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This article was downloaded by: [North West University]On: 20 December 2014, At: 12:32Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK
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Trying it on for SizeLinda Andrews Reeves aa Northwest Vista College , 3535 North Ellison Drive,San Antonio, TX, 78251, USAPublished online: 17 Oct 2008.
To cite this article: Linda Andrews Reeves (2005) Trying it on for Size, InternetReference Services Quarterly, 10:2, 19-33, DOI: 10.1300/J136v10n02_03
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Trying It On for Size:Piloting Synchronous
Online Reference Servicewith Elluminate vClass
Linda Andrews Reeves
ABSTRACT. Most colleges are continuing to see growth in their onlineeducation programs. Academic libraries are attempting to strike a bal-ance between traditional library offerings and new online resources andservices. Determining how to allocate funds is complicated by the factthat many students in online classes today live near enough campus tocome to the library. Should libraries at institutions where most onlinestudents live near campus devote scarce resources to providing ser-vices such as online reference? One community college library is at-tempting to answer that question by testing online reference withElluminate vClass in a limited way. [Article copies available for a fee fromThe Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address:<[email protected]> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com>© 2005 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]
KEYWORDS. Synchronous online reference, pilot program, onlinereference, online library services, library support of distance education,local online students, Elluminate
Linda Andrews Reeves is Instructor and Reference Librarian, Northwest Vista Col-lege, 3535 North Ellison Drive, San Antonio, TX 78251 (E-mail: [email protected]).
Internet Reference Services Quarterly, Vol. 10(2) 2005Available online at http://www.haworthpress.com/web/IRSQ
2005 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.Digital Object Identifier: 10.1300/J136v10n02_03 19
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INTRODUCTION
Many colleges today are wrestling with the question of what kind ofonline library resources and services are appropriate to support theircommunities. Northwest Vista College has been piloting online refer-ence service in an attempt to find an answer to this question.
The newest community college in San Antonio, Northwest VistaCollege (NVC) has experienced tremendous growth. The college beganoffering classes on its new campus in 1998, and by the 2000-01 aca-demic year it was listed as the fourth fastest-growing college of its sizein the nation. By 2003, the college had become the fastest-growing col-lege of its size in the nation. In the face of this kind of growth, it was achallenge to find classrooms for all the students and offices for the fac-ulty needed to teach them. The challenge for the library was to provideadequate resources and services to support this burgeoning populationof students.
Like many other colleges, community colleges in particular, North-west Vista College has also witnessed spectacular growth in its onlinelearning program. Ninety percent of public two-year institutions nowoffer online classes (Distance Education 2003). Northwest Vista beganits online learning program in 1999 with 53 students enrolled in fiveclasses. By the fall semester of 2002, over 1,000 students were enrolledin 67 online and hybrid courses (courses combining online materialsand face-to-face class sessions). One year later, in the fall of 2003,1,669 students were enrolled in 95 online and hybrid courses.
OBLIGATION FOR LIBRARY SUPPORT
Of course, a college offering online courses must provide library re-sources to support them. The Association of College and Research Li-braries makes this obligation clear in the Guidelines for DistanceLearning Library Services (2000):
Access to adequate library services and resources is essential forthe attainment of superior academic skills in post-secondary edu-cation, regardless of where students, faculty, and programs are lo-cated. Members of the distance learning community are entitled tolibrary services and resources equivalent to those provided for stu-dents and faculty in traditional campus settings. (2)
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STUDENTS DISTANT IN SCHEDULE
Determining what kinds of library support are appropriate for North-west Vista College’s online students is complicated by the fact that mostof these students live close to campus. In fact, 92% live within 20 milesof campus. Northwest Vista is not unique in seeing its online learningprogram heavily utilized by students who live close enough to come tocampus. In fact, a survey by the National Education Association indi-cated that about 56 percent of all distance learners live within an hourfrom campus (Hansen 2001).
The fact that terms such as distributed education and online learningseem to be replacing the term distance education illustrates the trend foronline classes to be popular with students who live near campus as wellas those who live at a distance. Judy Brown, executive director of theAcademic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Lab partnership with theDepartment of Defense, explains that she does not use the term “dis-tance education” because “it is not about distance any more, but aboutshifting time and availability.” “We prefer to use ‘distributed learn-ing,’” she adds (Lorenzetti 2003, 5). Barron (2002), in “Distant andDistributed Learners Are Two Sides of the Same Coin,” wonders, “Isthere a difference between distant and on-campus students anymore?Or is that distinction disappearing in our current state of academic‘wiredness?’” (25).
At institutions where even online students are able to come to thecampus library to use materials and take advantage of reference and in-struction services, can libraries get by with not providing resources on-line? No. As Barron has said, “the restrictions on time, etc., that have leda person to choose an online or televised (distributed) course might alsolimit his or her access to the library every bit as much as physical dis-tance” (26).
Indeed, there are compelling reasons for a college to offer online ser-vices even if it does not offer online courses. Increasingly, students ex-pect the kinds of online services once reserved for distance educationstudents. Students know what technology is capable of because they useit in their everyday life. Euster (1995) observes that “students alreadyexpect information wherever, whenever; in a world where you can getmoney out of a machine, surely you can get information out of one”(qtd. in Gandhi).
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ONLINE SERVICES FOR ALL STUDENTS
Making online library services available to all students can be benefi-cial not only to the students but also to their institution. Providing stu-dents with online support services is one way to improve studentretention and success. In a 1997 study, Greenlee and Greenlee discov-ered that students left school for four main reasons: almost half (46 per-cent) left for financial reasons, 30 percent left because of family issues,29 percent left due to work or schedule conflicts, and 24 percent left forpoor academic performance. Quality online support services can make adifference for students in all of these situations because they make itfaster, cheaper, and easier to get the support necessary to succeed in col-lege.
The University of North Texas (UNT) found, in fact, that extendingthe amount of library resources available online improved student re-cruitment and retention. Librarian Frances May explains, “Severalyears ago, the librarians here at UNT decided to view each student as apotential distance learner. Because we view each UNT student as a po-tential candidate for our online DE program, we don’t place restrictionson what resources our students can access” (Gaide 2004). Increasing theamount of library resources available online has benefited both onlineand on-campus students. The university has reaped benefits in greaterrecruitment and retention. According to May, word about UNT’s im-pressive variety of online library resources has helped to recruit and re-tain both mainstream and online students.
ONLINE OPTIONS AT NORTHWEST VISTA
Offering online library resources fits in well with the mission ofNorthwest Vista College. Because it is the newest community college inSan Antonio, there is the opportunity to do things differently and to trynew things. From its inception the college was conceived as a stu-dent-centered, high-tech institution, characterized by innovative learn-ing systems and the effective use of learning technologies.
In some ways the library at NVC (http://www.accd.edu/nvc/lrc) hada head start in providing online resources because the electronic revolu-tion was well underway when the library began developing its collec-tion. Unencumbered by the baggage of a large print collection of oldermaterials and the microfilm readers that are part of most established li-
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braries, the Northwest Vista Library from the start has been able to de-vote a large portion of its materials budget to online resources while stilloffering a balance between tangible and electronic materials. The li-brary continues to purchase a wide variety of monographs, and its col-lection of audiovisual materials is extremely popular.
It is in the realm of periodicals that there has been the biggest changein the format preferred by library users. Usage patterns have led the li-brary to shift an increasing proportion of its material budget to provid-ing access through online databases rather than print periodicals. Thelibrary currently subscribes to over 65 databases, which are availablefrom off campus, as well as on campus, 24 hours a day. Through thedatabases, students can access full-text materials from journals, news-papers, and reference books. Northwest Vista librarians take every op-portunity to inform students and faculty about the databases and how toaccess them from off campus. Use of the databases from off campus hasskyrocketed over the past few years. Off-campus logons to databasesincreased from 5,493 in 2000 to 237,508 in 2003.
In addition, Northwest Vista College students have the ability to ac-cess around 25,000 electronic books, made available to members ofTexas colleges by the Texas State Library. Students can use the collegedistrict’s online catalog to search for both electronic books and forbooks owned by Northwest Vista College or the other colleges in theAlamo Community College District.
Of course, providing resources online is not enough; students alsoneed online services. Northwest Vista librarians believe that it is impor-tant to provide both instruction and reference assistance online. Recog-nizing that students often do not realize that they need instruction in aparticular library resource until they are working on their research proj-ect late at night, the librarians developed brief Web-based tutorialsabout the online catalog, electronic books, off-campus access to data-bases, and several of the most commonly used databases. In another ef-fort to provide assistance to students as they do school work after thelibrary has closed, the librarians recently launched an e-mail referenceservice. Students can submit a question any time of the day or night andexpect to receive an answer by e-mail within 24 hours. E-mail referenceservice and simple instructional Web pages are two simple, inexpensiveways to provide online support to students studying off-campus duringtimes when the library is closed. Neither option significantly impactsstaffing.
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PILOT OF ONLINE REFERENCE
In keeping with the college’s philosophy of offering student-cen-tered, high-touch service, the library is also trying out synchronous on-line library reference and instruction using Elluminate vClass. In 2002,the Alamo Community College District (ACCD) purchased 100 con-current licenses for use by the faculty, staff, and students at the district’sfour colleges. After considering several products, the district selectedElluminate vClass because it is robust, cost-effective, easy to use,broadly applicable, and has a number of attractive features. The applica-tion provides a virtual classroom environment with a whiteboard thatcan serve either as a chalkboard or as a screen on which to projectPowerPoint presentations, images, or PDF documents. In addition to of-fering a box for live chat, Elluminate vClass also makes possiblevoice-over-Internet conversations among participants. This feature al-lows students to get help while they are working at their computer. Theydo not have to leave their computer (possibly disconnecting from theInternet) to make a phone call. Students who are at a distance save thecost of a long-distance phone call. Best of all, librarians can give stu-dents help within the information search environment. They can takeadvantage of features such as sharing their desktop and pushing Webpages to teach students how to access and search databases.
STEPS IN SETTING UP A PILOT
During spring semester of 2002, Northwest Vista College beganworking to develop a pilot of Elluminate vClass. A student advisor anda reference librarian from the college’s online learning committeeteamed up to test if Elluminate would be useful in extending the servicestheir departments provide to the online environment. Also part of theteam was an academic computing specialist, who did a lot of work be-hind the scenes to enable the pilot to run smoothly. We followed a num-ber of steps in setting up the pilot: (1) arrange for training; (2) developforms and documents; (3) select target group; and (4) form partnerships.
Arrange Training
Shortly after the district purchased the licenses for Elluminate, thevendor provided training for some of the information technology sup-port personnel who would be working with the application. These tech-
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nology personnel in turn provided training to individuals from variousacademic areas where the application was likely to be used. These indi-viduals then acted as resources for others in their area who were inter-ested in using Elluminate. In preparation for sessions with students, theadvisor and librarian engaged others in their area to play the role of stu-dents. It was also informative for the moderator in training to use twoside-by-side computers and play the role of moderator on one and therole of student on the other. This technique allowed one to immediatelysee the impact of any computer functions.
Develop Forms and Documents
In preparing to launch the pilot of online services we found that weneeded to develop an invitation to the target population, appointment re-quest forms, an auto response form with instructions for students, amechanism to e-mail the librarian or advisor with an appointment re-quest, and an online evaluation of the service for students to complete atthe end of a session.
Invitation to Pilot
At the beginning of the pilot, the advisor and librarian composed aletter of invitation to the students who would be invited to participate inthe pilot. The letter explained the purpose of the pilot and providedneeded instructions and logon information. The participating instruc-tors in turn posted this letter in their WebCT classes.
Appointment Request Form
The team then designed an online appointment request form for stu-dents to use. We brainstormed about what information we would needfrom the student in order to prepare for the online help session. Becausethe information needed to get ready for an online library reference sessiondiffered a great deal from that needed to prepare for a student advisingsession, a different form was needed for each kind of appointment.
Auto Response Form
Working together, the team determined what information studentswould need to have in order to go online and log into the Elluminateclassroom. The academic computer specialist put this information into
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an auto response form that was generated every time a student requestedan online appointment. The computing specialist also programmed ane-mail notification to be sent to the librarian or advisor who would meetwith the student.
Evaluation Form
Finally, the team collaborated in creating an evaluation form for thestudents to complete immediately after the online session. The goal wasto allow the student to complete the form quickly but also to collect in-formation that would be useful in evaluating and improving the service.
Select Target Group
Students enrolled in online classes were the logical choice for a testgroup. Not only would they be the ones most likely to use online services,but they are also, in general, technically savvy. Online students would notfind it a challenge to download the java application and follow instruc-tions to access the Elluminate classroom. The target group was furthernarrowed to students in classes taught by instructors who had taught on-line before. We did not want to ask an instructor who was still learningabout WebCT to become familiar with Elluminate. We further narrowedour pool of candidates to instructors of classes that involved library re-search. We ended up inviting a couple of experienced online instructorsof English composition to take part in the first test of the pilot.
Form Partnerships
One of the most gratifying aspects of working with this pilot was theopportunity to work with people from other areas of the college. Thecollaboration between the librarian, advisor, and computing specialistresulted in friendships and a professional network that continues longpast the development of the pilot. The pilot also gave Internet faculty anidea of how the library could support their online classes.
TIME FRAME OF THE PILOT
One of the trickiest issues with our pilot was getting a sample of stu-dents to use the service in order to provide feedback and discover prob-lems with the service, without making the service available to the entire
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student body. Although we put a great deal of thought into who wouldbe the ideal candidates for the pilot, we learned that there were otherissues we had not considered. One of them was timing. We learnedthat short, intense terms such as our three-week MayMester and ourfive-week summers terms are not the best times to elicit participationin a pilot. We began the pilot during a Maymester term and got very fewstudents to participate, even though the instructors offered extra credit.During the first summer term that followed, we made presentations atthe required orientation sessions for the four WebCT classes with whomwe had arranged to pilot the service. Even with this friendly, personalinvitation and with their instructor’s offer of extra credit, not a singlestudent used the online advising or online library reference serviceduring that summer term. We concluded that students enrolled in con-densed academic terms are too busy to think about using new technol-ogy, even for extra credit.
For the fall of 2003, the pilot of online library reference acquired anew target group. A technical writing instructor developed an assign-ment whereby students were asked to test out the service, write an eval-uation of the instruction brochure, and create their own instructionmanual for the service. Students in two sections of technical writingparticipated in the pilot during each of fall and spring semesters. Theirparticipation allowed us to get ample evidence that our online ap-pointment request form, auto reply form, and e-mail notification featurework smoothly. A disadvantage to having the technical writing studentsparticipate in the pilot is that not all of them were enrolled in a class thatrequired library research. Therefore, not all students had a real need fora reference session with a librarian–online or in person. However, thosestudents who were working on a research project were able to see howthe online reference service could be used to meet a real need, and weobtained some very useful feedback from these students.
SOFTWARE PERFORMANCE
We have been pleased with the performance of the software. Insti-tutions can choose to install Elluminate on their server or haveElluminate, Inc., host the service. When the Alamo Community CollegeDistrict purchased 100 concurrent licenses to Elluminate, they opted toinstall it on the district server. Authentication has not presented a prob-lem. When a college staff member requests to have an Elluminate class-room for office hours, library instruction, tutoring, etc., the technology
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team “creates” a classroom and establishes logons and passwords forthe class moderator and for the student participants. Students using theonline library service are given their logon information in the auto re-sponse form generated by their online appointment request. The voice-over-Internet-provider (VOIP) features work remarkably well regard-less of the geographical distance between participants or the type ofInternet service used. Participants are instructed to select the connectionspeed that they are using upon first entering the Elluminate classroom.Elluminate is designed to adjust for participants’ varying Internet con-nection speeds.
What we valued the most in Elluminate vClass are the features thatmake it a virtual classroom rather than just a chat reference service or ameeting place. The whiteboard area can be used like a chalkboard or as ascreen for showing a PowerPoint presentation, a document, or an image.(See Figure 1.)
Even more exciting, however, is being able to take students into theresearch environment. The moderator is able to send students to a Website and then meet back in the classroom to discuss, through the chat fea-ture or VOIP, what the student discovered. Most useful of all to librari-ans working with remote students is the ability to share desktops. Thelibrarian can share his or her desktop to show students something partic-ularly tricky, such as the link on the library Web page where studentscan log on to the databases remotely. With each click of the moderator’smouse, Elluminate redraws the student’s screen. This can be disconcert-ing until the student learns what to expect. The application sharing fea-ture can also come in handy if a student gets “lost” somewhere in thesearch process. The student can share his or her desktop with the librar-ian moderator so that the librarian can see the nature of the problem andoffer advice. When a student complains that he cannot access an articlehe wants, for example, a librarian can look at the search screen, deter-mine that the full text is not available, and advise the student to checkthe box that limits the search to full-text articles. (See Figure 2.)
Craig Coroneos, instructor of English at Northwest Vista College,likes for his online students to receive library instruction through a liveElluminate session. According to Coroneos, “Elluminate’s rich Web-based functionality combined with real-time interaction enable a levelof student immersion in a virtual classroom not available with asynchron-ous Internet course delivery tools such as Blackboard and WebCT. Whilenot intended to replace these tools, Elluminate is certainly a powerfulsupplement to them and is specifically geared to visual and audi-tory-based learners.”
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Celita DeArmond, Distance Education Librarian at San Antonio Col-lege and another enthusiastic Elluminate user, also values the inter-activity Elluminate makes possible. She likes the ability to instantly pollclass participants by asking them to select Yes or No, or A, B, C, D, E inresponse to a question. She also appreciates the emoticons (smiley face,confused face, hands applauding, or thumbs down) that can be usedwith the chat feature. DeArmond explains, “That way you can just askfor a picture of how the students are doing. Take their emotional tem-perature, do little check-ins with them to make sure all is well.”
STUDENT FEEDBACK
Of course, collecting feedback is an essential part of a pilot project. Inorder to get information from students about the online reference ser-vice, we sent them to a brief online evaluation form after each session.We encouraged students to be honest and assured them that we would
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FIGURE 1. Librarian’s Elluminate Desktop with a PowerPoint Slide on theWhiteboard
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take their suggestions seriously because we were trying to design a ser-vice that would be easy for them to use. Below are the responses forsome of the key questions we asked:
• Fairly easy to Use: 55%• Very Easy to use: 32%• Accomplished everything they wanted to in the reference ses-
sion: 72%• Use service again: 91%
We were pleased to see that 87% of students found the application eitherfairly easy or very easy to use. We were particularly happy to learn that91% of students who tried the service said that they would use the serviceagain. We also received comments, as expected, that students would likethe service to be available for more extended hours and on a drop-in basisinstead of exclusively by appointment. It would not be difficult for librari-
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FIGURE 2. Student’s Elluminate Desktop During Application Sharing–Librar-ian Sharing Desktop to Show Student the Database Login Link
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ans to keep the Elluminate classroom open on their office computer duringtimes when they are not scheduled to work at the reference desk, and we in-tend to experiment with this kind of service in the future.
NOW WHAT?A LITTLE ONLINE REFERENCE?
We still struggle with the question of whether enough students needand would use online reference to commit the funds to staff the servicemore extensively. We are exploring the possibility of developing aconsortium with the other four community colleges in the AlamoCommunity College District. Other libraries have successfully usedthe consortium model to expand their services. The fourteen libraries inthe Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, for example,worked together to create the Virtual Information Desk in order to extendreference service for remote users until midnight. The Virtual Informa-tion Desk employs student assistants who are trained and supervised by aprofessional librarian (Bell, 2000, p. 56). In the meantime, we are pro-viding online reference in a limited way by marketing the service togroups of students who need it the most.
TARGETED MARKETING
At Northwest Vista College, the groups most in need of online refer-ence include students enrolled in online courses who cannot come oncampus; dual-credit high school students, most of whom take courseson their high school campus; home-schooled, dual-credit high schoolstudents, who do not actually have a school library; and the growingnumbers of students taking classes at an off-site location in the San An-tonio medical center area. We have informed our online faculty aboutthe availability of online library instruction and reference assistance,but we have not undertaken an extensive marketing campaign to offeronline reference to all students enrolled in online classes.
We reach the dual-credit students with information about library re-sources and services through their newsletter. In addition, every yearthe college library invites the librarians at high schools participating inour dual-credit program to come on campus for an informal meeting tolearn about the resources available through the college library.
Home-schooled dual-credit students are in particular need of libraryresources and services because they do not attend class on a high school
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campus. The college library periodically invites home-schooled dual-credit students and their parents to a reception to learn how to use “theirlibrary” at Northwest Vista College.
The newest group of students to whom we are offering online refer-ence service is the students taking classes at our offsite facility in themedical center. Some of the students taking classes at the off-site centeralso attend class on campus. Others, however, take classes only at thecenter because they live or work in that area. The center offers blocks ofcore required courses so that students can maximize the time they investin coming to the center. The center provides a computer lab so that stu-dents can do research and work on papers. The online library resourcesthat students access in this lab represent the only library at the off-sitecenter. During the first week of each semester, Northwest Vista Collegelibrarians host a table in the lobby of the Medical Center branch, provid-ing students with information and brochures about resources and ser-vices available from off campus. Throughout the year librarians providelibrary instruction in the computer lab and pass out brochures invitingstudents to take advantage of synchronous online reference.
In conclusion, it is possible to provide online library resources and ser-vices without investing a great deal of money and staff time, and even stu-dents enrolled in traditional classes on campus expect these resources. Byproviding access through the library Web site to a wide array of useful re-sources, librarians at Northwest Vista College have been able to providesome degree of assistance 24 hours a day to students enrolled in onlineclasses as well as students enrolled in face-to-face classes. Consolidatinglinks to online materials and tutorials on a separate Distance Learning Re-sources page highlights for students the tools that are available to themonline. To provide virtual reference, we selected multiuse software thatour district had already purchased, and we make the service available byappointment only. Finally, we target our marketing of off-campus libraryservices to those groups who cannot readily come to campus to use the li-brary. In this way we are able to provide some support to students in on-line courses without making a big dent in the library budget. By testingout online reference service with small groups of students and collectingfeedback, we hope to be able to expand our off-campus library services asthe need for them is demonstrated.
Received: September 3, 2004Revised: October 17, 2004
Accepted: November 9, 2004
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REFERENCES
ACRL Guidelines for Distance Learning Library Services. 2000. Association of College& Research Libraries. 20 May 2004. <http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/guidelinesdistance.htm>.
Barron, B. B. 2002. Distant and distributed learners are two sides of the same coin.Computers in Libraries 22:24-28.
Bell, Steven J. 2000. Creating Learning Libraries in Support of Seamless LearningCultures. In Future Teaching Roles for Academic Librarians. Ed. Alice HarrisonBarr. New York: The Haworth Press, Inc.
Distance Education at Degree-Granting Postsecondary Institutions: 2000–2001. Na-tional Center for Education Statistics. 15 June 2004. http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/peqis/publications/2003017.
Euster, J. R. 1995. It’s academic. Wilson Library Bulletin 69:62-63.Gaide, S. 2004. Integrated library services boosts online recruitment and retention.
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