TL INFOBITS March 2007 No. 9 ISSN: 1931-3144 About INFOBITS INFOBITS is an electronic service of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ITS Teaching and Learning division. Each month the ITS-TL's Information Resources Consultant monitors and selects from a number of information and instructional technology sources that come to her attention and provides brief notes for electronic dissemination to educators. NOTE: You can read the Web version of this issue at http://its.unc.edu/tl/infobits/bitmar07.php. You can read all back issues of Infobits at http://its.unc.edu/tl/infobits/. ...................................................................... UNC-Chapel Hill's Blackboard Course Extractor Available Scholars Still Reluctant to Accept Open Access Publishing Are We All Learning Designers Now? Special Journal Issue on E-Science Teaching with Wikis E-Materials Possibly Contributing to Rising Textbook Costs Another Museum Makes Digital Images Free to Scholars ...................................................................... UNC-CHAPEL HILL'S BLACKBOARD COURSE EXTRACTOR AVAILABLE The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Information Technology Services' Teaching and Learning division has developed a new application and is making it available to the education community. bFree is a course extractor that makes a stand-alone website from any Blackboard course content. While maintaining the organization of the original Blackboard course content, bFree creates a freestanding website or a folder hierarchy. With bFree, course content authors can: -- Conveniently retrieve course materials previously available only in Blackboard -- Produce independent course websites with the same content and structure as the original course embedded in Blackboard -- Apply a cascading style sheet (CSS) to customize the look and feel of their freestanding site -- Easily distribute and share course content files with others To learn more about bFree or to download the program, go to http://its.unc.edu/tl/tli/bFree. bFree is copyrighted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/). Under this license's conditions, non-commercial users are free to copy, adapt, distribute, and transmit the work. ...................................................................... SCHOLARS STILL RELUCTANT TO ACCEPT OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING In "Open Access & Science Publishing: Results of a Study on Researchers' Acceptance and Use of Open Access Publishing," Thomas Hess, et al., report on a study was conducted in 2006 by the Ludwig-Maximilans-University Munich, Germany, in cooperation with the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The study "centered on the question if and why scientists decide or do not decide to publish their work according to the Open Access principle without access barriers and free of cost to readers." While the 688 publishing scientists were favorably inclined to use papers published in open access publications, they were reluctant to publish their own research work in these outlets. Some of the downsides cited for publishing in open access journals included "the inferior ability to reach the specific target audience of scientists within one's own discipline [and] . . . the low level of use among close colleagues." The entire report is available online at http://openaccess-study.com/Hess_Wigand_Mann_Walter_2007_Open_Access_Management_Report.pdf. ...................................................................... ARE WE ALL LEARNING DESIGNERS NOW? "What were once the inviolable domains of the subject matter expert, the instructional designer, and the programmer are now coalescing to the point where just about anyone can say that they can create a learning programme." In "Are We All Learning Designers Now?" (INSIDE LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES, January 2007) Vaughan Waller discusses how rapid content production tools are changing the way instructional software is being created. Using these new tools, one person, with little experience, can put together a learning module, thus supplanting the traditional trio of subject matter expert, instructional designer, and programmer. According to Waller, "The concern of many is that speed, ease of production and super low cost may be the winner and the quality of the programme the loser." The article is available at http://www.learningtechnologies.co.uk/magazine/article_full.cfm?articleid=224&issueid=24§ion=1. Inside Learning Technologies is published online three times a year by Principal Media Ltd., 19 Hurst Park, Midhurst, West Sussex GU29 0BP UK; tel: 01730 817600; fax: 01730 817602; email: info@learningtechnologies.co.uk; Web: http://www.learningtechnologies.co.uk. For free access to current and back issues, see http://www.learningtechnologies.co.uk/magazine/magazine.cfm. ...................................................................... SPECIAL JOURNAL ISSUE ON E-SCIENCE According to Nicholas W. Jankowski (in "Exploring e-Science: An Introduction"), "Enhanced science, e-science, is one of many terms used to describe recent transformations in the scientific enterprise. The overall assertion behind this and other nomenclature is that the procedures and practices of traditional forms of science in which scholars engage during their everyday professional lives are undergoing radical change. . . . that the very essence of science is changing, particularly through employment of electronic networks and high-speed computers -- two of the core components of e-science." The current issue of the JOURNAL OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION (vol. 12, issue 12, January 2007) is devoted to the topic of e-science. Papers include: "Social Science and e-Science: Mapping Disciplinary Approaches" by Ralph Schroeder and Jenny Fry "Intellectual Property in the Context of e-Science" by Dan L. Burk "Does the Internet Promote Collaboration and Productivity? Evidence from the Scientific Community in South Africa" by R. Sooryamoorthy and Wesley Shrum "Collaboration Structure, Communication Media, and Problems in Scientific Work Teams" by John P. Walsh and Nancy G. Maloney The complete issue is available at http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue2/. The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication is a web-based, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary, scholarly journal published quarterly by the Indiana University School of Library & Information Science and School of Informatics. For more information and to access back issues, go to http://jcmc.indiana.edu/index.html. ...................................................................... TEACHING WITH WIKIS "Wikis are Web pages that can be viewed and modified by anyone with a Web browser and Internet access. Described as a composition system, a discussion medium, and a repository, wikis support asynchronous communication and group collaboration online." ("7 Things You Should Know about Wikis," from EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative; http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ELI7004) In "Wiki as a Teaching Tool" (INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING OBJECTS, vol. 3, 2007, pp. 57-72), Kevin R. Parker and Joseph T. Chao review the current state of wiki use in education. Some of the uses include "webpage creation, project development with peer review, group authoring, tracking group projects, data collection, and class/instructor reviews." They also discuss how wikis can be used in online learning. The paper is available at http://www.ijklo.org/Volume3/IJKLOv3p057-072Parker284.pdf. Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects [ISSN: Print 1552-2210, CD 1552-2229, Online 1552-2237] is published by the Informing Science Institute, 131 Brookhill Court, Santa Rosa, CA 95409 USA. For current and back issues, go to http://www.ijklo.org/. For a report on how a well-known wiki, Wikipedia, handles links to research and scholarship see: "What Open Access Research Can Do for Wikipedia" by John Willinsky FIRST MONDAY, vol. 12, no. 3, March 2007 http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_3/willinsky/index.html ...................................................................... E-MATERIALS POSSIBLY CONTRIBUTING TO RISING TEXTBOOK COSTS The University of North Carolina system's Board of Governors recently proposed controlling the rising cost of textbooks by instituting rental or buyback programs. Triggering such a recommendation is the increasing costs of college textbooks, with prices rising faster than the rate of inflation. Students, administrators, bookstores, and publishers argue who or what is causing these increasing costs. One argument places the blame on faculty who demand not only frequent new editions, but also want students to have access to materials that technology enables -- CD-ROMs, e-books, course-related software, private-access websites. Instructors may find themselves caught in the middle of this blaming game. Publishers say that if textbook authors and adopters did not insist on having additional bundled materials, the costs could be kept down to a reasonable level. Students argue that in many courses the extra materials are seldom or never used. In addtion, these extras drive up prices, but often make it hard for students to resell their texts. For more about the textbook cost discussion and the UNC Board of Governors' proposal see: "Who Controls Textbook Choices?" INSIDE HIGHER ED, March 16, 2007 http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/03/16/unc For textbook publishers' perspectives, see: http://www.textbookfacts.org/ The Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) campaign to lower textbook prices: http://www.uspirg.org/higher-education/affordable-textbooks ...................................................................... ANOTHER MUSEUM MAKES DIGITAL IMAGES FREE TO SCHOLARS Earlier this year the Victoria and Albert Museum in London dropped the fees for reproduction of its collections' images in scholarly books and magazines (TL Infobits, December 2006; http://its.unc.edu/tl/infobits/bitdec06.php#5). This month the Metropolitan Museum, through the non-profit image clearinghouse ARTstor, made a similar offer for scholars. See the Museum's March 12, 2007, press release for more details: http://www.metmuseum.org/press_room/full_release.asp?prid={A113E0AD-AA4E-471B-8F04-736A21F1A70A} For more information on ARTstor, see: http://www.artstor.org/info/ ...................................................................... INFOBITS RSS FEED To set up an RSS feed for Infobits, get the code at http://lists.unc.edu/read/rss?forum=infobits. ...................................................................... To Subscribe TL INFOBITS is published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Information Technology Services Teaching and Learning division. ITS-TL supports the interests of faculty members at UNC-Chapel Hill who are using technology in their instruction and research. Services include both consultation on appropriate uses and technical support. 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