This research reports the findings from a survey that examined the differences in communication between students who used Instant Messenger (IM) services and those who did not in the same asynchronous distance education Web-based course. It was found that students who used IM services found it easier to communicate, felt a stronger sense of community, and had more venues for informal and social communication about not only class material, but also information about the school and their common degree program. In traditional classroom buildings, the common spaces such as hallways provide the venue for this informal communication; IM services can enhance the distance education environment by providing the â virtual hallwaysâ for students and instructors to meet.

This Microsoft Powerpoint presentation (of 20 slides) was presented at the Learning Resources Association of the California Community Colleges (LRACCC) North-South Meetings on February 15 at San Francisco City College and on March 11 at Coastline Community College. Cheryl Stewart is Virtual Librarian, Cosatline Community College and she discusses how distance learning is changing library services in the community colleges. A distinction is made between virtual, digital, and electronic librarians and library services in these modes. References are embedded and urls to useful electronic resources and tools are included.

This 84-page report defines the Cyberinfrastructure program proposed by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Here is the text of the news release from the University of Michigan School of Information: " Atkins committee issues NSF report on development of cyberinfrastructure (Feb 2003) A National Science Foundation (NSF) committee chaired by University of Michigan professor Daniel Atkins has recommended the organization spend an additional $1 billion per year developing the nation's "cyberinfrastructure" to support scientific research. The Advisory Committee on Cyberinfrastructure argues that investment in a comprehensive cyberinfrastructure can change profoundly what scientists and engineers do, how they do it, and who participates. Its recommendations are detailed in a newly released report titled Revolutionizing Science and Engineering through Cyberinfrastructure. In the same way society now depends on highways, water systems, and power grids, the panel contends, scientific research in the coming years will depend on the quality of the cyberinfrastructure -- the integrated information, computing, and communications systems that tie us together. "It's not just the raw technology, but also the organization and the people," says Atkins, who is professor in the School of Information and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at U-M. It's also the standards for interoperability that will allow different disciplines to use the same infrastructure, "just the way we agreed long ago on a standard gauge for railroad tracks." "The path forward that this report envisions ... truly has the potential to revolutionize all fields of research and education," says Peter Freeman, assistant director of the NSF for Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering (CISE), the NSF arm that commissioned the report. The report was issued on the same day the NSF submitted its $5.48 billion budget request for fiscal year 2004. "NSF has been a catalyst for creating the conditions for a nascent cyberinfrastructure-based revolution," says Atkins, a revolution being driven from the ground up. "We've clearly documented extensive grass-roots activity in the scientific and engineering research community to create and use cyberinfrastructure to empower the next wave of discovery." The committee cites NSF support for such projects as the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulations (NEES), the TeraGrid effort, and the Digital Libraries Initiative as seminal in the development of a cyberinfrastructure. At the same time, the report makes clear that the cyberinfrastructure needed cannot be built with today's off-the-shelf technology, and it argues for increased NSF support for fundamental research in computer science and engineering. The report emphasizes the importance of acting quickly and the risks of failing to do so. Those risks include lack of coordination, which could leave key data in irreconcilable formats; long-term failures to archive and curate data collected at great expense; and artificial barriers between disciplines built from incompatible tools and structures. The NSF has a "once-in-a-generation opportunity," according to the committee, to lead the scientific and engineering community in the coordinated development and expansive use of cyberinfrastructure."

We are finding ourselves in a rapidly growing and complex digital environment which has in turn increased our dependency on information. But there is increasing evidence that our information skills are not keeping pace in any systematic fashion. We all need help to sharpen the techniques and skills to manage information. Present paper is an attempt to present the current status of information literacy and the emerging roles of libraries and schools of LIS education in augmenting the information literacy campaign.

Networked multi-agent systems have attracted lots of researchers to develop algorithms, techniques, and applications.A multi-agent networked system consists of more than one subsystem (agent) to cooperately solve a global problem with only local computations and communications in a fully distributed manner. These networked systems have been investigated in various different areas including signal processing, control system, and machine learning. We can see massive applications using networked systems in reality, for example, persistent surveillance, healthcare, factory manufacturing, data mining, machine learning, power system, transportation system, and many other areas. Considering the nature of those mentioned applications, traditional centralized control and optimization algorithms which require both higher communication and computational capacities are not suitable. Additionally, compared to distributed control and optimization approaches, centralized control, and optimization algorithms cannot be scaled into systems with a large number of agents, or guarantee performance and security. All of the limitations of centralized control and optimization algorithms motivate us to investigate and develop new distributed control and optimization algorithms in networked systems. Moreover, convergence rate and analysis are crucial in control and optimization literature, which motivates us to investigate how to analyze and accerlate the convergence of distributed optimization algorithms.

This is a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation of about 27 slides used in conjunction with a talk at UCI-CRITO on 18 May 2005, and the research reported is from a previously published study of mine. Information technology is varied and human use and impact can be examined at different levels. I report on a study that examines the ubiquitous hyperlinks as instruments of cognition in e-learning. This study has been published as Coleman, A. 2005. Instruments of cognition: Use of citations and Web links in online teaching materials. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 56 (4): 382-392. Preprint available online: http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/archive/00000806/. Last retrieved: 12 May, 2005

This item is not the definitive copy. Please use the following citation when referencing this material: Dillon, A. (2000) Designing a better learning environment with the Web: problems and prospects. CyberPsychology and Behavior, 3(1), 97-102. Abstract: In a recent review of the empirical findings on hypermedia and learning outcomes, Dillon and Gabbard (1998) concluded that contrary to many people's assumptions, the use of hypermedia-based instructional systems in education had not produced significant learning gains. Indeed, their review concluded that such instructional technologies rarely showed any benefit for learners over existing paper- or lecture-based instructions. While it is commonplace these days to dismiss as irrelevant any media comparison study, the Dillon and Gabbard review went further, also examining comparisons made between alternative hypermedia implementations (a within-media comparison) and between single and group learners employing this technology. Since hypermedia is the underlying technology of the World Wide Web, their findings made depressing reading for those of us who believe that this technology is important and could be put to powerful instructional use. The present issue contains papers from many leading theorists who advocate the use and exploitation of information technologies such as hypermedia and the World-Wide Web in our classrooms, and I am not completely in disagreement with them. However, I wish to question the very assumptions on which the use of the Web and standalone hypermedia applications are based. What I aim to provide in this paper is a sense of the gaps in our knowledge, and to speculate on why education is so poorly served by the wonderful technologies that are within our grasp.

We propose that emerging collaboration, or groupware, technology that supports synchronous interaction among students and faculty can add new aspects to the traditional distance learning and university course models. To explore this assumption we taught a masters' level university course using collaboration technology. In our approach, collaboration technology (integrated synchronous audio- and video-conferencing, electronic whiteboard and shared application tools) was used to provide students at universities in different countries opportunities to participate in interactive class exercises and discussions, and to do class assignments together. Students also participated in traditional, face-to-face class seminars, discussions and exercises at their local university. Thus students learned using collaboration technology and traditional methods. In this paper we describe the course and discuss students' evaluations of the course, their collaboration with each other, and collaboration technology used during the course. Students evaluated the course and their collaborative experiences very highly but reported unique challenges and had mixed impressions with respect to the technology. Challenges included establishing interpersonal communication and meeting commitments. In general, students judged collaboration technology lower than e-mail and telephony in characteristics such as social presence, participation and ease of use. However, there were differences in evaluations among students in Chapel Hill and Oulu implying cultural preferences. In addition, students reported varying degrees of productivity and variety of tasks afforded the technology. These differences were similar for students in Chapel Hill and Oulu, implying individual preferences influenced evaluation of the technology. These results appear to imply that students need to learn principles of collaboration in addition to the technology for collaborative learning across distances to occur, and that a variety of technologies are needed to accommodate cultural and individual differences among students.

OpenCourseWare is an innovative and bold idea. It aims to support learning and teaching programme significantly. Learning material contained in an OCW provides learners an opportunity to gain knowledge beyond their routine classroom environments. These are in the digital form which can be accessed online, thus breaking the barriers of time and distance. Indian academics can play a significant role in creating OCW materials for the students to propagate the teaching and learning process diluting the limitations of traditional educational setup and begin a new culture of "Learning Beyond Classroom". The present study aims to sensitize the teachers and learners about the potentials of the OCWs. It presents a proposal for creating an "Indian OCW Consortium" at different levels. Also discusses the challenges and issues in establishing such an OCW project.

Distributed learning is becoming an increasingly common method of further education in post-secondary institutions and programs across Canada and internationally. Academic libraries are not immune to this trend, and many are reviewing and revising their teaching methodology. All learners require information literacy instruction that is relevant, engaging, and embedded in curriculum; in a distributed learning environment, however, the design and delivery of that instruction may need to be adapted to respond to the challenges of instruction to distributed learners. Through a literature review of distributed learning models in academic libraries and consultation with faculty and librarians at the University of Saskatchewan, this research will assist in determining distributed learning models and instructional design best suited for the provision of information literacy instruction within this environment. Although this research focused on academic libraries, this session will be relevant to anyone who is interested in providing instruction outside of a classroom. / Slides from a presentation at the Saskatchewan Library Association annual conference in Saskatoon, SK, in May 2013. Notes from the presentation are included on the slides which were not part of the original presentation.