Searching for Learning Resources

What are the two worst things that can happen when an instructor begins to search for online learning resources? The instructor may find nothing or the instructor may find thousands of resources. Finding too little is discouraging and will most likely turn the instructor away from attempting to use online resources in the future. Finding too much is overwhelming and can also turn an instructor away from using online resources just because it is inordinately time consuming to sift through hundreds or thousands of possibilities. The third worst happening is finding some learning resources but determining that they are all of poor quality and therefore of no real use. The fouth worst outcome is to locate some useful resources and then determine that they are too expensive or that they require specialized software unavailable to students.

All of these outcomes suggest that instructors may benefit from help when they set out to find online resources to supplement existing courses or put into the construction of new courses. Who will help? Help with using online resources is as diverse as help with computing? Where the help center is located will vary from university to university. In some institutions there will be no help at all; in others several different help centers will exist.

The departments that house the assistance will also vary from place to place: Libraries, Distance Education Centers, Instructional Support Centers, Multimedia Centers, Computer Centers, Faculty Development Centers, Teaching and Learning Centers, and so on. If you stop by one of these departments and ask about getting help with finding and using online learning resources you may be answered by a "Huh?" or by a "Sure, we help instructors all the time, what's your field?"

Given this variability across institutions, it's important for instructors to do two things: one, learn enough about general and discipline-specific online resource sites to do some searching on their own; two, having learned what questions to ask, investigate the institution and locate what departments do provide local assistance. A third desirable option would be for instructors at an institution that does not have a help center to set up their own support group, using a listserv, weblog, and occasional luncheon meetings. This local support group will fill a gap and might eventually influence the institution to establish a more formal unit for instructional support.

Ten years ago instructors and students needed a lot of assistance using email on the Internet. Now email usage is common and no special introductory support is required; email addressing is straightforward and email handlers have graphical user interfaces that are easy to use (the current communication problem is that people have so MANY different addresses and change their email services frequently). In a few years the use of online learning resources may become as widely used for instruction as the use of email and the web; certainly finding and using online learning repositories will be facilitated by better tools. For now, some level of assistance is definitely needed.