Integrating Library Content into Course Management / Learning Management Systems
The Distant Librarian has a couple great posts about how to integrate and link to library content into course management systems. One post discusses how to integrate information literacy content (TILT) into course management systems (specifically Blackboard). The second post discusses how to create persistent links to library content (TILT) within a course management system.
Because libraries can’t rely on students coming to the library’s webpage, integrating library content into course management systems is really important. This means integrating information literacy information and tutorials. It also means integrating the content of our “research guides” or “course pages” into course management systems as well.
One of the biggests challenges that librarians face in doing this is gaining access to the course management system. For the maximum effect, librarians need to be able to add materials to each course just as the professor would be able to. Asking a professor to add library materials themselves only adds to the professor’s burden. However, many professors (rightly) don’t want to give librarians administrative rights over their courses in the CMS. Thus far I’ve yet to experience a CMS/LMS where librarians could have permissions to add content to a specific page but not view/edit any other portion of the course. This is too bad because it makes collaborating with professors on course guides in course management systems. While libraries could create such pages on their own library website and IT staff to automatically create a dynamic link to this content for every course in the CMS, usability would suggest that it would more useful for the content be part of the CMS.
Irregardless of the existing technical issues, libraries need to work harder to get library content in the CMS/LMS. This is part the important ongoing effort to get content to the end-user regardless of if they are traditional library users. The Google Scholar OpenURL project, persistent linking to databases, WAG the Dog, and Open WorldCat, are all part of these efforts. However, libraries need to continue to find other ways of reaching potential users whereever they may be physically or electronically.
First I need to point out that those were reposts of something Gary Roberts had written a year ago, so no credit goes to me :-)
Second, Rebecca Hedreen has a good workaround solution to posting to an individual page within a CMS. In this post she discusses posting materials to a specific tag in del.icio.us or FURL. I don’t see it in her blog, but I know she’s then taken that one step further, using Feed2JS to stick any one of those feeds into a CMS page. Apparently the del.icio.us feed can be fiddled with quite a bit to make it look pretty nice. So the end result is that if you can have one page in a CMS where you can embed a little Javascript, even after your access to the course has been removed you can continue to populate that page with material you tag through del.icio.us or FURL!
you wrote: “many professors (rightly) don’t want to give librarians administrative rights over their courses in the CMS.”
Why “rightly”? I work with many profs who give me instructor-level access to their Blackboard course sites so that I can add library instructional content, durable links to articles in our databases, etc. It’s a great service that students and faculty appreciate and use heavily.
I honor the access they’ve given me by talking through with them beforehand what I’m going to do, by not messing around with their other content, and by not looking at the student gradebook.
We need to be partners with faculty in creating the best course sites possible that take full advantage of library resources. In order to do this, we need access, and an assumption by faculty and our colleagues that we’re competent and trustworthy.
I simply don’t understand the notion that some faculty, and more problematically, more than a few librarians have that librarians somehow can’t be trusted to work in partnership with faculty to add appropriate content to CMS’s.
“Rightly” because in some systems like WebCT giving admin rights means giving rights to everything. As much as I would like professors to completely trust me and I wouldn’t dream of looking at their grades or altering their other content, I understand why they might be skeptical. Trust needs to be built over time and can be easily broken by one incident. There are several faculty I have worked with over the last four years who I don’t think would hesitate to give me access. However, I would not expect a brand new faculty member who knows nothing about me or the library to hand over access without batting an eyelash.
There are lots of good content that librarians can add to CMS’s. Librarians need to work in partnership with faculty to do this. However, part of building partnerships is respecting concerns that faculty might have and dealing with them appropriately rather than being offended at the concerns being raised. This problem could be avoided completely if there are different levels of priveleges. There is in my mind no good technical reason why CMS’s can’t be designed so that there are different levels of administrative rights. This would alleviate concerns over librarians having access to items like grades.
Karen,
I agree with most of your response here, and it sounds to me like we both work similarly to build the partnerships with faculty needed to maximize library presence in the course sites.
I would say that I’m less offended than I am frustrated on this issue. Blackboard has the same limitation that WebCT apparently has, in the lack of adequate flexibility in levels of admin. rights. Until and unless that problem is fixed, we can only help the profs add library content if they let us in, or teach them to do it themselves. Most won’t take the time to learn to do it themselves–they’re busy. So if they want the content, they need to trust us. I try to build that trust as I described, by explaining what I’m going to do and otherwise trying to behave with integrity.
I do understand the privacy concerns. But we all want partnerships to be a two-way street. I think many librarians go out of their way to work with profs to get good library materials in the course sites–I think that the prof’s side of the partnership needs to be helping us understand enough about the course content and objectives to select the right library material to include, and enough trust to let us in to do it.
I definitely agree with you that the CMS’s need more flexibility to grant partial access, and writing a letter to Blackboard and my university’s software administrator about this is now on my to-do list.
Cheers.
Nice Blog, I’m using toko for content management (it’s a free one)… http://toko-contenteditor.pageil.net