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Distance Learning Support: Role of the Central Library of the OUSL Ensuring Information

Dissemination for the Remote Learners Ms. Damayanthi Gunasekara

Senior Assistant Librarian Open University of Sri Lanka

Email : hpsgun@ou.ac.lk

Abstract: This paper outlines the teaching and learning pattern of the Open University of Sri Lanka and its Regional and Educational Services and particularly focuses on the pattern of distribution of information among 24 Regional Centre and Study Centre libraries located various parts of the Island. It also discuses about the Distance Education Modernization Project and how it is helped to distribute information through regional centres to OUSL distance learners to achieve the objectives of the library by supporting them an effective manner. This articles describes that the role of the central library and how it disseminate information ensuring that information for all distance learners who are near and far away. This article also includes on the role that centre libraries play at present and future assuring that all distance learning students and instructors/ academics have access to the electronic resources that main library offer.

Keywords: Distance education, Distance learning support, E-learning support, Sri Lanka

Introduction: All the terms, distance education, distance learning, off-campus education, open learning, extended learning describes the concept of separateness between learner and institution. The term, distance learning is often used synonymously with distance education. Distance education evolved from the field of correspondence study, which was primarily print-oriented. While the notion of the separateness of teacher and learner remains implicit in distance education, the term also implies the use of mechanical aids and technological devices to supplement print materials. This is proved by the following definitions. Derek Rowntee defines distance education as "a system in which the student does the bulk of his learning from pre-prepared teaching materials and how very little face-to-face contact with tutor. He may or may not have occasional contact with other students" (Amaragunasekara. 1999). Keegan (1986) defines distance education on analysis of the definitions proposed by Holmberg (1977), Peters (1973), and Moor (1973) identifies seven principal Characteristics, which he regards as being essential for any comprehensive definition:

the separation of teacher and student the influence of an educational organization the use of technical media the provision of two-way communication

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the absence of group learning, with retaining taught largely as individuals(while retaining the possibility of occasional seminars) participation in the most industrialized form of education the privatization of learning ( the learning occurs away from the group)

Concept of Open University: The concept of an Open University system is not just a multimedia approach to teaching distant learners. It is a philosophical concept of providing open access to higher education for all those disadvantaged groups who could not or did not join the formal stream. It aims to equalize educational opportunities and to train people in various arts and crafts to develop their skills in different jobs. It is different from the conventional university system in several aspects. Its objectives, operations, and its spatial needs lend it a very distinctive character. Besides doing away with the conventional restrictions of place, time and entry qualifications, it seeks to democratize higher education. There are three categories of educational institutions in the world like Dual-mode, Single-mode and Face-to-face teaching institutions (Watson, 1996). Dual-mode refers to those institutions that offer face-to-face tuition as well as distance programmes. For instance Australian and Canadian universities. Single-mode institutions are those that offer tuition and training via distance only. For example, Open Polytechnic- New Zealand, Open Polytechnic- UK, IGNOU – India, OUSL. The third category institutions are those that introduce a distance-taught programme or course with in a particular department. For example, in UK at least seven institutions offer a MBA degree. In many instances, this is the only distance taught programme which the institution offers. The Open University of Sri Lanka: The Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL), which was established in 1980, has the same legal and academic status as any other national university in Sri Lanka (SL).Its objectives are:

To improve the current programmes of study, the processes and the student support systems of the university to extend access to rural and remote communities. To enhance interaction of the Open University with other national and international universities and industry To establish new academic programmes of study in response to the changing needs of the country. To expand access for life-long education. To improve continuously quality standards in Open Distance Learning. To create new and better opportunities for staff development To develop and expand the library as a national learning resource center of excellence (OUSL hand book, 2000).

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It has 04 Regional centers and 20 study centres every part of the island. All centres are under the cotrole of Director/Regional and Educational Services. Each centre has small library and it includes study materials and core book collection to be used by the staff and students. Number of courses offered by the university has risen over 600 at present. Number of academic staff of the OUSL counts around 844 and number of registered students in 2006 is 24373 (University hand Book 2005) The academic programmes of the OUSL are well suited for employed persons and adults. These programmes have been specially designed to enable persons aged 18 and over to pursue foundation courses to programmes leading to Certificates, Diplomas, Degrees and Post Graduate degrees/diplomas using their own time and space and from their own homes. Existing study system at the OUSL: The OUSL belongs to the single mode category and its students have in general, no ready access to campus facilities. That means they present a different challenge to the university education provider than they do on conventional provider. Distance teaching is done through modules and contact sessions. Printed self-learning materials (modules) are prepared for each subject. Students learn mainly through these modules. But audio and video media may be used to facilitate studies where ever necessary. Each module contains an assignment for submission at the end of it, which contains questions, exercises or projects covering the main content of the module. In addition, there is a list of library materials in a module to get more information in the project or writing and for the assignments. The assignments should be completed by the students and submitted to the relevant department or a teacher, which will be evaluated and returned to the students with tutor comments. Students earn credits for the assignments and these credits leads to get the eligibility to sit the final examination. It makes provision for exercise, transfer of learning, two-way communications between students and teacher, evaluation and feed back. Different forms of contact sessions such as: workshops, day schools, tutor clinics and tutorial classes are conducted by different academic departments. Contact sessions are also available for practical work in science and technology programmes in the form of laboratory work, workshop experiences and fieldwork. Regional education services department co-ordinates the academic activities of the programmes offered by the four faculties. The university has a network of Regional/Study centers distributed throughout the country. The centers provide facilities for collection of application forms, student registration, distribution of course material, limited reference facilities at mini-libraries, face-to-face teaching and holding examinations. The OU system also includes a series of contact sessions, held at regional and study centers, to help the students to get their study problems solved. In addition written or

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telephone contacts are often used, as well as more modern media such as e-mail, and electronic net works are also used to communicate with students. Students progress is assessed both by means of a system of ‘continuous assessment’ (CA) as well as final examination. CA is an integral part of the distance teaching system. The types of CA components vary from course to course and may comprise tutor marked assignments, computer marked assignments, and take home assignments. Some departments have introduced closed book type (CBT), open book type (OBT), assignment tests, revision tests (RTS) and project reports for continuous evaluation. Students are expected to complete at least a specified number of assignments. These will be marked, commanded on, and graded before they are returned to the studies. In certain courses ‘answer guides’ or model answers are sent to the students along with the marked assignments. Eligibility to sit the final examination will be based on obtaining a specified mark in CA Any student unable to obtain eligibility to sit the final examination for any particular course will has to re-register for that course in a subsequent year and will then be considered as a repeat student. How central library disseminates information: Present role: At the initial stage, main library collection was based on research purposes and therefore usage of materials was limited to the academic staff and research students. Needs of distance learners were meant to be met via the public libraries and the mechanism necessary to deliver services to distance learners through the OUSL library system was not established. It was only in the 1990 that the OUSL library initiated a policy of using new technologies to serve the needs of distance learners. The main thrust of the library’s acquisition policy was the provision of textbooks as a library support service. The main library is situated in main campus in which the major library resources of the library are concentrated. It is well equipped with resources that are needed to the academics as well as the students of the university. The main library also has AV center which contains over 2000 materials. The AV center consists with materials that were produced by the OUSL academics as well as the foreign products. They are specific resources that suited to academic needs of each programme to write their lesson materials. Therefore, both core book collection as well as general materials is consisted with the collection of the main library. Four regional centers, 20 study centers and 6 teaching centres are situated covering the greater part of the country. This basically aims to link the campus and the distance learners. Library resources are processed and cent to centre libraries by the central library on the request of the academic department. The resources available at mini libraries at study centres will remain limited to the provision of basic reference materials, OUSL course materials, past question papers with facilities for using the videos and audios which are the part of the learning packages provided by OUSL. Nearly 5000 materials are available at regional centre libraries.

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Students who registered in any of the regional centre can use the resources of the main library and its services such as reference, photocopying and AV viewing facilities. The book borrowing facility is restricted to members of the main library, Kandy, Matara and Jaffna regional centre students. But a student who registered in any center in the island is allowed to take membership at the main library if they are agreed with the procedures. The students have to pay Rs.500.00 refundable deposit to get the membership to use the borrowing facility and Rs.10.00 is charged per each over due date. The major improvement of the library system is the establishment of computerized information system and a catalogue of the libraries holdings with user access, and a computerized circulation system. The library provides Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) and terminal for mail access, for users directing them to use modern technology to provide access to information. The main purpose of the OPAC is to inform users the resources available at the OUSL libraries and to provide the reservation facility to its users. The whole collection is barcoded and enabled automated circulation system. Recent achievements: Present library services alone cannot meet the needs of remote distance learners because their information needs and seeking behaviour is different at each level to each other, therefore, library has to provide a more personalized service to suit the distance learner’s needs. It is understood that many researchers (Lekamge, Gunasekera, 2005)have studies study pattern and the frequency of use of information of the remote learners and have recommended necessity of effective information service for the independent learners. As mentioned in the Guidelines for Distance Learning Library Services, prepared by the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) summarized by the Davidson, (Davidson, 1998) the OUSL also, as a distance teaching university, is bound to provide information services to its students and staff, wherever they are based on or off campus with library services equal to those provided to on-campus users and other services. The guidelines state that: “The parent institution is responsible for providing support which addresses the information needs of its extended campus programmes. This support should provide library service to the extended campus community equitable with that provided to the on-campus community. The library has primary responsibility for identifying, developing, coordinating and providing library resources and services which address the information needs of the extended campus community” (ACRL, 1990). Within this situation OUSL library also wanted to move from traditional services to modern online services. The central library was able to materialize one of its major goals with the collaboration of Distance Education Modernization Project (DEMP). The goal of any library whose parent institution offers distance programs is to provide library services and resources equivalent to those provided on the main campus. With this in mind, OUSL Library has started the Virtual Information Resources Centre and launched its services in April 2006. It consists of 15 user terminals to facilitate the access for e-resources, Internet browsing

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and one terminal outside for email checking. In addition, it is equipped with 4 file and print servers to store and archive the e-resource collection; 2 CD ROM servers to provide simultaneous access to selected CD ROM databases; printers and scanners as auxiliaries. The library now focuses on strengthening its e-resources collection. The library has started a digitization project, which covers the OUSL course materials and past question papers and intends to extend to field institutional repository. LLB past question papers and Education faculty course materials are available online now. A web portal inclusive of on-line gateways for subjects of OUSL interest; research publications of OUSL academic and administrative staff; links to subscribe e-resources and important free on-line resources; digitized resources and achieves together with the online library services has designed and in processing. Model screen print of the library web page, which can be accessed to online services, at http://lib.ou.ac.lk ,is given in Fig.1 bellow.

Fig: 1 Home Page of OUSL Main Library (http://lib.ou.ac.lk)

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Ensuring Information for all: The implementation of new electronic products and services are the biggest challenge that we face today as it has become critical to the support of distance learning. First of all we had to consider the present information flow of the teaching and learning environment at the OUSL. With that understanding librarian wanted to implement new services that suit to the distance learners who study independently. We also considered the important academic accreditation and library standards available in the world through literature search, in planning library services for distance learners. The Southern Association for Colleges and Schools (SACS) accreditation standards that cover off-campus programmes and it states in section 5.22.-a, which deals with services, that “Each institution must ensure that all students and faculty members have access to a broad range of learning resources to support its purpose and programme at both primary and distance learning sites”. (SACA, 1996). Ensuring information for all who are near and who are far away, librarian has developed a virtual library portal, Fig: 2 given bellow, to link faculties and the library hoping to establish electronic learning environment at OUSL (Seneviratne, 2007). The web portal clearly shows the available facilities and proposed collaborative activities that are being processed now and it can be accessed at http://lib.ou.ac.lk.

Fig.2 : Value-Added functions planned – Virtual Library Portal - (Seneviratne,2007)

Library

Web

Portal

ACCESS TOE-RESOURCES –subscribed + free

LINKS TO OTHER

N/W, GATEWAYS,SITES

LIBRARY OPAC

QUERY SUPPORT

ASK A LIBRARIAN

FORUM

E- CAS/ E- INFO PRODUCTS

LINKS TO FACULTY/ LIBRARY

COLLABORATIVE MATERIALS

LINKS TO VITUAL CLASS

ROOMS/ COURSES

OTHER LEARNING

MATERIALS: QUESTION

PAPERS, SUPPORTING

CASES, TUTORIALS etc.

PROPOSED AVAILABLE

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Introduction of online public access catalogue through the web page shown in Fig: 2, is greatest achievement, which enables to bridge the gap between students who are on-campus and off-campus. Any one who lives anywhere in the world can get the information about academic activities, library collection and other information relevant to OUSL through the library web page. As shown in Fig:2, available services are given for students and staff through the virtual library, which is most important development in OUSL library. It is now used heavily by many students and staff to access online information. The main purpose of establishment of virtual library is to provide better service to distance learners who registered at far away regional centres. OUSL past question papers, course materials are digitized and now available online. Online data bases subscribed through consortia are also available for references. There are several workshop packages and hands on practice sessions are available on user request to provide much needed practice on e-resource usage and information literacy skills etc. The central library has also introduced services such as ‘ask librarian service, online learning channel, online databases’ ensuring information for all students who are away from Colombo through the library web. Main goal of the library during all these years was to explore the technological potentials to meet the needs of the distance learners while establishing such a model utilizing new technology in maintaining library operations and providing the library services. Even though, the provision of adequate and quality library services in single-mode institutions encounter constraints of a different nature, as a professional, we should take challenges and risks to meet the future expectations of the parent organization. Therefore, it is important to have a good cooperation among staff of the faculties, regional centers and other supported sections to have an integrated environment as library staff cannot do it alone. How central library cooperate with faculties: Main library cooperate with faculties in number of ways. Mainly to develop the collection that suits to the each academic module. Assistant librarian represents the librarian at each faculty meeting to discuss academic problems regarding library matters and to take decisions. Library staff is ready to provide any training or hand on practice when they are needed. The contact information of the Assistant Librarian who is incharge of reader services are given to academic staff to contact at any time when they require. Online services introduced through library web page, shown in Fig: 2, will be activated upon the collaborative practices of the respective faculties and the library. The facility is supposed to be student-centered ,to support the learning activities of the remote student, whether they are at home, at a computer launch or at a practical session. These services also facilitate the teacher any time during their teaching sessions or at the times of

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curriculum design and lesson planning, providing online connectivity through their desktops. The learning channel introduced through new library web, is supposed to integrate activities done by the library and faculties. Users can get information recommended by each academic member to their each module through the channel. Each academic member is given a space in that channel to record their information that is relevant to their modules that they teach and to record their official information. Recommended reading list available online will be helpful to both library staff and to the students to have an idea to make references ready. Official information is useful for any one who wants to communicate the staff member. This service will be more helpful to support and to improve the quality of the online teaching and learning activities done by the faculties. Collaboration with center libraries: Central library is acting major part of the distribution of materials to the centres. Purchasing, processing and distribution of materials are done by the main library. Any request or any problem regarding library matters at centres is forwarded to Assistant Librarian who is in charge for Regional Educational Services through Librarian of the central library. Accordingly, Assistant Librarian is bound to take necessary action to send materials and other required information to relevant centres by the central library. As there is no professional staff at all centers, main library took initiatives to train the one staff member of each centre on library activities. Workshops and training sessions were organized and conducted by the central library. Two library assistants from KRC and MRC were given foreign training on digital libraries and its function with the support of DEMP project. Central library is planning to develop the Kandy Regional Centre library as the second best library in OUSL setup. Planning, budgeting for the required refurbishments is being done now by the central library. Collaboration with DEMP project: The project implemented in 2004 at the OUSL premises, with three components such as Praise quality and enhance capacity of tertiary education through on-line distance education under MTET, Public- private partnership to increase access under MTET, Capacity enhancement of the Open University. It is a combination project with the Ministry of Higher Education and the OUSL and activities of the project will be ended in 2009. It has supported to main library to establish virtual resource centre allocating fund and equipments. It also supported to the library staff giving local and foreign training opportunities to upgrade the knowledge and skills on digital environment. These trainings were given specific to the identified needs of academic and administrative staff to

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increase the knowledge and skills in the appropriate use f computers to support academic and administrative operations of the library. In addition to that DEMP is supporting the OUSL of finding best ways of applying LMS sytem to OUSL academic activites by facilitating foreign and local training to staff and improving facilities at centers. The OUSL has taken policy decision to apply Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) (www.moodle.org) to facilitate distance teaching and learning activities. The basic purpose of the use of LMS is to integrate all the activities done by the university. LMS has many features and facilities to integrate university activities from calling application for the courses to the convocation. It means that all administrative, financial, examination and management activities will be integrated and functions of each sections including issuing membership and checking eligibility etc. will be easier than today. Moodle is an open source e-learning platform and also a course management system (CMS) which supports the learner through a virtual learning environment. Moodle enables educators to create online course with opportunities for rich interaction with the learners ensuring learner-centered teaching mode. Moodel has many features expected from an e-learning platform including forums,Content managing (resources), Quizzes with different kinds of questions, Blogs,Wikis, Database activities, Surveys, Chat, Glossaries, Peer assessment, Multi-language support (over 60 languages are supported for the interface and the Sinhala language translation for the interface is in progress) . Therfore, it will help teachers to analyse their students requirements and enhance their teaching activites even living at far away from main campus. Further, DEMP has supported to improve the regional activities by involving civil work and supplying equipments to the following centers, Kandy, Matara, Baticaloa, Ampara, Moneragala, Vavuniya and Gampaha hoping to develop the distance mode teaching and learning system in Sri Lanka. DEMP has given new building for Anuradhapura astudy centre and is going to upgrade it to the regional centre by facilitating network facilities and other infrastructure facilities. These attempts will help to achieve the goal of the university to be an excellent institute in Sri Lanka. Challenges Everyone working alone to establish library services off-campus needs the cooperation, commitment and dedication and support of the library staff and academic and non academic staff is needed. Like in any distance education programme, tutor support is vital in the e-learning project. On-line tutors and students should be trained to respond to the needs of learners and be pro-active on expected requirements from them. Some learners experienced difficulty to make contact with the on-line tutor and didn’t get the feedback in the timeframe expected. Other learners did not make use of their e-mail facilities to make contact with on-line tutors. This is an area where additional effort is required to make the model work.

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Provision of Internet facility to rural students is another biggest challenge. According to the facts discussed in the student representative meetings, the students from the distant rural remote areas suffers a lot to come to the main city, Colombo due to the irregularities in the transport, financial difficulties and ethnic disturbances in northern areas of the island etc. Some working people encounter difficulties in obtaining leave from their organizations to attend some praticals and examinations. The regional centers are established to address these issues which were already expected by the Open Distance Learning (ODL) system designers but unfortunately the regional centers and study centers of the OUSL system are not yet competent at present to cater the students registered in the remote areas. The regional centre libraries are also not in a position to accommodate all the learning requests posed by the students. There fore distributed information dissemination solution is extremely necessary to unburden the information problems of the ODL students. For that it is important to have internet access facilities. Even though the government has identified the capacity of distance education to accommodate the huge number of A/L completers who cannot gain admission to conventional Universities and its ability in meeting the increasing needs of life long learning. Further, the establishing of network of` `Tele Centres' through out the country is already in progress to provide access facilities for distance learners in order to promote distance education by using ICT. In addition, the government has launched a program called `Nana Sala' to take the communication technology to the village with the aim to increase the IT literacy rate from 20% to 60% over a period of 3 years and develop Sri Lanka as a regional centre of the Asian IT dissemination networks (Mahinda Chintana, 2005). If these projects achieve their goals in time, the provision for distance education in Sri Lanka will be vastly enhanced in near future. Therefore, it is very important for the OUSL to boost the process of achieving its development goals to upgrade the quality and maintain the standards of distance education in Sri Lanka. This will certainly raise the position of the library system as a vital service point, which delivers the much needed information for success. Study centers don’t have adequate resources or staff, students can travel to Colombo to use this library but it is not practical The biggest challenge that the central library face today is recruiting professional staff to centers and train them with limited carder and budget. Central library has already requested for 13 new cadre positions for main library and 30 new cadre positions for regional cantres to meet the current and future challenges. Skills development of the students, staff and giving training on new technological environment is another burden and challenge to the central library as most students are young (20-25) and they like to learn about computers. The library would be like to facilitate this training if they had the staff and the computers. Often older people (eg staff 40-50) do not like to learn about computers because they do not know the advantages If the new electronic services are not used, all the money is wasted. Future expectations:

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• The library wishes to shift to a new integrated library management system in order to build up online connectivity with regional centre libraries to enhance the communication among the library network with the support of DEMP project.

• Implementation of RFID security system which is in process now.

• E-collection development CD towers – 10 OUSL videos will be online and available (at one time) to academic staff ( OUSL productions will be available online in future) Abstracting services for postgraduate students on Distance Education that it is in process now. Digitization of OUSL course materials of the four faculties Development of webliographies on OUSL AV productions Provision of Web-based databases, through the use of a proxy server, allowing access to indexes and full-text articles. Delivery of materials through the Interlibrary Loan facility to centers. Acquisition of e-books under university consortia.

CONCLUSION: The OUSL was established in 1980 with seven objectives to enhance the education system catering many school leavers who cannot enter the conventional universities available in Sri Lanka. It is a single mode university and teaching and learning is done by the distance mode incorporate with 4 regional and 20 study centers situates at all over the island. Curricula are designed to suite the independent learners and learning support is given by supplying lesson materials and having day schools etc. As the library of the country's leading distance education institute, the OUSL library has to face number of specific challenges related to catering the distance learners. It is certainly possible to develop library services that are integrated with existing on-campus libraries with the available financial support given by the DEMP to ensure necessary information for all students. As the integrated approach provides flexibility for program growth, encourages the development of broad staff expertise, and contributes to the essential institutionalization of the distance-learning program as a whole on the academic campus. Equally importantly, this distributed model brings all staff into the detailed work of meeting the research and information needs of distance-learning students, which makes it possible for centre libraries to support distance-learning programs. The integrated LMS system will help to integrate OUSL library with other faculties and with centers. These attempts and future expectations will be helpful to fulfill the library vision “to be the centre of excellence in open and distance learning, teaching and research resources in Sri Lanka” and to ensure the dissemination of information equally among distance learners who are near and far away.

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References:

1. Amaragunasekara, L.(1999) Distance Teacher Education program in Sri Lanka (PhD. Thesis).

2. Association of College and Research Libraries. Task Force to Review the Guidelines for Extended Campus Library Services. “ACRL Guidelines for extended campus library services”. College and Research Libraries News 51, (40) 1990 353-355p.

3. Davidson, Laura (1998) Presentation given at the WILS world conference, Madison WI may 28.

4. Keegan, D (1986) The foundation of distance education, London: Croom Helm In Watson F. Elizabeth and Jaganathan, Neela (eds.) Library services to distance learners in the Commonwealth: a reader , Vancouver, Commonwealth of learning.

5. Lekamge, G. [et.al.] (1999) .- Student satisfaction with OUSL support services.- OUSL Journal 2 ,pp. 80-93.

6. OUSL Hand Book (2005) Open University of Sri Lanka, Nawala: Nugegoda. 7. OUSL Hand Book (2000) Open University of Sri Lanka, Nawala: Nugegoda. 8. Rowntee, Derick (1981) Developing course for students, MacGrowhill, London. In. .

Amaragunasekara, L.(1999) Distance Teacher Education program in Sri Lanka (PhD. Thesis)

9. SACS (1996) Commission on colleges, Criteria for Accreditation. Atlanta: The Commission. In Thousands still shoeless: developing library services in support of distance education: a case study

10. Seneviratne, W (2007) Supporting Teachers and Learners Online in an Open Learning Environment: a web-based library portal for Open University of Sri Lanka, paper presented at the CALIBER Conference, University Punjab: Chandigar. 8-19 February 2007.

11. Watson, E. F. (1996) Distance librarianship: new partnerships and changing relationships, paper presented at the 26th Conference of the Association of Carribbean University Research and Institutional Libraries (ACURIC), St. Martin, 19-24 May 1996. In. Slade, Alexander L.(2000) keynote address-International trends and issues in library services for distance learning: present and future.

Biographical Note:

Ms. Damayanthi Gunasekara (B.A. (LIS), (Kelaniya. S.L.), (MLS (Colombo. S.L.), ASLLA) Email : hpsgun@ou.ac.lk

Her research interests are library usage of distance learners, Distance learning support, E-Learning support,