Support for Distance Education at Cabrillo College Library

by Johanna Bowen

prepared originally for "Real Support for the Virtual College: Online Classes and Libraries Coming Together"
California Library Association, November 14, 1998, Oakland, CA

expanded for: "Inform, Excite, Engage Patrons: Web Authoring and Multimedia aproaches to Serve Distance Learning Patrons" on June 27, 1999, at the Annual meeting of the American Library Association in New Orleans, LA.

"Support for distance education at Cabrillo" PowerPoint slides at: http://www.cabrillo.cc.ca.us/lrc/ala99/sld001.htm

Background for the issues:

According to the U.S. Department of Education:

58 percent of community, junior and technical colleges offered somedistance learning classes in 1995, the most recent year for which statistics are available. Another 28 percent said that planned tobegin offering distance education courses within the next three years.

According to Dr. David R. Springett, president of the California Community College Foundation:

"California will have to make use of distance learningto cope with a coming wave of students."
California currently enrolls about 1.5 million students in its 107 community colleges, and expects an additional 500,000 students by 2004.
"We can't continue to build more colleges," Springett says. "And most of our colleges are crowded now. That leavesdistance learning and other technology. It may not be the total answer, but it can sure be a real good start."

Change on campuses

To walk through most of the classrooms on most campus is to still see a teacher engaged in the respected lecture/discussion mode of transmission of knowledge. To enter virtually (no pun intended) any library on most campuses however is to see structures and delivery methods that are radically altered from the past.
Please note that one of the things I really like about my profession is the rate of change. When you say that the library has changed dramatically from the past I can be talking about a change from the 1950's, or the dramatic change in the past two years or year or ...

My personal opinion is that The single most significant piece of software to have an effect on libraries is Netscape. Why? Because we can now deliver everything we own or have access to through one seamless homepage running under Netscape. That is a huge step forward and begins the process of enabling us to help students become information literate. Yes, I know it is easy to knock the technology set-up of the past, but in my opinion a student who went from one island of computers to another (CD-dedicated, CD-tower, Public Catalog, Internet station) was at best being led to follow a series of bread crumb trails. The learning was necessarily tied to "remembering the rules" rather than understanding what was going on here.

When a library has made the transition to a single Web interface for all of its access tools and resources, that same library then has to expend considerable effort to make this interface accessible to the remote student.

As a profession we have put to rest the notion of the total "library without walls" (where the demise of the library was envisioned) but the notion of asynchronous use of our facility is alive and well.
Library hours do not define when users are present wandering about and making choices.

I predict that how well we serve the Asynchronous User will be part of our library accreditation in the not too distant future.

In fact most libraries are themselves Asynchronous Users of remote services. Do you think any of us can get help from EbscoHost, Britannica, or NewsFile during a California evening?

Today's library environment:

• single web interface to all tools and resources
• cooperative buying power AND shrinking prices of online fulltext resources
• campus wide dynamic IP addresses, death of the single station delivery
• presence of "Asynchronous Users"

Today's Goals are very simple

• Reduce barriers to remote users
• Reduce dependence upon a librarian mediator

What exactly is the role of a librarian in this matrix of competing standards, rapid development and pressure to provide students with traditional services in a non-traditonal setting?

1. Action Plan: Get it in writing:

   State level:

   Title 5 of the California Code of Regulations was amended to read:

   5536. Instructor Contact..."All approved courses offered as distance education shall include regular effective contact between instructor and students, through group or individual meetings, orientation and review sessions, supplemental seminar or study sessions, field trips, library workshops, telephone contact, correspondence, voice mail, email, or other activities."

   Campus level (most important):

   Cabrillo College 1998 Distance Education Plan

   "Students and faculty must have ... access to learning resources"

   "Provide support for faculty and staff in acquiring information competency."

   "Ensure that online resources, which include, but are not limited to, library, counseling and student services, adequately meet the needs of the curriculum and the students."

   Provide a mechanism for developing and delivering courses, which combines on-campus and distance learning modes where appropriate."

   "Provide remote access to online library resources that support the needs of the curriculum"

   Library level:

   First: the Mission Statement for the Robert E. Swenson Library at Cabrillo College

   The Robert E. Swenson Library is committed to supporting of the goals of the Instruction Component at Cabrillo College. The librarians and library staff are committed to:

   Provide innovative, state of the art programs, systems and services in support of the information needs of the Cabrillo college community

   Provide prompt, unbiased, and knowledgeable responses to requests for assistance with information resources

   Provide high quality instructional services and programs in the use of information resources

   Provide universal online access to current information resources for the Cabrillo community

   Encourage and facilitate information competency, critical thinking, intellectual independence, and lifelong learning skills in all students

   Provide services to remote users and to users with special needs

   Second: add Distance Education to the Library Technology Plan:

   Goal 5. Provide services to remote users (students, staff and instructors at home; Watsonville Center; SLV Center; Distance Education offerings

   Strategies:

   • Provide remote access to full text databases
   • Provide online ability to renew materials
   • Provide online ability place a "hold" e.g. reserve an item
   • Provide email access to timely reference services
   • initiate an interlibrary loan request
   • Provide online ability to recommend items for purchase
   • Expand reserve services to include scanning and digitizing materials for faculty
   • Provide access to electronic reserves

Third: Navigate the Validation shuffle

• Goal: Identify users of subscription databases and limit access to authorized users
• Information exchange has to be secure and firewalls in place

Options explored at June 1998 American Library Association in Washington D.C.

1. IP validation (campus-wide already in place at Cabrillo)
2. Proxy servers (tried the one at San Jose State, users have to re-set preferences in broswer)
3. Direct authentication at vendor site with:
   • passwords given out at the Reference Desk
     (open sesame? Rumplestiltskin?)
   • Vendor verification of user status, vendor has to have patron database updated regularly
4. Let Innovative do it? Outsource it. (slows response time, way too costly)
5. Cabrillo choice: We authenticate users from our own server. Scripted dialog which asks for the barcode number and verifies it against a file of authorized users. A Cookie is placed for the session and works to make it look like your IP is temporarily on campus, within the appropriate IP range. A positive side effect is that users must have a library card and they validate their use of these restricted resources with the barcode number from their card. We control the library cards, barcodes are constatntly validated and updated. Works very smoothly. User is authenticated for the session with all the remote resources we have. Admitedly, Cabrillo is small, has only a core of resources.

At all times: Collaborate across the campus

Identify and work with allies in:

Instruction (interested faculty)
Teaching and Learning Center
Computing Resources
Tutorials
Counseling
Faculty Senate
Faculty Union?
see AAUP statement at http://

Many people on a campus care about the issues of equity and access for distance learners but have very few opportunities to focus support. Support for the libraries role in providing resources can provide such a focal point.

What's Next?

1. Set up teams to work on all the additional service strategies from the Technology plan.
   
2. With a Criminal Justice instructor, co-design a one unit course which teaches students at home how to do research over the Internet
   
3. Expand the tutorial aspect of Information Literacy course related sessions
4. Expand the Internet skills section of the one unit "Library Research Course" taken by all students planning to transfer.

Sloan, Bernie. "Library Support for Distance Learning" at: http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/~sloan/libdist.htm

This is the best "webliography" on the topic of libraries and Distance Learning in general.

The Internet address of this page is:http://libwww.cabrillo.edu/about/ala99.html
Revised June 22, 1999

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