“The Library”: Surrounding Students with a Wealth of Information

by Ted Curran

(This post is part of a series on online learning communities called “The Connected Class Community”). The purpose of these posts is to explore the vital components of an online learning community using abstract, timeless qualities.

For most of human history, information was stored in books, copied by hand, guarded by a tiny few literate scholars, and inaccessible for those who could not afford the time or expense of formal education. Before the written word, important facts were memorized as poems, songs, and parables, and those who had mastered these arts were considered to have almost magical powers.

Our education system grew up in this world of scarce information– and it adapted to information scarcity by teaching us to memorize facts, read canonical literature, and master skills in school that we would likely need in later life.

We are living through the first time in human history where information is no longer a scarce commodity. The Internet has made it possible to call forth almost any information instantly– and it has changed us from a state of information scarcity to attention scarcity. Now more than ever, instructors need to teach students how to access the vast ocean of data in efficient, structured, and flexible ways. They also need to act like curators of a great library, continuously organizing this overwhelming ocean of data into sequenced, coherent, stimulating journeys.

The Library in a Connected Class Community is a shorthand way of saying “An easily accessed wealth of rich, relevant materials curated to support learning”. It represents the trusted, existing knowledge that class stakeholders preserve and share to make sure they are working with accurate, relevant data.

This can include

Carefully chosen textbooks and source documents
Instructor-created guides, tutorials, and lectures
Shared bookmarks of relevant sites with curated comments
An FAQ/Knowledge Base where community members can benefit from previous questions and answers

–notes—

Library

LMS or Blog Page with embedded items or GDocs folder
- PDF of exemplary source materials
- Presentations and Tutorials
- collaborative docs
Links to course reserve materials
Embedded video, audio, and flash in context
Knowledge base wiki
Shared/Annotated bookmarks
- Diigo
When in doubt, give learners “firehose” access to high quality information
- I had a Google Notebook for each course
  - Clipped & explained relevant sites as I researched.