Search results

This paper aims to describe a case study of the open and affordable educational resources (OAER) initiatives led by Penn State University Libraries (UL) and implemented at its many campuses which are designed to address the challenges students experience accessing and funding their course materials.

This case study will show how a broad administrative mandate for high-level OAER initiatives created the environment for Penn State (PSU) to evolve from individual pioneering units into coordinated university-wide initiatives. This shift, spearheaded by administration with strong UL involvement, allowed for customized and targeted initiatives at its many campuses. By using UL’s centralized, but geographically dispersed, structure, library faculty and staff have been supported in their efforts to expand OAER from the ground up to meet individual contexts and campus needs.

As a result of its many open and affordable initiatives, PSUL has been able to demonstrate both savings and increased access for students across PSU’s many campuses and World Campus. Broad administrative support has created an environment which enabled UL faculty and staff to lead various initiatives.

UL has long been a leader and partner in open and affordability initiatives at PSU because of its core mission of providing access. By sharing the processes and logistics of how a large research institution with many campuses of various sizes implemented a wide variety of library-driven open and affordability initiatives through a centralized but geographically dispersed structure, academic libraries will be able to replicate similar initiatives in their unique contexts.

PageWell, an e-reading platform provider, was preparing to launch PageWell 2.0 to the larger full-time MBA student market after a successful trial of PageWell 1.0 in Executive MBA (EMBA) classes at the Kellogg School of Management. Research had shown that full-time MBA students would be very interested in using products that allowed electronic access to course materials everywhere and across many platforms and that allowed electronic note-taking and storage. To better understand this user group, PageWell conducted a market research survey of students, faculty, and administrators to gauge their needs, preferences, and potential interest in the PageWell product. The study revealed that MBA student usage patterns, scenarios, and behavior varied significantly from EMBA student needs and perceptions. PageWell now had the task of prioritizing the product requirements and recalibrating the market requirements document to more accurately reflect student needs and thus create a viable product

After students have analyzed the case, they will be able to:

• Use customer feedback to help define requirements for a new product

• Understand the role of personas and scenarios in defining requirements

• Understand how to use scenarios and scenario templates to derive scenario implementation requirements

• Understand how to prioritize scenarios based on customer, company, and competitive criteria

• Write a market requirements document for a next-version technology produc

Use customer feedback to help define requirements for a new product

Understand the role of personas and scenarios in defining requirements

Understand how to use scenarios and scenario templates to derive scenario implementation requirements

Understand how to prioritize scenarios based on customer, company, and competitive criteria

Write a market requirements document for a next-version technology produc

This study aims to evaluate the efficacy of a digital medical library, including department-based electronic journal access, library training course participation and scholarly publications.

The data on full-text electronic journal access, participants of library training courses and scholarly publications were exported from a digital medical library database during 2017–2021. In addition, electronic journal access and library training courses were divided into high-level and low-level groups, while scholarly publications were divided into physician and non-physician groups.

The scholarly publications had a positive correlation to library training courses and electronic journal access. Furthermore, scholarly publications showed a significant difference between the high-level and low-level electronic journal access groups but not between the high-level and low-level library training course groups. Scholarly publications and electronic journal access had positive correlations for both the physician and non-physician groups. Scholarly publications and library training courses, and electronic journal access and library training courses had positive correlations only in the non-physician group.

The importance of electronic journal access for scholarly publications is suggested based on the findings of the present study. The training courses held by the medical library had a positive effect on scholarly publications for the non-physician group.

The current study provides insights relevant to the electronic journal access of library-supported scholarly publications among medical departments. These results can serve as a reference for medical library development planning and decision-making in the future.

Outlines the development of Access Courses and explains the national quality assurance framework developed to co‐ordinate standards within such provision. Generalizes the quality assurance processes of authorized validating agencies (AVAs), in order to facilitate a future exploration of some typical costs and benefits and the appreciation of the problematic nature of such an exercise.

Efforts to promote equity in mathematics education are becoming more widespread. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics elevated its position on equity from one of societal need to one of six guiding principles required to ensure excellence in mathematics education. I investigate how efforts to promote educational equity in mathematics education are informed by democratic views. In particular, I examine the intersection of course taking, equity, mathematics, and democracy in the context of a case study conducted in one high school mathematics department. This case study was conducted over one academic year, and data included a focus survey, interviews, field notes from department meetings and class observations, and school documents. In this study, I investigated the curricular redesign process undertaken by one high school mathematics department addressing high failure rates in low-level courses disproportionately enrolled with students of color designed to increase access to more advanced mathematics courses. I discuss how those changes impacted access, influenced equity, and aligned with democratic aims and their relationship to mathematics education.

This article outlines how an existing information literacy (IL) course was developed and embedded into a Learning Management System (LMS) with the aim of creating a blended learning environment for the course. It outlines how the platform was chosen, choice of learning design (LD) approaches, tools and processes used, Open Educational Resources (OERs) incorporated, the choice of Creative Commons (CC) licensing, branding, usage options and formats of materials.

A mixed-method approach was used in conducting this research. The online course was piloted in 2017 with two groups of students who completed an online questionnaire to provide their evaluation and feedback.

The results showed a very positive evaluation by the students, which shows that the university is on the correct path with embedding IL into a learner management system.

The author could not have the second face-to-face class with group 1 as was intended due to the student unrest at the university during this time. Also, with the disruption to the academic programme, the author had less feedback from students than expected; however, the 20% response rate was sufficient to inform the author’s future developments.

The flexibility (not a one size fits all) in usage was relevant and necessary to accommodate a number of student needs and socio-economic factors.

This article adds value to the academic project by showing how IL courses can successfully be embedded within an LMS, student preferences and socio-economic factors to be considered in a South African context.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how a credit‐bearing information literacy course was enhanced through the use of video lectures to deliver course content. Students have a choice of how to access course materials: video lectures or reading material.

A literature review shows that, previously, videos have been used largely to supplement face‐to‐face classes or one‐shot library instruction sessions. A description details the production of video lectures for one of the courses that satisfies the information literacy graduation requirement at Weber State University. For this course, a student survey was then used to measure the actual use and effectiveness of the video lectures.

Survey results indicate that a majority of students use the video lectures, at least partly, and find them helpful.

Results also show that many students are comfortable reading course materials rather than viewing the lectures. As more courses incorporate video lectures, holdouts should become more comfortable with the format.

Video lectures are relatively easy to create, and can be used to enhance online information literacy classes. Students can view the video lectures at their convenience.

Video production tools such as Camtasia Studio are used for library instruction and other face‐to‐face classes, but are not widely used in online courses. Adding video lectures to an online course gives students options on how to access the course content.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the way the University of North Carolina Libraries have begun to incorporate library resources into their university course management system.

The paper presents a case study of course‐specific web pages that have been incorporated into BlackBoard sites as a way to facilitate the use of the library and to promote a comprehensive view of library services and resources at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Students and professors appreciate course‐specific web pages that provide access to library resources that relate directly to class assignments. Web page usage statistics show that students are using librarian‐created course pages to access library materials.

The paper describes a way for librarians to bring library resources into a course management system that may be beneficial for other academic libraries.