From Add-on to Mainstream: Applying Distance Learning Models for ALL Students - April 18, 2012

Due to our high online enrollment at Minnesota West CTC, this title caught my attention.  Why do we differentiate between our online, on-campus, hybrid learners?  One of the initial comments by the presenters from Northern Kentucky University struck a chord with me; they dislike the one-shot bibliographic sessions. Me, too!! Although we can say we met with students and introduced them to the library or library resources, it's an ineffective method to really get students thinking about using the library and how to best use the library resources. It's like having one driver's ed session and then handing over the car keys. Young people have been in a car their whole lives and (sort of) know how driving a car  works...just like the libraries they've likely visited in their lives. Truly utilizing the library for academic work is a much different situation that requires a more advanced set of skills!  Okay, off my soapbox and back to the presentation... NKU focuses on embedding library instruction into online environments as much as possible. This allows students to access it at point-of-need vs. having to rely on retaining what was covered in a 1-shot session.  The librarians stay embedded in the course all semester and monitor forums, drop in new lessons as needed, and just try to be present for students. They indicated they are pretty close to eliminating face-to-face library instruction, and are not staffing the reference desk as many hours as they have an online question submission form and also are meeting students in the online course forums to answer questions there. I like this model!