AARL

Course materials database: integrating information resources into online teaching for students at QUT

Caroline Young and Judy Stokker

Abstract: The Course Materials Database project at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) provides students with electronic access to the majority of their lecturer directed information resources via online teaching web pages for each subject. Resources include copyright materials, lecture notes and past exam papers. The online teaching pages also link from each student's portal on the QUT Intranet. The project integrates online information resources with courseware, conveniently arranged for the student in one place. Staff from several areas of the university have collaborated to achieve this streamlined service. The paper outlines the product, the process and what was learned.

The QUT Course Materials Database project began following an agreement reached in March 2000 between the Australian Vice Chancellors' Committee and the Copyright Agency Limited which struck a flat rate fee for Australian universities to digitise as well as make multiple prints of 'reasonable portions' of books, journal articles and other print copyright resources for teaching purposes.

Through the collaboration of several areas of QUT, the Course Materials Database (CMD) project at QUT has been successful in delivering high use information resources electronically to our students. Within the Division of Information and Academic Services collaborating staff come from the library, the teaching and learning support services department, information technology services, student copying and printing services as well as the copyright officer. Beyond this division, collaborators include the publications and printery department and the academics of each faculty. The project was begun in May 2000. In semester 2, 2001, the CMD was successfully launched. For each unit taught at QUT, all suitable articles and book chapters, law cases and legislation, lecture notes containing copyright materials held in the library course reserve collections as well as past exam papers have been made available on the CMD via the Online Teaching (OLT) pages. Up to the end of July 2001 (2 weeks into semester 2), 4000 documents had been loaded and the CMD had already had 250 000 hits.

What we built

'One stop shop'

A recent (May 2001) Division of Information and Academic Services survey on student need for online services at QUT shows that students clearly demand a single, convenient online place to access their course materials. Here are some requests:

I would like to 'suck down' everything for my subjects in one hit.

Other reference materials on the OLT page. Additional reading articles could be placed online so students would not have to get from the library reserve area.

Limit the number of ways to access lecture notes and other online notes.

More cases and articles placed online. It is sometimes very difficult locating everything in a short space of time. I work during the week as well as attend lectures. Would be so much easier to find all that I need using my home computer and not waste 2 hours in public transport travel... We poor uni students have to utilise our time online and at home sparingly.

Creation of an online teaching page for each unit (subject), linked to the CMD, has provided students with 'one stop shop' access to lecturer directed digitised course information resources and past exam papers. Two parts of QUT's IT infrastructure have made access easy - the online teaching pages for units and QUT Virtual (QUT's Intranet). QUT Virtual underpins staff and student access to QUT-wide internal databases, systems and services. Following a recent upgrade of QUT Virtual, each student now logs on to his or her own portal (called the QUT Personal Profile). From this web page they will find, amongst other things, links to the online teaching pages for each unit in which they are enrolled. On each unit online teaching page, students are able to click on the Course Materials Database link, which takes them to an Index Database where they can select the reference they want to follow up from a list of resources for their unit. By clicking on the reference, they will access either the digitised article/chapter, law cases and legislation, course notes, past exam paper, or the article on one of the library vendors' databases of full text electronic journals/law cases.

Online teaching

By May 2000, about one third (1200) of all QUT units already had interactive online teaching pages created by the unit lecturers and teaching and learning support services staff. The uptake of online teaching has been a gradual process at QUT over recent years, even with strong support from the university administration. One significant outcome of the project is that now all QUT units have an online teaching page, even if only for providing a link to the CMD resources. It is envisaged that the creation of online teaching pages for every unit will deliver the critical mass necessary to accelerate the uptake of the online teaching environment by academic staff. It is expected that students will be the driving force in the transition as they apply pressure for academic staff to utilise online teaching pages fully.

Copyright management system

In addition to its primary aim of providing an integrated information resource service for students, the CMD is fundamentally a copyright management system. As required by the licence agreement with the Copyright Agency Limited, access is restricted to QUT staff and students who are obliged to log on using their QUT user names and passwords. The university now requires all academic staff to use the CMD if they want to provide access to digitised non-QUT copyright material. This includes lecture notes containing copyright material such as diagrams, tables, and photographs. Alternatively, for course/lecture notes which do not contain copyright material, lecturers may choose to load their course notes directly onto their online teaching pages. The CMD may also be used to manage electronic versions of documents where written permission from the copyright owner has been obtained.

The staff

Staff from several areas of the university made the project a success. Members of the CMD project Steering Committee spent a great deal of effort in leading the project work across organisational boundaries within the library, the Division of Information and Academic Services and within the broader university. Staff from the Information Technology Services created the CMD software. Teaching and Learning Support Services created generic online teaching pages for those units which lacked them, linked these to the CMD and trained the many academic staff new to online teaching. The printery staff retrospectively digitised the course reserve documents. The University copyright officer was a valued source of expert advice on the many copyright issues and wrote the copyright guide for academic staff.

However, of all parts of the university affected, the CMD has made the biggest ongoing change to work in the library. Library staff in lending services at each branch scan all the new requests, sort out problems and obtain any needed interlibrary loans. They also handle all lecture note files and past exam papers on the CMD. Library systems staff manage the hardware, train library staff in the new hardware and software, sort out the software problems and liaise with IT services and teaching and learning support services staff on technical issues. Liaison librarians train and advise academic staff in their schools how to use the CMD. Library resource services (technical services) staff receive new requests from lecturers, check the CMD database for copyright compliance and negotiate with requesters on copyright conflicts, eg where two lecturers both want parts from the same book digitised. They then locate articles in vendor databases, convert scanned documents to PDF using Adobe Acrobat Capture software and so reduce file size, monitor and resolve problems with document quality, index the CMD documents and manage the ongoing workflow including performance monitoring and reporting. This new responsibility places the backroom library resource services staff right into a direct client service role. They deal with requests from academics, and have to meet demanding turnaround times of three days for new CMD requests. They are working together with lending services in the provision of this service, with staff from both areas playing a critical role in its delivery.

Staff in the library, IT services and teaching and learning support services have been drawn together working in new ways to provide this innovative service to QUT students and staff. A team that works across the organisational areas is developing.

What it replaces

Up until the completion of the project, high use information resources were made available to students in several ways:

• Library course reserve. At each of the four branch libraries, a closed collection of high demand books and videos, photocopies of book chapters, journal articles and lecture notes for use by students in the library. Students often borrowed to make copies of this material.
• Built Environment and Engineering Resource Centre. Amongst other services, this departmental centre kept the equivalent of a course reserve collection of articles and chapters for students in this faculty.
• E-Reserve. Lecture notes provided to the library in electronic form by the lecturer and mounted on the library web page by unit (subject) code and lecturer's name.
• Past exam papers. With some exceptions, past exam papers were digitised and mounted on the library web page by unit code. They were also available in hard copy volumes in the library.
• Online teaching pages. Some lecturers had already made their lecture notes available from their unit's online teaching pages or from their faculty's web server. All online teaching pages were listed on the teaching and learning support services home page by unit code in a single list and some were also linked from faculty or school web pages. Only one third of units taught at QUT had online teaching pages in May 2000.

The end result was that students had to search a variety of places both digital and physical to find their high use, lecturer directed information resources. None of these places were linked and the same information resources could be duplicated in different places.

Course packs, external student notes

Course packs are parts of books, journal articles and lecture notes selected by the lecturer, printed in a course pack by the printery and sold to students in the University Bookshop at a price to cover costs. External student notes, as with course packs, are printed into a package by the printery and posted to external students at no charge.

The Project Steering Committee is investigating the benefits of loading the content of course packs and external student notes onto the CMD. There is no appreciable difference between their content and documents on the CMD. In fact, some lecturers have advised the library that they make the same content available in course packs and on the CMD. The question arises whether the CMD should replace these printed note sets. Our costings show that it is much cheaper (and quicker) for a student to buy a course pack than to print out the same documents page by page on a laser printer. Rather than replace them, we could make the individual documents available on the CMD as well. They would then be accessible 24 hours a day, and QUT could use the CMD database as the source to create the course packs and note sets. QUT does not require its external students to have a computer and Internet connection, so it would be unreasonable and inequitable to replace the mailed external student notes sets with CMD access.

Multimedia

Some academic staff make a leap of logic and falsely assume that the copyright regime for text and multimedia is the same. Lecturers have asked the project Steering Committee to investigate if the CMD could be used to manage copyright multimedia items. Multimedia copying is not covered by the university's licence with the Copyright Agency Limited, however, where the lecturer has obtained permission from the copyright owner it is possible that the CMD could be used to make the file available and manage the copyright. A working party on CMD and multimedia has been convened and will report by the end of the year.

Planning the project

Following the agreement between the university and the Copyright Agency Limited, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor Information and Academic Services established a project team under his sponsorship, to prepare a plan for a database of high demand copyright journal articles and book chapters for use by our enrolled students, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The project team comprised staff from teaching and learning support services, information technology services, the library, the publications and printing manager and the university copyright officer. The project leader was the Associate Director Library Services, Information Resources. She was seconded to the project full time for three months from May till August 2000. A reference group of academics with a commitment to flexible delivery was also formed to advise the project team.

The plan was completed by the end of August 2000, however a delay in budgeting meant that the university did not provide central funding of $200 000 to implement the project until November. This did not allow enough time for the project to run as a trial in semester 1, 2001, as originally proposed in the plan. The course materials database became fully operational from semester 2, 2001.

Risks and concerns

Academic users' acceptance of the service

There were two distinct client groups for this project - the students and the academics. Developing a system and processes which would suit the majority of the academic client base was one of the challenges of project. Academics vary widely in their use and acceptance of electronic delivery of course materials. QUT's academic staff could be divided into three groups with each group requiring different levels of explanation and support to use the CMD. There were:

• those who already had well developed online teaching pages, but who have questioned how CMD would fit in with their online teaching pages and had concerns about maintaining control over their OLT pages
• those who had not previously had online teaching pages for their units. The CMD has given them some incentive to make the transition to online teaching but they needed support with the new technology
• those who previously used the library's E-Reserve and course reserve collections and required assistance to move to the new service. Staff in this group may also fall into one of the other two categories.

Therefore the needs, perceptions and expectations of the different client groups were considered when drafting communications, documentation and in the support structures developed. For example, liaison librarians, who are knowledgeable about the needs and abilities of their academics, were trained in the CMD and online teaching issues so they could offer a primary support role and therefore tailor the support and awareness raising strategies to suit the client group.

Authentication issues

Where possible, the CMD links to articles on vendor databases, but certain requirements must be met:

• the link must be to article level
• the database must provide PURLs (permanent URLs) to ensure continuity of the link
• authentication is by IP address.

Previously, the library provided access to vendor databases via the password embedded in the login from library web pages and/or IP address. This enabled students dialling in from home to gain access even if they came from a non-QUT IP address. However, it was not regarded as good service to link students using the CMD to the databases' front pages. As a result of establishing the CMD, the student no longer sees the prompt for the password but its taken directly to the article. One anticipated but unfortunate result is that students dialling in from some ISP addresses will not appear to the vendor databases to come from QUT. They will therefore fail to be authenticated on these databases. While this is not a big problem at the moment, because only a limited proportion of CMD references link to outside databases, the proportion will increase over time. Some students have complained and have been offered a work around using software supported by the IT Services Help Desk staff. However, this software is complex and alternatives are being investigated.

Database reliability

In the first weeks of semester 1 2001, the online teaching server did not cope with the heavy load. The hardware had been upgraded, but a 50% increased load in semester 2 over semester 1 once again slowed response and led to justifiable complaint. As a temporary measure, the library made the CMD available by unit code through its web pages to ease the burden on the online teaching server. An urgent hardware upgrade and rearrangement of the online teaching servers appears to have resolved this problem.

Printing problems

At one campus, there were many complaints about serious slowness in printing documents from the CMD. It appears that some mistakes in setting up the scanner at that campus led to documents with very large file sizes. There were other problems in labs with file sizes expanding back to original pre-PDF size when transferred to the printer. Both these problems were resolved, however, there remains some inherent slowness in printing PDF files.

Equity of access

Some lecturers have raised concern that students will be forced to use IT to access required readings. They see this as disadvantaging both students who do not have access to a computer at home and those who lack computer skills. Others are concerned that there will not be enough PCs in campus labs to satisfy demand. The university is providing greater lab access as a priority as well as providing laptop rental and docking facilities on campus. All students who attend campus have access to the CMD. The print-based library course reserve service requires students to go to the library to access the documents at hours when the library is open, with the usual problems that the articles could be stolen or misplaced. Poor students can read articles online, just as they could read the course reserve photocopies if they could not afford to make a copy. The Pro-Vice-Chancellor Information and Academic Services has taken the position that the library is not funded to provide access to these documents in both CMD and print-based course reserve, therefore only CMD will be provided.

Key success factors

The Course Materials Database is a quality service which was delivered on time and within budget, largely due to good planning, adequate resources, consultation and the commitment of staff to make it work.

Support from senior levels

At the outset, the project was initiated and sponsored by the Pro-Vice-Chancellor Information and Academic Services. Support at this high level within the university captured the attention of staff approached to work on the project. It also helped that the project team leader met monthly with the PVC to keep him abreast of progress and issues. At times when commitment from some staff appeared to flag, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor gave the project a boost by raising the issue at divisional executive meetings and ensuring further support at departmental head level. His endorsement and support also ensured that the university provided sufficient funds to undertake the project.

Senior staff member as the project leader

A senior member of the library staff was assigned as the project leader to research, plan, co-ordinate and later to implement the project. The choice of a senior member of staff meant that the project leader had a sufficiently strategic approach to both manage the project with senior staff from other departments, and with them, to extend the original boundaries of the brief from a focus on digitisation of copyright materials to provision of a comprehensive range of high demand information resources including exam papers and lecture notes.

Sharing the ownership of the project

At all times, the project has clearly been a cross-university project. This has been both a factor in the success of the project and a major challenge to team members. The combined expertise of the staff from different areas has delivered a quality service. The skills and knowledge required to deliver the product was not available from any one department. Staff from the different areas brought to the team a range of different perceptions about what the service should deliver and what was important to users.

The database - interfaces with academic staff kept convenient and simple

The CMD interface for academics has been designed to make it easy for them to request the library to add new documents to the CMD. Comments from academic staff support this claim with even some of our self confessed technically challenged academic staff reporting that they find the CMD easy to use. Academics can readily check which references have been loaded for their units. Future enhancements will allow them to specify online which documents they want removed. Academic staff no longer have to supply a photocopy for inclusion in the library's course reserve collection. They simply complete a web form and the library does the rest by collecting, scanning and indexing the record. Over time, the content of the CMD will become more interwoven with the online teaching pages. At present, the CMD references are in a block at the start of the online teaching page for the unit. Many academics will no doubt choose to intersperse these links to CMD reading throughout their pages.

The database has proved to be a quality product. The many hours spent on design and consultation with academic staff and staff across the division have paid off. There have been no database faults or problems since the service went live in late June. Furthermore, seeking feedback from library and academic staff about the database from the outset has provided us with list of a dozen or so enhancements. The quality of the product is not only evident from its smooth operation to date, but in the relatively few essential enhancements. Most of the suggested improvements fall into the 'nice to have but not critical' category of database enhancements.

Informing staff about the new system

A communication plan was developed to promote the system to academic staff, students and library staff.

Awareness raising sessions for academic staff prior to the launch of the CMD were a powerful tool in facilitating the transition to the new service. Sessions held at all branches were well attended. The sessions not only spread information to academic staff but also provided the CMD team with useful insight into users needs and expectations about the service prior to its launch.

Library staff also needed to understand the implications of the CMD for their work. It was essential for liaison librarians to have a thorough knowledge of the CMD so they could provide support to users. Some of the lending services staff were worried that their jobs would be threatened as a result of the change from photocopies in the library course reserve collections to documents on the CMD. Staff in the library's technical services area worried that they would be overwhelmed with new and urgent work associated with the CMD. Project team members have met with the staff and discussed these issues with them. Some of these concerns are valid and have been addressed with extra staffing at peak times. In other cases, staff were satisfied with a thorough explanation of the new procedures and their implications. The library staff have shown a real commitment to making the CMD a success.

Documentation to support the service includes the Guide to Using the CMD, a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and the Guide to Complying with Copyright Regulations. These web documents provide users and support staff with most of the information they need to use the CMD and contact details for more advice if required. They are available to staff from numerous access points from within the online teaching pages, the CMD and the library's web pages.

Post-implementation support

Speedy resolution of problems and feedback to users is essential in developing trust in the new service and its providers. Effective strategies in minimising the number of queries have included:

• updating user documentation to include the information learned from the problem solving processes and
• advising support staff promptly of problems and their resolution.

Project staff from all departments have had to be flexible and willing to go that extra mile to ensure reported problems and issues are addressed quickly. Staff across the Division have worked long and hard to make the project a success.

What have we learned

Content of the CMD - high demand to lecture directed reading

It pays to question assumptions. The aim of CMD was to provide students with access to an electronic version of high demand course materials such as those held in the library's course reserve, E-Reserve and E-exam collections. However, the ease with which academic staff can place material on the CMD has meant that the CMD is more accurately described as a database of lecturer directed readings rather than high demand material. Many academics, quick to see the advantages of the CMD, are placing all readings for their unit on the database. Others immediately saw the potential of the CMD to replace course packs. This raises some issues:

• the capacity of the library staff to meet increasing demand
• the implications for the cost of future licence agreements with the Copyright Agency Ltd
• the need for lecturers to distinguish essential readings from supplementary readings on CMD for the sake of students.

Support

Support for a service for which more than one organisational area is responsible is a challenge on several fronts. Firstly, the staff from the different organisational areas need an understanding of what sorts of questions they can and are expected to answer, and to whom to refer other questions. The same issue applies to the users. Academic staff need to know when to ask the library and when to ask the online teaching support staff. This requires a level of understanding beyond that which we can expect users to have at this stage in the project. Strategies to address this have included:

• providing support staff in the different organisational areas with information about the sorts of queries answered by the other groups
• developing staff expertise in all areas so they can answer questions not necessary related strictly to their areas of expertise. For example, all Liaison Librarians have been encouraged to attend the introductory online teaching seminars held for academic staff
• preparing a Communication Directory with types of CMD queries and referral information.

Library staff perceptions

Misinformation can quickly become established fact if it is not addressed promptly. When a new system is introduced, staff tend to blame it for any problems rather than to apply normal diagnostic problem solving strategies. Users and staff alike were quick to blame the CMD when service was interrupted due to overload on the online teaching. If there is a problem then it must be a bug in the new system! Correctly diagnosing, rectifying and explaining the problem as soon as it arises arises is critical to staff and user understanding of and confidence in the service.

Academic staff perceptions - pedagogical issues

Several staff have raised concerns about 'spoon feeding' students by providing them with easy access to selected information resources. This was unexpected. It is difficult to see that providing the information resources electronically is essentially different from providing the same resources in the library's course reserve collection or in course packs. There is a clear distinction between lecturer directed readings provided on the CMD and linked to online teaching pages, and the student's self directed reading where they find their own information resources using the library catalogue and library vendor databases.

It is interesting to note that one of the academic staff most vocal about this issue is now a keen convert to CMD.

People

The major difficulties were to do with people. It is always hard to bring people from different organisational areas to focus on the project goals when they have so many other goals competing for their attention in their own workplace. There were missed meetings, lack of response on issues up for discussion on e-mail, delayed deadlines, rushed discussion and misunderstandings. These kinds of problems arose in the project team, the Library Working Party and the Academic Reference Group. While frustrating, these difficulties are normal in any new team endeavour and have been outweighed by the success factors.

Realistic expectations

With hindsight many of the complaints from staff and students may have been avoided had we concentrated more on setting realistic expectations. For example, printing from off campus is possible but it will be slow if the student is printing a large file, using a slow modem connection, or has a printer with inadequate memory.

Conclusion

The project has been a success in bringing a variety of heavily used information resources together in one convenient location readily accessible by students. While these resources have always been available, previously they were dispersed across a number of collections and systems operated by the library, academics, the teaching and learning support services and publications and printery. The Copyright Agency Limited/Australian Vice Chancellors' Committee agreement on the digitisation of copyright material provided the initial prompt, but the project team soon realised that the possibilities extended beyond the original brief of making a database of digitised heavy use copyright materials. It is envisaged that the CMD through its access via online teaching pages will have the added advantage of accelerating the uptake of online teaching at QUT. The key success factors were: sponsorship by the Pro-Vice-Chancellor, secondment of a senior staff member as project leader, formation of the project team from all key departments, a clear focus on client service outcomes and consultation, and communication with affected staff and the sheer hard work and commitment of staff involved in the delivery of the service. For students, university is a total experience. If we are to provide a high standard of student service, we must conceive of our services from the student's perspective and learn to work effectively across our organisational boundaries.

Carolyn Young, associate director, Library Services (Information Resources), Queensland University of Technology, GPO Box 2434, Brisbane Qld 4001. E-mail: c.young@qut.edu.au.nospam (please remove the '.nospam' from the address).

Judy Stokker, lending service co-ordinator, Queensland University of Technology, GPO Box 2434, Brisbane Qld 4001. E-mail: j.stokker@qut.edu.au.nospam (please remove the '.nospam' from the address).