Back to Institute News" Institute's distance education classes featured in Building a Virtual Library"
One of the central tenets of distance education is that, in order to provide effective distance education programs and resources, there must be a high level of cooperation between the college/department and the library. At the University of South Florida (USF), knowledge of library services and resources is an important component of graduate coursework. In collaboration with Merilyn Burke, Head of Access Services at the Tampa Library (USF), Bruce Lubotsky Levin and Ardis Hanson of the Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute (USF)published a case study that reiterates the importance of collaboration between faculty and librarians in the development and support of distance education. The chapter, published in Building a Virtual Library, discusses the differences in transforming an existing traditional classroom course, Foundations of Behavioral Health Systems, to “fit” within an online environment. The second course, Community-Based Prevention in Behavioral Health, was developed specifically as a web-based course. Both courses were designed to fit within the new Graduate Studies in Behavioral Health Degree Program, a collaborative teaching initiative between the USF College of Public Health and the USF de la Parte Institute.
In both of the web-based classes, the professors incorporated specific internet-based readings for the lectures and assignments, including online articles and databases available through the USF Libraries. They decided that it was critical to have students use the many full-text refereed resources available through the USF Virtual Library as well as to learn how to successfully use the available databases. To help increase student awareness of the need for authenticating an internet-based resource, an information literacy tutorial component and PowerPoint presentations on resources within the USF Libraries were included in the class assignments.
For more information about the chapter, see Burke, Merilyn; Levin, Bruce Lubotsky, and Hanson, Ardis. Distance learning. In : Hanson, Ardis and Levin, Bruce Lubotsky, Eds. Building a virtual library. Hershey, PA: IDEA Group Publishing; 2003; pp. 148-163. ISBN: 1591401062. For more information about the Institute's academic offerings on the web, traditional classroom settings, and its online training, see Educational Opportunities