ACRL New England Chapter News Online

ISSN 1527-0106

Spring 2004, Number 102

In This Issue (Home):

President's Letter

Election Results

C.E. Committee Chair Needed

Librarian of the Year Award

Annual Conference Reports

National Legislative Day Report

Interest Group Reports:
Access Services (ASIG)
Information Technology (ITIG)
Instruction (NELIG)
Online Course Info. (LOCI)
Women's Studies

Annual Reports

Board Meeting Minutes, February 11th, 2004 (.pdf)

Calendar Listings

Librarians on Online Course Information Group

Regina Raboin, Co-Chair
Tufts University

On Tuesday, May 11, ACRL NEC LOCI (Librarians on Online Course Information) gathered at Harvard University's Office for Information Systems to listen to the presentation "Courseware at Dartmouth: A Look at Library/Computing Partnerships" given by Jeff Bohrer, Instruction Technology Specialist and Blackboard Administrator of Dartmouth College.

Jeff began the program by speaking about the structure of Dartmouth's Curriculum Support Group, of which the Blackboard Support Team is part. He continued with a review of Dartmouth's first experiences with courseware, the implementation of Blackboard and its increased use among faculty. The team's approach to Blackboard is to promote it to the faculty as an academic portal that provides instant access to class rosters, grade books, discussion boards, and quiz/survey managers. However, the team still provides custom web design if the faculty prefer this to Blackboard. Though the use of the courseware has not been administratively mandated, Dartmouth has experienced significant growth in Blackboard's use, from 50 courses in 2002 to 200 in 2004. The Curriculum Support Group feels that this steady growth is due to peer-to-peer promotion and the support group's positive reputation on campus.

Dartmouth's Baker-Berry Library integrates both library and academic computing services and the Curriculum Support Group is located in the same section of the library as Reference services. Dartmouth's Instructional librarians and the Blackboard group partner to provide quarterly faculty workshops with topics such as Teaching with Blackboard, Smart Searching, Managing Citations with Endnote, and Adding Research Resources to Blackboard. Jeff also spoke about their "Get-to-know-you sessions," opportunities for Reference librarians and Curriculum Computing staff to learn about each other's roles and services within the Dartmouth academic community.

Within Blackboard, the library has a strong presence that includes a separate section for Library Tips, Links & News for Faculty and Staff, in addition to a link to Request a Library Instruction Session. The librarians receive Blackboard training and have identified ways to increase the library's presence by more outreach to faculty. Some of these ideas are: talking to faculty about adding contact information, new resources, research guides, creating guest speaker profiles/bibliographies, monitoring discussion lists and adding "Ask a Librarian" link to their Blackboard sites.

Jeff concluded his presentation by talking about current challenges his group is facing, implementation of Blackboard 6 (Enterprise) and working with the library to integrate electronic reserves. Future challenges are establishing and promoting the "My Library" portals that are offered in Blackboard, pre-loading of course-related library resources and adding the "Ask a Librarian" link.

After a short break, Jeff continued the program with a round table discussion that addressed topics such as information literacy vs. "spoon-feeding", transformative instruction activities using Blackboard, the use of middleware with Blackboard, administrative responsibilities and practices and other library's experiences with Blackboard and other courseware. Jeff's presentation can be found at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~bohrer/loci

Towards the end of the program, Regina Raboin, co-chair for LOCI, held a very brief business meeting, asking if LOCI would be amenable to allowing Laura Morse and herself to continue as LOCI co-chairs for another academic year. A motion was made and passed to accept this proposal.

See the LOCI web site for more details of interest group activities.