Tri-State College Library Cooperative Spring Conference, American College, Bryn Mawr, PA, April 24th 2007

The Virtual Learning Commons

Moving Towards a ‘Grand Good Place’

by Mark D. PuterbaughInformation Services Librarian

Eastern University, Warner Memorial Library, St. Davids, PA

A Place where everyone know your name!

Distance Education/Reference and Life on the Internet

• Lack of interaction• Social process• Social presence• Quality of instruction• Quality of reference services support

“The bigger the new world that the Net

opens up, the lonelier it is.”

Park Sang-woo, The World of Internet Games, Koreana 16 no4 38-41 Wint 2002

The Case of Eastern University

• Nearly half of the student population are either distance learners or commuters

• Student and faculty found in varied locations within the United States

• Growing population of students found in international sites.

The Case of Eastern University

Our students are found in:

• South Africa, • Brazil, • Thailand, • Romania• China • Ghana,

• Ecuador, • Peru, • Costa Rica, and the • Philippines• India• South Korea • Austria

A Global Community

• How do we provide services?

• How do we do academic support?

• How do we do research instruction?

• How do we do reference?

Web 2.0

The Social Web

• Wikis

• Blogs

• Social Search Engines

• RSS feeds

• Instant Messaging

• Meetups /social networking

• Online social gaming

The Virtual Learning CommonsA place in cyber space to bring together all the

University’s online resources

• Blackboard• E-journals• E-books• Distance learning• Distance reference

The Virtual Learning CommonsA place in cyberspace to build a community

A Place for On-line Classes

A Place for Library Services

A Place to Access E-Resources

A Place to Meet Friends and Colleagues

A Place to Grow Community

“Increased user contribution leads to the growth of “collective intelligence” and reusable dynamic content. Such engagement with content promotes a sense of community, empowerment, and ownership for users”

Maged N. Kamel Boulos, Steve Wheeler (2007) The emerging Web 2.0 social software: an enabling suite of sociable technologies in health and health care education 1 Health Information and Libraries Journal 24 (1), 2–23. doi:10.1111/j.1471-1842.2007.00701.x

VBI Phase IV

A year long experiment that opened VBI to the community!

•Student workers

•Volunteers

•Alumnae

•Librarians

•Faculty

•International Friends

Mandi’s Place

Fred’s Place

Kristin’s Place

Matt’s Place

Teresa’s Place

Ted’s Place

Mi Young’s Place

Fran’s Place

Main Street