Instructional Technology: Moving Moodle into the Library or vice versa

February 21, 2006

Moving Moodle into the Library or vice versa

This should be the start of something bigger:

Moving the Library into Moodle

Why?

Universal access to information on the web and the provision of Library resources through a web interface is pushing the roles traditionally performed by the Library system to the periphery of academic life. For example, whereas the Humanities program at Earlham had an intentional bibliographic component, the new ES, IP & CP courses which replaced this do not necessarily have any formal Library input.

But the need for bibliographic skills, guidance from Reference Librarians and help in locating quality resources has grown rather than diminished.

Making the Library symbolically and concretely the backbone of resource provision within Moodle
- centrality of bibliographic resources. Metadata, searchable
- expertise. Reference Librarian (live ‘ask a Librarian chat channel’)
Currently we have a number of stand alone systems with little or no integration between them:
- Palni search books, online searching for books in our libraries
- Search online databases. Each db has it’s own search engine.
- ContentDm media database. A great deal of time/effort and skill goes into the creation of a database within this system. But how can faculty use info or images in their courses?
- other stand alone systems?
Moodle is the teaching platform where these systems could come together in a bibliographic setting closely linked to courses being taught or research interests pursued.

So we want to move the library paradigm back into the centre of the teaching and research effort.

How could this be done?

Note that Moodle is probably the most widely used central system by teaching faculty. So siting a Library focus within Moodle makes a lot of sense.

This could take the form of a Moodle block or some other object (perhaps a new ‘floating’ window) which could appear independently of the course but be closely linked to it.

For possible functionality — see later.

Posted by markp at February 21, 2006 04:22 PM

Comments

I’ve been working this angle for a while at MIT, networking with all of the Librarians I can and talking about the possibilities. It’s paid off in two ways so far.

1) Electronic reserves. Librarians have special access to Stellar class sites, so they can add electronic reserves to the course.

2) Our slide library is being digitized and will be available through new Stellar/Sakai tool called Stellar images.

Especially in the Stellar images example it worked well because the libraries continue to focus on their specialties of creating collections and making them accessible, while we concentrate on making a useful tool for teaching (you mix those images into slideshows, for example).

I love the way moodle classes are build around class session modules. It would be cool if instructional librarians could build modules which they could clone into the classes where they teach (would have been the Humanities III and IV classes back when I was at Earlham).

Posted by: Ben Brophy at February 21, 2006 07:37 PM

I like the idea of electronic reserves. It goes well with what both faculty and students relate to.

The problem is that we have a disparate grunge of proprietary systems — ContentDm for example.

Could you develop your idea of ‘cloning modules into classes’ a bit more?

I have to say that this was inspired by envy of the Mellon grant to IU & UM. I do think that we could / should shoot for some serious grant money (as a collaboration within NITLE) to do something similar. Will post more ideas soon…

Posted by: MarkPea at February 21, 2006 08:54 PM