Electronic Resources in the Virtual Learning

The Library area
The first stage involved deciding where to place the Library area. Within
WebCT and other VLEs there are numerous places that ‘bookmarks’ or
links can be placed. Many institutions have a generic link to the library
website within the VLE. However, as there were numerous tools and
customisable links that the team wanted to add, it was decided that the
Library area should be created from what WebCT calls an ‘organiser
page’. This is an icon which appears on the course home page and
contains further links to other tools within it. An icon very much
representative of the LSE Library was designed and within this organiser
page were added links to numerous library-related tools and resources.
Figure 6.4 shows the Library area icon within a WebCT course.
The tools in the Library area included generic resources, such as the
library catalogue, but also other links that could be customised so that
they are course specific. They included:
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Figure 6.4
Screen shot of Library area in WebCT

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Electronic Resources in the Virtual Learning Environment
■
a generic link to the Library Catalogue which can be searched from
within WebCT – it was felt that a quick link to get to the library
catalogue would be useful for all courses;
■
a generic link to the Electronic Library, which is a database containing
all the electronic resources at the LSE – this link could be customised
to link to specific resources or to the relevant subject listing of
resources;
■
a generic link to the electronic journals listing, known as the Journal
Reading Room – the LSE maintains a database of electronic journals
and the link could be customised to link to specific titles or to the
relevant subject listing of e-journals;
■
a generic link to the exam paper database, which can be customised
to link to the specific exam papers relevant for the course;
■
a link to the information skills website, which has information about
face-to-face classes and online courses;
■
a link to the online reading list, where links to electronic coursepacks
and e-journal articles are added into the online reading list template
described in Case Study 2;
■
a link to a page of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds from the
SOSIG (SOcial Science Information Gateway) website that could be
customised to include subject-specific resources.
The use of the Library area
The Library area was added to all new WebCT courses in 2003 as part
of the standard template. Its use was promoted by the CLT staff in the
course of WebCT training and support. Academic staff were able to hide
any tools they did not want to use and customise the Library area to link
to appropriate resources for their course. For example, one law course
made significant use of a tool which enabled ‘deep linking’ at article level
to resources held in the Westlaw database. These links were made
available through an online reading list.
Problems and issues
One of the major problems associated with launching the Library area
was how to promote it to academic staff. Many staff had already
established means of providing links to resources integrated within their
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Case studies and practical examples
WebCT course. They were reluctant to undertake major changes to their
course. It was agreed that liaison librarians would be invited to become
involved in populating the Library area to illustrate how it might be
used. The Anthropology Department was chosen as a pilot for this work
and the project is currently in progress to build a customised
Anthropology Library Area.
New courses were provided with a WebCT course template, so it was
relatively straightforward to incorporate the Library area into this
template. Nevertheless, training and support for the effective use of the
Library area was problematic. Simply making the Library area available
in the WebCT template did not encourage its use, as staff required
guidance. With only one librarian within the team, one-to-one support
was not practical for a large number of academic staff. However, the
team was fortunate in having the experience and skills of an IT trainer
who, throughout 2003/04, worked with the librarian to develop training
materials, including support documentation and a course handbook that
could be used in group training sessions. The group training and support
was being piloted with a small number of academics during the summer
of 2004 with the plan being to launch the courses formally in the autumn
as part of the Academic Staff Development Programme.