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Library Services for a Managed Learning Environment

by
Neil McLean
Macquarie University, Sydney
Email: mclean@library.mq.edu.au

Abstract
Higher education institutions all over the world are seeking to redefine their mission in terms of taking advantage of opportunities for offering online learning in a variety of modes. This paper examines the dynamics driving this process at the institutional level and explores the implications of creating an online managed learning environment.

The challenge for university libraries of delivering information and services within the online managed learning environment is considerable. This paper also explores the key issues which have to be resolved if libraries are to be effective in an increasingly competitive online learning environment.

Introduction
It is now clear that most service industries are seeking to transform themselves in order to compete in an increasingly networked service environment. This is proving, in most cases, to be a painful process because it involves the rethinking of traditional services and it implies a reassessment and realignment of both human and physical resources. It very often demands collaboration with new service partners and a reliance on new technologies, which themselves can be risky and frustrating.

Higher education institutions are now beginning to take seriously the prospect of creating large scale managed online learning environments and the purpose of this paper is to explore the dynamics of this new phenomenon, with particular emphasis on the potential role of the library.

The Higher Education Environment
This analysis draws particularly on the Australian higher education environment, although many of the key characteristics apply to developments in the UK and in the US. The strategic plans of universities in Australia have reflected an increasing preoccupation with the impact of information technology on their respective teaching missions over the past decade. In many instances the rhetoric of these strategic plans is not realised in practice because the complexities of moving to a managed learning environment are not yet fully understood.

Principal Drivers
Technology has been the primary driver of this desire to embrace what is most commonly known in Australia as flexible learning. In many respects the networked world has developed faster than expected and the explosion of Web activity has opened up huge potential for new ways of delivering teaching and learning.

It is possible to detect a number of different rationales implicit in the various university strategic planning statements, including:

So, whilst technology is the primary driver, the related factors of competition and cost reduction are proving to be powerful catalysts in the strategic planning processes.

Strategic Issues
The main institutional strategic issues appear to be as follows:

Management Issues
There are some significant management issues to be faced in resolving these strategic issues. There are many signs of senior managers becoming exasperated with the failure of their institutions to react quickly enough to the declared strategic imperatives but, in doing so, they often fail to take into account the extent of the cultural change required to survive in an online learning environment. The supremacy of the individual academic in the classroom is a tradition with a long and proud history, and it does not easily translate into an environment where collaboration at various levels is the key to success.

Of even more importance is the changing expectations of students. No longer are they merely passive recipients of classroom and tutorial instruction. The introduction of online learning provides students with a much wider choice of options in terms of undertaking courses and it also makes them much more active and independent as learners. A new relationship is required between teacher and learner and the task of managing these changing relationships with students at both the individual teacher's level and at the institutional level is a major challenge.

At a more basic level all universities are grappling with the problems of developing and maintaining appropriate levels of IT infrastructure to support the management of the online learning enterprise and this is proving to be a daunting task. There is a chronic under investment in IT, a grave shortage of appropriate technical expertise and a general lack of understanding of the levels of technical interoperability required to sustain online learning.

Looming large on the horizon is the matter of managing intellectual property rights in the digital environment. When a teaching unit is put online, complete with associated learning objects and extracts from various information sources, there is the challenge of ensuring proper intellectual property rights management. At the heart of this issue is the question of who owns the teaching input provided by the lecturer (i.e. is it the university or the lecturer concerned?) and this matter threatens to become a major industrial relations issue in Australia.

These are all major management issues, which have to be resolved in order to provide educational, technological and financial sustainability.

Institutional Models
In the headlong rush to be involved in the online learning environment, most universities have adopted very similar rhetoric in their strategic plans and the lack of differentiation suggests a certain naivety in terms of the planning for long term survival. Universities are diverse in terms of their history, and in terms of their particular geographic environment, so it is unlikely that they will all emerge as similar online learning enterprises. The task, however, of identifying institutional strengths, particular markets and prospective partners is proving to be difficult.

It was interesting to note the classification of institutional models produced in a relatively recent DETYA sponsored study(1), which identified three major possibilities:

older universities who will probably use IT to enrich traditional learning with an already strong brand name

new cost-based mass education institutions which will most likely emerge from universities with a history of distance education provision

a hybrid model where there is mass customisation in large devolved campuses using low cost central IT facilities and strong academic faculties.

There is, of course, no single model which will guarantee success, but universities will have to target their efforts carefully to ensure that they avoid dispersing their energies and resources in the pursuit of an elusive and fickle online learning customer-base.

Characteristics of a Managed Online Learning Environment
There has been considerable debate, both in Australia, the US and UK, about the characteristics of the emerging online learning environment. The term 'flexible learning' has had widespread currency over the past few years in Australia but it is clearly an inadequate term to reflect the developments now being undertaken in some institutions where online learning has been incorporated into the core business.

A recent Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) seminar in the UK(2) produced the following working definition, which is useful for the purpose of this paper, namely:

"A managed learning environment is a system that uses technology to enhance and make more effective the network of relationships between learners, teachers and organisers of learning through integrated support for richer communication and activities."

The primary characteristics inherent in such a definition are that:

Creating An Online Learning Community
The key to success is to be able to create a successful online learning community, which in turn depends on developing a collaborative knowledge building environment. It is necessary also to nurture a culture of autonomy and socially configured learning which has a capacity to allow learners to:

In order to achieve these objectives, a portfolio of tools is required as part of the managed learning environment and this portfolio has been described by Oblinger and Kidwell(3) as follows:

Managing The Teaching/Learning Experience
It is now generally recognised that all aspects of the teaching and learning experience have to be re-evaluated in the online environment. There are fundamental matters of pedagogy to be revisited which will include curriculum design, course design and presentation for the online learning environment, the impact on learning outcomes and the use of learning objects and information resources. There is very little systematic evaluation being undertaken, as yet, because most institutions still rely on individual lecturers to mount individual units, or courses, which are often isolated from the traditional programs being offered by the institutions.

Technical Inter-Operability
The managed online learning environment requires very high levels of technical interoperability, which are not yet realised anywhere in the world. The mapping of the functional and technical models required to develop the required levels of interoperability is a major task and the table (see diagram Appendix 1), illustrates the complexities of developing such a model.

There are considerable challenges in developing interfaces between systems, directory services, authentication systems, portals, digital learning and information repositories and links to e-commerce, particularly when collaboration is required across institutions. The difficulties in achieving these objectives are likely to be major inhibitors in achieving institutional strategic goals.

Positioning Libraries In The Online Managed Learning Environment
University libraries have spent the last decade adapting to the demands of the digital revolution and, in many ways they have been highly successful. The purpose of the remainder of this paper is to explore the role of the library in relation to the emerging online managed learning environment and to identify some principal areas where action and innovation are required.

Strategic Issues
There are a number of key strategic issues which university libraries must face in order to remain relevant and competitive in the online teaching/learning environment. These issues can be summarised as a series of questions, namely:

Can libraries, as they presently operate, remain viable in the much more ubiquitous and open online learning environment?

Can the traditional university library still combine research and teaching support within the same infrastructure?

Is it possible to describe multimedia effectively and affordably?

What is the role of libraries in the management of intellectual property?

What steps are necessary to maintain freedom of access to information?

How can libraries ensure technical interoperability with learning management systems?

Is there any point in trying to harness or manage Internet Web resources?

What institutional mechanisms are required to achieve the collaborative action required to deliver a successful online learning environment?

The principal fear underlying all these questions is that libraries may become marginalised, given the apparent ability of online learning management systems to handle all aspects of the learning process, including the acquisition and storage of information content.

A secondary fear is that the cost structures of university libraries are still inextricably tied to traditional services with a corresponding high staffing cost structure, which may not be relevant to the online teaching/learning environment.

A third threat comes from the changes in user behaviour, which all indicate an overwhelming dependence on the Web-based search engines at the expense of library-based services. A recent study in the UK(4) revealed that students rely to a very large extent on search engines because they provide immediate access to information. The use of the local OPAC is limited and the use of Web-based information resources provided by the library is minimal. The use of institutional Web sites is negligible and the use of subject gateways almost non-existent. There was little evidence of reliance on librarians or training packages to improve information seeking skills and little difference between undergraduate and postgraduate students in terms of information seeking behavior. This preference for convenience over quality presents a major challenge to libraries in terms of evaluating the value and relevance of present activities.

The remainder of this paper looks at specific areas of library activity of relevance to the online teaching/learning environment.

The Scholars Portal
There has been extensive discussion about the concept of portals as a means of harnessing the plethora of information resources available through the Web. In a most interesting paper, Jerry D. Campbell makes the case for a "scholars portal", arising out of a meeting between the Association of Research Libraries and OCLC in September 1999.(5)

He correctly identifies that most libraries only offer general access to the Web and that existing library Web pages are focused mainly on individual libraries and the resources they offer. They are not designed, therefore, to serve as a general entry point for the larger world of Web-accessible resources. He acknowledges that there are a range of commercial portals but that these are business-driven and limited in their goals. Their value, however, is that they provide direct access to information resources and this is why convenience rules over quality in terms of user behaviour surveys.

The argument for collaborative action in developing the scholars portal is persuasive; the desire for veracity, dependability and accuracy are all worthy goals. The doubt, however, is the scale of action required to achieve such a goal and the ability to market it successfully to what appears to be an unreceptive customer-base.

E-Reserve
Over the past three years so-called "e-reserve" collections have been developed in a limited form by Australian university libraries as a means of improving the nexus between library services and online learning management systems. The main impediment to any major advancement has been the lack of any agreement with the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) to carry out digital copying for reserve purposes. The recent agreement between the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee and CAL to permit copying for teaching and research purposes, and the enactment of the Commonwealth Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Bill have paved the way for the creation of digital reserves, within the confines of the fair dealing terms of the Copyright Act 1968.

This is most timely because, in many cases, academic staff were beginning to load digitised material into their learning management systems of their own accord which is both expensive in terms of time and fraught with danger in terms of compliance with copyright laws.

The concept of the e-reserve, however, is somewhat a contradiction in terms, because the term 'reserve' implies a physical rationing based on placing heavily used material in a physically restricted space, whereas the creation of a digital repository containing full text articles, or portions of monographs, has no physical bounds and could in fact exist as a collaborative venture between one or more universities.

The key to library initiatives in terms of making available digital repositories of highly used material is to ensure ease of access through providing full interoperability between the digital repository and the learning management system. This in turn raises matters of technical interoperability relating to authentication and authorisation, which have yet to be solved. The other important process to be managed in providing such a service is copyright compliance, which is tightly allied to the issues of authentication and authorisation.

Whilst it seems appropriate that the management of this e-reserve service should reside in the library, it is by no means clear that the creation of the digital repository itself, or the actual location of the repository, should be a library activity. The time consuming activity of scanning articles and seeking copyright clearance could well be outsourced and there is potential for achieving considerable economies of scale if universities collaborate in such an outsourcing operation.

Increasingly, full text sources of material relevant to teaching and learning programs will be available in online form from commercial suppliers and the task of linking these various services in a transparent fashion is a library access management responsibility, albeit a very challenging one.

The crucial point to be made, however, is that material classed presently as reserve will be merely part of a spectrum of material available in distributed mode in the digital service environment.

IT Skills Development
An essential attribute in the online learning environment is that customers have the prerequisite skills to manage their participation in the learning process. There are a variety of practices in Australian universities as to how this goal is achieved, ranging from full responsibility resting with the library to the non-involvement of the library. In many cases, there has been piecemeal development which is to be expected. However, it would appear to be an area where commercial training packages could be applied with considerable success, irrespective of where the actual internal administration and customisation takes place.

From the library perspective it is probably not desirable that expensive resources be devoted to such an activity, given that the management of such IT training activities is contestable and there are other more cost-effective means of achieving the goal.

Information Literacy
Information literacy, or information handling skills, is a much more controversial issue and clearly closer to the core business of the library. As stated by the Association of College and Research Libraries in the US.(6)

"information literacy is a set of abilities requiring individuals to recognise when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate and use effectively the needed information."

The same statement goes on to say that information literacy forms the basis for lifelong learning and it notes the considerable overlap with information technology skills.

There is considerable momentum in the Australian university environment to adopt the American Library Association definition and standards for information literacy and this is generally regarded as a significant step in the right direction.

Some caution has to be applied however, in terms of implementation strategies, particularly in the light of the recent UK JISC study, which showed the almost negligible impact of large-scale training in information seeking skills provided by most major university libraries. A much more considered approach will be required in terms of developing strategies and far greater attention will be required to evaluating outcomes. It is surely one of the great professional conundrums of our time that users feel sufficiently empowered by the power of the Web and its associated search engines to almost completely ignore library services and their training programs. There is, therefore, a major strategic issue to be faced in terms of how much resource, both financial and human, should be devoted to this activity at a time when so much of the overall library resource is locked up in traditional activities. There is a related question as to whether such activity is to be integrated into the curriculum or conducted as a separate generic activity and a further question of whether it is best done by academic staff or librarians, or as a joint activity. It is undeniable that students would benefit from acquiring such skills; the issue would appear to be whether the timing is right to try and redress the obvious imbalance.

Customer Assistance
Increasingly students are able to carry out their learning and information seeking activities at home or in the workplace, which means rethinking the form of customer assistance offered by the library. In this environment customers need quite a lot of help with basic technical matters at the desktop and there are now many initiatives designed to provide such support, sometimes managed from the library, but more often from the customer services section of IT services.

In the case of Macquarie University, this IT customer assistance is managed by the Library and the service operates for nineteen hours per day with links to the London School of Economics providing additional support within the twenty-four hour cycle. The demands on this IT helpdesk continue to grow and it is clear that there are strong service links between the actual IT-related questions and the software/information-type matters arising from the searching of databases.

There is a question, therefore, of how to offer traditional reference-type services in this virtual environment. This is a matter that has been extensively debated over the past couple of years in the national and international arena and it is too early to make any realistic assessment of the extent and shape of so-called reference services to be offered to remote customers. There are, however, a number of important questions to be addressed in resolving this service issue, namely:

To what extent are traditional reference services amenable to being offered remotely?

Is there, in fact, a significant demand for such services, given the overwhelming dependence on search engines for information retrieval?

Is call-centre service philosophy relevant in modelling this new service paradigm and is it possible to apply frequently-asked-question (FAQ) principles to such a service?

Can such a service be simply grafted on to the traditional reference service paradigm?

Is there scope for collaboration in order to achieve economies of scale?

Is similar assistance required for the use of learning management systems?

Should there be a combined IT assistance/library reference/learning management system helpdesk?

What level of staff is required to service such helpdesk activity?

The response to these questions will vary from institution to institution but the outcomes will have significant implications for traditional library services and for the way in which institutional organisational structures converge to offer more integrated networked customer services.

Conclusion
The purpose of this paper was to raise a number of service issues relating to the support of the emerging online managed learning environment. There are profound cultural, organisational and technical issues to be addressed at the institutional level and most universities in Australia are, as yet, still dealing with these issues in a piecemeal fashion. The role of the library in such an online service environment is in the balance. If library managers take a passive view of the changing environment then there is every likelihood that the library could become marginalised very rapidly. On the other hand, there would seem to be great opportunities to take new service initiatives in creating an effective online learning environment.

This cannot be achieved, however, without a radical rethink of traditional service activities and without a significant realignment of resources. Bold innovative strategies are required and it remains to be seen how many library managers can meet such a challenge.

References
Managing the Introduction of Technology in the Delivery and Administration of Higher Education. Prepared by Philip Yetton & Associates, Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs. Canberra, April 1997.

Joint Information Systems Committee, Managed Learning Environments: a workshop run by JISC Assist, 25 February and 7 March 2000 Final Report.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/pub00/mle/final_rep.html

Diana Oblinger & Jill Kidwell. "Distance Education: Are We Being Realistic?" Educause Review May/June 2000.

JUSTEIS - JISC Usage Surveys: Trends in Electronic Information Services. Final Report - 1999/2000 cycle. Report prepared by C.J. Armstrong, R.E. Lonsdale, D.A. Stoker & C.J. Urquhart. August 2000.
http://www.dil.aber.ac.uk/dils/Research/Justeis/cyc1rep0.htm

Jerry D. Campbell, The Case For Creating a Scholars Portal to the Web: A White Paper.
http://www.arl.org/newsltr/211/portal.html

Association of College and Research Libraries, Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. ACRC Board, 2000.
http://www.ala.org/acrl/ilcomstan.html

Appendix 1: Managed Learning Environment [diagram]
Copyright © Neil McLean 2000.
All rights reserved.
mclean@library.mq.edu.au

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