Purchase of eBooks in School Libraries

In regards to the HarperCollins Open Letter to Librarians article, I disagree with establishing an eBook checkout limit of 26 circulations per purchase; although, I understand the fear of publishers that the unlimited borrowing of books will hurt their sales. Restrictions on eBook checkouts are somewhat inconsistent because emulating the equivalent price of a printed book is challenging (Cotler, n.d.).

First, our teacher-librarians have indicated eBooks that are offered with a 26 check-out limitation are relatively the same price of what other vendors offer with an unlimited single user check-out. This lack of consistency in pricing stems from the “first-sale doctrine” and procurement of eBooks. The only way for libraries to obtain eBooks is through the purchase of licenses (Colter, n.d.). EBook licenses are subject to what or how the publisher wants to license to the libraries. Publishers maintain control and flexibility in the pricing structure offered to libraries.

Second, our librarians are purchasing more nonfiction eBooks to support the type of text found on the STAAR test, and librarians prefer the simultaneous multiuser books when available for nonfiction books. Even though they are typically more expensive, for roughly the cost of two books, our librarians can offer access to the whole school at once, which makes it usable for class projects/reads should they choose to use them. To find the big five publishers and library lending terms click this link. The pdf document confirms that the publishers offer licenses and various lender terms beginning with 26 checkouts to an unlimited number of single-user-at-a-time checkouts.

Third, when I asked our librarians how they felt about eBooks, they mentioned they purchased them because they felt the need to offer them to our students. In other words, libraries should take advantage of any opportunities available to place reading materials into the hands of our students. However, they also felt that purchasing physical books was a better use of the library funds because students mostly requested the physical books over eBooks when reading for entertainment. Basically, they felt the pricing of a printed book along with the longer shelf life compared to many eBooks was a more efficient way to spend the district’s limited funds (Everton, 2010).  Teacher-librarians feel you can get many more circulations from a book than an eBook with a limit of 26 checkouts. Lanning and Turner (2010) found this explanation consistent in a recent survey which also indicated librarians felt printed books were a more popular choice because of the cost of electronic sources versus their print counterparts. 

However, the demand for eBooks has consistently risen and schools need to make more of them available to their patrons. One key function of the library is to make books available to the school community because this has a positive effect on the knowledge and education of people in the community. Providing eBooks has a greater ability to reach more people at great distances considering the exponential growth in mobile devices.

Hopefully legislation will find an equitable way to provide more eBooks to the schools and community in a consistent manner.

This article was recently released and is very interesting about free eBooks being offered to Title 1 schools. I wonder what implications this will have on the future purchasing of EBooks.    

        

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2016-02-24-the-white-house-and-michelle-obama-release-250m-open-library-app-for-title-i-and-special-education-teachers

Renee

References

  Cotler, A. (n.d.). Libraries in the Digital Age.

Everton, K. (2010). Are Libraries Dying? Ebooks and the Future of Libraries. The Book of MPub: New Perspectives on Technology and Publishing, 47.

Lanning, S., & Turner, R. (2010). Trends in print vs. electronic use in school libraries. The Reference Librarian, 51(3), 212-221.

Project Completion

My Canvas course is complete and can be viewed publicly at https://canvas.instructure.com/courses/971925. However, I never really feel that anything that I create is truly finished. Every time I review it, I think of something I would like to add or change. At some point, I just have to let the mouse go and log off.

I do still need to finalize my course evaluation. I started a Google form, but I haven’t finalized the questions. I hope to finish that task during the Thanksgiving Holidays. It has been started along with shared to the world but needs major revising. In addition, I hope to get a jump start this week on creating my final presentation, so I won’t be rushed at the last minute. I am looking forward to seeing my peers’ presentations and how they have used Canvas.

The major challenge that I have faced lately is mostly time. I had a great conference that I attended in Salt Lake City earlier this week, the Personal Learning Community Institute. However, the travel time to get there and back, along with attending the sessions, took much of my extra time that I usually use for completing course work. I did plan ahead some, so I wouldn’t get too far behind. But, I found myself working all weekend to meet the Sunday night deadline. Now that I have met the deadline, I am ready to enjoy the Thanksgiving break. So, thanks to my instructor for pushing us to complete it prior to the holiday.

In addition, I did make the deadline for completing my job aid for the course. If you write a job aid that truly provides all of the background that an instructor needs to successfully facilitate the course, they can be very lengthy. And my job aid ended up at about thirty pages long. I don’t see how it could have been any shorter without deleting key information that will be needed to facilitate the course. I think that perhaps, more guidance or information in the course in this area could help the students produce better job aids for their course. I reviewed the rubric, Googled for information about job aids, and researched the library databases, but did not find any good resources to help improve my job aid. So, I produced a document that I felt would help me if I were teaching the course and was unfamiliar with some of the concepts.

I will not have time to implement the course as it spans over a seven week timeframe. However, it will be a great course for me to utilize with our staff next semester. I also had another district inquire about facilitating the course content for their district. 

Creating a Transformative Digital Vision Canvas Course Reflection

The Canvas course which I created for CECS 5510 Technology-Based Learning Environments is finally complete. I adjusted the design of my course, so I could meet the course completion timeline. There are many more resources that I could have included in this course; however, I had to prioritize and decide which components were best for a 40 hour course. I also find it hard to announce that the course is complete as I think that improvements can always be made. Each time I review a module, I find myself changing the sentences and linking a new resource that is better than the previous one.

The technology challenges that I have battled are mostly cosmetic ones. Canvas is somewhat limiting on how appealing you can make the course content. I think the more appealing an instructional designer can make the course, the easier it is for participants to navigate within the course. For example, I made buttons to each module on the splash page. I spent entirely too long working on them to display correctly in various browsers. I think it looks much more professional this way, but was too cumbersome when completing. Perhaps in the future, Canvas will add more of these features as a drag and drop option. In addition, I am a firm believer in the use of rubrics. I included thirteen different rubrics in my course. Creating the rubrics were much more difficult than they should have been. For example, each rubric had to be created from scratch. Hopefully, there will be a way to copy a rubric, rename it, and modify it in the future, so you don’t have to continue to recreate the entire rubric each time you want to add a criterion to an existing rubric.

Having three people in a peer review group made peer review more difficult than just having a peer review partner. It is difficult to communicate with everyone and schedule the reviews. For instance, there were a couple of times in which we had to review two courses because it was a little confusing about who was reviewing each other’s work. Also, when you change reviewers, you must go back and review the entire course to understand the navigation and key concepts being built upon throughout the course instead of just reviewing the last 1/4^th of the course. However, on the flip side, having multiple peer reviewers helps ensure that the student is receiving accurate information from multiple resources and may eliminate student assessment error (Bostock, 2000).

I’ve also learned that when designing an online course with a timeline, you must plan and set completion goals, so you are not trying to complete your project at the last minute. I used my project timeline for completing my course and met the deadlines accordingly. Everyone in my peer review group did a great job of meeting the deadlines.

I didn’t know my strengths in this process until I saw everyone’s project presentation. I think that having a background in education and previously being an ELA teacher helps tremendously. It is very natural to me on how to set up the modules and activities, but others struggled with this. I am very happy with my course and look forward to using it myself in the future with other administrators.

Reference

Bostock, S. (2000). Student peer assessment. Learning Technology.

Reflection on Progress of Online Canvas Course

The development of my online class is moving along according to schedule. Although we are nearing the end of the semester, there is still quite a bit of detail to complete. For example, I only have one module left to construct. It is the final module which includes the presentations of the comprehensive digital portfolios. Then, I need to go back through the entire course and fine tune the details.

I enjoy the creativity of building the class; however, it is the detail involved that I find rather tedious and tiresome. But from experience, this is one of the key factors that I find online instructional designers tend to overlook. It is very frustrating as a student, when materials in the online class contradict each other or are too vague for the student to understand the assignment.  Therefore, I want to be sure that the syllabus, the assignment due dates, and instructions all align with the course activities and modules. And, you don’t want the course instructor modifying course content while teaching the course, as trying to create course content and meet the student needs at the same time would be overwhelming and effect the success of the course (Caplan & Graham, 2004).

Time has been the biggest challenge in creating this course. If I had more time, I could develop most of the instructional videos myself. However, in this case, I had to pick and choose which ones I needed to customize and create myself. Although, in some instances, the student is charged with researching and finding customized videos and information. In addition, Canvas is somewhat limited when it comes to formatting the material. I spent too much time trying to create a professional looking line break between activities in each module. I wanted to break the activities into chunks of information, so the material would not look so overwhelming to the participant. However, it still isn’t perfect and views differently depending on the device being used to view the course.

Currently, I am on schedule to meet the timeline for completion. However, I am always thinking of things that would enhance the course, but usually end up abandoning many of the ideas due to time constraints and the scope of the assignment. The course is set up so that each module should be completed within a week’s timeframe. So, I will not be able to implement the course during this timeframe; however, I will be using this course with our administrators next summer. And I have been asked to conduct training for another school district based on the information and materials in the course. So, the evaluation will be conducted after this semester.

Reference

Caplan, D., & Graham, R. (2004). The development of online courses. Theory and practice of online learning, 175.

Feedback and Updates on Creating the Transformative Digital Vision Course

I have received feedback from two of my classmates on the course I’m designing in Canvas. First, I used a program called Canva, www.canva.com, to create the graphics in the course. The splash page contains a graphic listing all of the modules that will need to be completed throughout the duration of the course. On my computer, the text on the graphics was very easy to read. However, when viewed on other computers it was more difficult.  So, I redesigned the graphic so that the text is easier to read. In the next peer review, I hope my peers find it easier to read.

When I click through the course, it is hard to believe that it took the amount of work and time that has gone into creating the project so far. For example, as I work on each module, it takes quite an amount of time to ensure that all of the details in one module are consistent with the other modules. I get extremely frustrated when I am participating in an online class, and the information in the various areas such as the syllabus, assignments, and modules are reporting due dates or other requirements that are inconsistent.  

I find the course content easy to produce because I work with the subject matter each day. I know that if I was designing a course in a subject that I am not so familiar with that it might take even longer to create the course. Fortunately, there are many videos on YouTube that can supplement the course materials. However, I have had to produce content so it is tailored to the expected outcomes of the course. And that definitely takes more time to complete.

In addition, as I build the activities for each module, I reflect to see if it is the best online pedagogy for the student task. For example, does the task allow for active learning, interactivity, or collaboration? These specific pedagogies promote and enhance the online learning environment and ensure that students are engaged in the course (Ukpokodu, 2008). In this course, I also want to ensure that the activities and the applications chosen model transformative learning. So, as I build each module, I double check to see if the web applications or resources I have provided are conducive to achieving this task. Again, this takes more time to research; therefore, the timeline becomes hard to meet when you are focusing on the quality of the course.

Reference

Ukpokodu, O. N. (2008). Teachers’ reflections on pedagogies that enhance learning in an online course on teaching for equity and social justice. Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 7(3), 227-255.

Online Instructional Design and Considerations

The instructional design document is the roadmap for creating the course in the Canvas learning management system (LMS). As I have begun building the modules in the LMS, some activities in the design document have been tweaked as well as enhanced along the way.

For example, I am using social media applications in my course to demonstrate to administrators how they can connect with other experts in their field. I discovered that you can embed a twitter handle or hashtag into a Canvas page, so participants can view the conversations within the LMS. Basically this works off of the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) technology. You can find the application collections in EduAppCenter.com, which is managed by Instructure, the creator of Canvas. Any application on the EduAppCenter page can be embedded into the LMS for a seamless experience for the user. The only downside is that many of these applications use a key or secret in order to be installed. This represents that a fee is associated with the application. However, I noticed many free applications that could be integrated such as Educreations, Youtube, Dropbox, Quizlet, Wikipedia, Vimeo, and Slideshare.

I have also noticed that I left out some details in the design document and a few areas need minor revising to ensure the participant has a clear understanding of the concepts being introduced. In my third module, I forgot to create an assignment or assessment for brainstorming a personal learning network. In my design document, I only listed an assignment dropbox for the final product; however, the task could be quite difficult for people not familiar with personal learning networks (PLNs). So, I added a monitoring or checkpoint assignment. This assignment will provide an opportunity for the instructor to offer feedback or redirection if the participant is struggling with the newly introduced concept. The assignment has little weight in the overall course, but it will provide insight into the overall understanding of the concept before the participant begins to construct their own PLN. Research has shown that providing feedback guides the learner’s performance and is positively related to their achievement (Reigeluth, Watson, Watson, Dutta, Chen, & Powell, 2008).

The design model is working well so far, as I am constantly referencing the instructional design document as I build the modules. There are so many details to consider when you begin placing instructional content online versus a face to face course. The pedagogy that is selected for the online course must be carefully considered and revised to ensure it meets the needs of the learner in the LMS format.

Reference

Reigeluth, C. M., Watson, W. R., Watson, S. L., Dutta, P., Chen, Z., & Powell, N. D. (2008). Roles for technology in the information-age paradigm of education: Learning management systems. Educational Technology, 48(6), 32. 

Reflection on Developing a Course in the Canvas Learning Management System

So far, I have been pleasantly surprised by the intuitiveness of how to build a course in Canvas. Before you begin creating your course, it is important to map out how you want to organize your instructional materials, assignments, discussions, pages, syllabus, and modules. I plowed right in to the program and quickly discovered that it would be worth my time to map out the overall navigation of the course. Once I decided on organizing the materials into weekly modules and accessing the modules from a home page or landing page, the organization of the course began to flow.

One item that has been rather challenging is the use of the rubric feature. I am a firm believer in the use of rubrics to establish assignment expectations. And the rubrics are fairly easy to build within Canvas. The only problem is that it drives me crazy that I have three areas in each criteria of the rubric, however, the lines will not align. In addition, the rubrics are managed under the outcome section. I would suggest to Canvas that rubrics have a section of their own. Furthermore, you can’t clone a rubric and make minor adjustments to it for a similar assignment. Instead, you must completely re-type it. Last, the student must select the gear button in the upper right hand corner to view the rubric, or you must hyperlink it to its URL, which seems much more difficult than it should be.

I have just about completed 25% of my course and have received feedback from a peer. The feedback was helpful, and I always welcome input from a second opinion. In addition, I did glance through his course and found them to be very similar in structure, so I must be on to something. I have created my own graphics and discovered that the main graphic on the landing page displays a little too dark for some monitors compared to how it appears on mine. Another note is to always check your work on various computers, browsers, and on a variety of settings. And I don’t want to forget to check it on a mobile device. Although, I think I read that Canvas doesn’t fully support the iPad application just yet.

Finally, I provided feedback to another classmate today. The best advice that I could give her was to consider how the participant would navigate through the course and what the most logical manor is without missing any important instructions or assignments. Along with this, is ensuring that you are also considering how the students will learn. For example, what are the pedagogical principles being used in the LMS, so students are successful learners (Suddaby & Milne, 2008). I feel these are truly the first big obstacles that the course designer must tackle after a strong instructional design document has been created.

What have I learned from the process of developing instruction in an LMS? I can conclude that it is very time consuming although once it is completed may look very simple to accomplish.  Perhaps that is what a good instructional designer does for the learner? They make everything very easy to navigate and provide explicit instructions, so the learner has a clear understanding of the course expectations.

Reference

Suddaby, G., & Milne, J. (2008). Coordinated, collaborative and coherent. Campus - Wide Information Systems, 25(2), 114-122. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/1065074081086660