ ...................................................................... STUDENT PERSONALITIES AND INSTRUCTION DELIVERY In "Personality Type and Online Versus In-Class Course Satisfaction" (EDUCAUSE QUARTERLY, no. 3, 2002, pp. 71-2), University of South Alabama faculty Richard Daughenbaugh, Lynda Daughenbaugh, Daniel Surry, and Mohammed Islam report on a study they conducted of 146 college students enrolled in either online or residential introductory computer courses. Each student answered two questionnaires, one to assess personality type and another to measure course satisfaction. "Evaluation of personality type and course satisfaction data indicated that certain personality types preferred online rather than in-class courses. More extroverted students and those who were more sensitive than intuitive preferred the way the information was presented, and the way they were evaluated, in online courses." The authors present three recommendations based on their research: personality types and their different learning styles should be addressed in online instruction, student interaction should be increased in online courses, and more research should be done in this area. The article is available online (in PDF format) at http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eqm02312.pdf The complete report, "Does Personality Type Effect Online Versus In-Class Course Satisfaction?" is online (in PDF format) at http://www.southalabama.edu/coe/bset/daughenbaugh/Personality%20Types.pdf EDUCAUSE Quarterly, a peer-reviewed journal published by EDUCAUSE, covers planning, developing, managing, using, and evaluating information resources and technology in higher education. For more information, contact EDUCAUSE, 1150 18th Street, NW, Suite 1010, Washington, DC 20036 USA; tel: 202-872-4200; fax: 202-872-4318; email: info@educause.edu; Web: http://www.educause.edu/pub/eq/ For another view of the characteristics of students in relation to technology, especially young learners, see Edna Aphek's "Children of the Information Age: A Reversal of Roles" (UBIQUITY, vol. 3, issue 28, August 27-September 2, 2002; http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/e_aphek_3.html). Aphek is an education researcher with a special interest in learning environments for children and older adults. Ubiquity: An ACM IT Magazine and Forum, a Web resource from the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), provides a moderated, interactive community for IT professionals and others to discuss important issues. To contact Ubiquity: email: ubiquity@acm.org; Web: http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/ For more information on the ACM, contact: ACM, One Astor Plaza, 1515 Broadway, New York, NY, 10036, USA; tel: 212-869-7440; Web: http://www.acm.org/ ...................................................................... EDUCAUSE ANNOUNCES 2002 IT AWARD WINNERS EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association that promotes the use of information technology in higher education, announced its 2002 award winners: Diane P. Balestri, a former vice president for computing and information services at Vassar College James P. Frazee, associate director of instructional-technology services at San Diego State University Kenneth C. Green, a visiting scholar at Claremont Graduate University Douglas Van Houweling, president of Internet2 The College of Mount St. Joseph The Intercollegiate College of Nursing and Washington State College of Nursing The University of Minnesota's paperless financial-aid office Wake Forest University's School of Medicine For more details, go to http://www.educause.edu/news/2002/08/awards.asp EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. The current membership comprises more than 1,900 colleges, universities, and educational organizations, including 200 corporations, with 15,000 active members. EDUCAUSE has offices in Boulder, CO, and Washington, DC. Learn more about EDUCAUSE at http://www.educause.edu/. ...................................................................... UNC-CHAPEL HILL'S ACCESSIBLE ELECTRONIC CONTENT WEBSITE The UNC-Chapel Hill's web accessibility website, created in 2001, has been revised and expanded to include guidelines for more types of electronic content formats. In particular, the guidelines now provide much more information on making multimedia materials accessible to all users. While the website is geared to the needs of our campus, other institutions may also find the information useful. You can check it out at http://www.unc.edu/webaccess/ ...................................................................... RECOMMENDED READING "Recommended Reading" lists items that have been recommended to me or that Infobits readers have found particularly interesting and/or useful, including books, articles, and websites published by Infobits subscribers. Send your recommendations to carolyn_kotlas@unc.edu for possible inclusion in this column. HANDBOOK OF ONLINE LEARNING: INNOVATIONS IN HIGHER EDUCATION AND CORPORATE TRAINING Edited by Kjell-Erik Rudestam and Judith Schoenholtz-Read Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2002 ISBN: 0761924027 (hbk.); 0761924035 (pbk.) "The demand for academic coursework and corporate training programs using the Internet and computer-mediated communication networks increases daily. The development and implementation of these new programs requires that traditional teaching techniques and course work be significantly reworked. This handbook consists of 20 chapters authored by experts in the field of teaching in the online environment to adult students enrolled in graduate university degree programs, corporate training programs, and continuing education courses." Related article in THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION: http://chronicle.com/free/2002/08/2002081301t.htm ...................................................................... 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If you have problems subscribing or want to send suggestions for future issues, contact the editor, Carolyn Kotlas, at carolyn_kotlas@unc.edu Article Suggestions Infobits always welcomes article suggestions from our readers, although we cannot promise to print everything submitted. Because of our publishing schedule, we are not able to announce time-sensitive events such as upcoming conferences and calls for papers or grant applications; however, we do include articles about online conference proceedings that are of interest to our readers. While we often mention commercial products, publications, and Web sites, Infobits does not accept or reprint unsolicited advertising copy. Send your article suggestions to the editor at carolyn_kotlas@unc.edu ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2002, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Center for Instructional Technology. All rights reserved. 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