Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 20, No. 549.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/cch/research/publications/humanist.html
www.princeton.edu/humanist/
Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu
Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2007 09:15:22 +0100
From: "Carolyn Kotlas" <kotlas_at_email.unc.edu>
Subject: TL Infobits -- March 2007
TL INFOBITS March 2007 No. 9 ISSN: 1931-3144
About INFOBITS
INFOBITS is an electronic service of The University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill ITS Teaching and Learning division. Each month the
ITS-TL's Information Resources Consultant monitors and selects from a
number of information and instructional technology sources that come to
her attention and provides brief notes for electronic dissemination to
educators.
NOTE: You can read the Web version of this issue at
http://its.unc.edu/tl/infobits/bitmar07.php.
You can read all back issues of Infobits at
http://its.unc.edu/tl/infobits/.
......................................................................
UNC-Chapel Hill's Blackboard Course Extractor Available
Scholars Still Reluctant to Accept Open Access Publishing
Are We All Learning Designers Now?
Special Journal Issue on E-Science
Teaching with Wikis
E-Materials Possibly Contributing to Rising Textbook Costs
Another Museum Makes Digital Images Free to Scholars
......................................................................
UNC-CHAPEL HILL'S BLACKBOARD COURSE EXTRACTOR AVAILABLE
The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Information Technology
Services' Teaching and Learning division has developed a new
application and is making it available to the education community.
bFree is a course extractor that makes a stand-alone website from any
Blackboard course content. While maintaining the organization of the
original Blackboard course content, bFree creates a freestanding
website or a folder hierarchy.
With bFree, course content authors can:
-- Conveniently retrieve course materials previously available only in
Blackboard
-- Produce independent course websites with the same content and
structure as the original course embedded in Blackboard
-- Apply a cascading style sheet (CSS) to customize the look and feel
of their freestanding site
-- Easily distribute and share course content files with others
To learn more about bFree or to download the program, go to
http://its.unc.edu/tl/tli/bFree.
bFree is copyrighted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share
Alike 2.5 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/).
Under this license's conditions, non-commercial users are free to copy,
adapt, distribute, and transmit the work.
......................................................................
SCHOLARS STILL RELUCTANT TO ACCEPT OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING
In "Open Access & Science Publishing: Results of a Study on
Researchers' Acceptance and Use of Open Access Publishing," Thomas
Hess, et al., report on a study was conducted in 2006 by the
Ludwig-Maximilans-University Munich, Germany, in cooperation with the
University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The study "centered on the
question if and why scientists decide or do not decide to publish their
work according to the Open Access principle without access barriers and
free of cost to readers." While the 688 publishing scientists were
favorably inclined to use papers published in open access publications,
they were reluctant to publish their own research work in these
outlets. Some of the downsides cited for publishing in open access
journals included "the inferior ability to reach the specific target
audience of scientists within one's own discipline [and] . . . the low
level of use among close colleagues." The entire report is available
online at
http://openaccess-study.com/Hess_Wigand_Mann_Walter_2007_Open_Access_Management_Report.pdf.
......................................................................
ARE WE ALL LEARNING DESIGNERS NOW?
"What were once the inviolable domains of the subject matter expert,
the instructional designer, and the programmer are now coalescing to
the point where just about anyone can say that they can create a
learning programme."
In "Are We All Learning Designers Now?" (INSIDE LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES,
January 2007) Vaughan Waller discusses how rapid content production
tools are changing the way instructional software is being created.
Using these new tools, one person, with little experience, can put
together a learning module, thus supplanting the traditional trio of
subject matter expert, instructional designer, and programmer.
According to Waller, "The concern of many is that speed, ease of
production and super low cost may be the winner and the quality of the
programme the loser."
The article is available at
http://www.learningtechnologies.co.uk/magazine/article_full.cfm?articleid=224&issueid=24§ion=1.
Inside Learning Technologies is published online three times a year by
Principal Media Ltd., 19 Hurst Park, Midhurst, West Sussex GU29 0BP UK;
tel: 01730 817600; fax: 01730 817602; email:
info_at_learningtechnologies.co.uk; Web:
http://www.learningtechnologies.co.uk.
For free access to current and back issues, see
http://www.learningtechnologies.co.uk/magazine/magazine.cfm.
......................................................................
SPECIAL JOURNAL ISSUE ON E-SCIENCE
According to Nicholas W. Jankowski (in "Exploring e-Science: An
Introduction"), "Enhanced science, e-science, is one of many terms used
to describe recent transformations in the scientific enterprise. The
overall assertion behind this and other nomenclature is that the
procedures and practices of traditional forms of science in which
scholars engage during their everyday professional lives are undergoing
radical change. . . . that the very essence of science is changing,
particularly through employment of electronic networks and high-speed
computers -- two of the core components of e-science."
The current issue of the JOURNAL OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION
(vol. 12, issue 12, January 2007) is devoted to the topic of e-science.
Papers include:
"Social Science and e-Science: Mapping Disciplinary Approaches"
by Ralph Schroeder and Jenny Fry
"Intellectual Property in the Context of e-Science"
by Dan L. Burk
"Does the Internet Promote Collaboration and Productivity? Evidence
from the Scientific Community in South Africa"
by R. Sooryamoorthy and Wesley Shrum
"Collaboration Structure, Communication Media, and Problems in
Scientific Work Teams"
by John P. Walsh and Nancy G. Maloney
The complete issue is available at
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue2/.
The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication is a web-based,
peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary, scholarly journal published quarterly
by the Indiana University School of Library & Information Science and
School of Informatics. For more information and to access back issues,
go to http://jcmc.indiana.edu/index.html.
......................................................................
TEACHING WITH WIKIS
"Wikis are Web pages that can be viewed and modified by anyone with a
Web browser and Internet access. Described as a composition system, a
discussion medium, and a repository, wikis support asynchronous
communication and group collaboration online." ("7 Things You Should
Know about Wikis," from EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative;
http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ELI7004)
In "Wiki as a Teaching Tool" (INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE
AND LEARNING OBJECTS, vol. 3, 2007, pp. 57-72), Kevin R. Parker and
Joseph T. Chao review the current state of wiki use in education. Some
of the uses include "webpage creation, project development with peer
review, group authoring, tracking group projects, data collection, and
class/instructor reviews." They also discuss how wikis can be used in
online learning. The paper is available at
http://www.ijklo.org/Volume3/IJKLOv3p057-072Parker284.pdf.
Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects [ISSN:
Print 1552-2210, CD 1552-2229, Online 1552-2237] is published by the
Informing Science Institute, 131 Brookhill Court, Santa Rosa, CA 95409
USA. For current and back issues, go to http://www.ijklo.org/.
For a report on how a well-known wiki, Wikipedia, handles links to
research and scholarship see:
"What Open Access Research Can Do for Wikipedia"
by John Willinsky
FIRST MONDAY, vol. 12, no. 3, March 2007
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_3/willinsky/index.html
......................................................................
E-MATERIALS POSSIBLY CONTRIBUTING TO RISING TEXTBOOK COSTS
The University of North Carolina system's Board of Governors recently
proposed controlling the rising cost of textbooks by instituting rental
or buyback programs. Triggering such a recommendation is the increasing
costs of college textbooks, with prices rising faster than the rate of
inflation. Students, administrators, bookstores, and publishers argue
who or what is causing these increasing costs. One argument places the
blame on faculty who demand not only frequent new editions, but also
want students to have access to materials that technology enables --
CD-ROMs, e-books, course-related software, private-access websites.
Instructors may find themselves caught in the middle of this blaming
game. Publishers say that if textbook authors and adopters did not
insist on having additional bundled materials, the costs could be kept
down to a reasonable level. Students argue that in many courses the
extra materials are seldom or never used. In addtion, these extras
drive up prices, but often make it hard for students to resell their
texts.
For more about the textbook cost discussion and the UNC Board of
Governors' proposal see:
"Who Controls Textbook Choices?"
INSIDE HIGHER ED, March 16, 2007
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/03/16/unc
For textbook publishers' perspectives, see:
http://www.textbookfacts.org/
The Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) campaign to lower textbook
prices:
http://www.uspirg.org/higher-education/affordable-textbooks
......................................................................
ANOTHER MUSEUM MAKES DIGITAL IMAGES FREE TO SCHOLARS
Earlier this year the Victoria and Albert Museum in London dropped the
fees for reproduction of its collections' images in scholarly books and
magazines (TL Infobits, December 2006;
http://its.unc.edu/tl/infobits/bitdec06.php#5). This month the
Metropolitan Museum, through the non-profit image clearinghouse
ARTstor, made a similar offer for scholars. See the Museum's March 12,
2007, press release for more details:
http://www.metmuseum.org/press_room/full_release.asp?prid={A113E0AD-AA4E-471B-8F04-736A21F1A70A}
For more information on ARTstor, see:
http://www.artstor.org/info/
Received on Sat Mar 31 2007 - 03:36:09 EST
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