e-edukacja w kraju - E-mentor

Virtuous Circles, Vicious Circles and Virtual BooksAs USD librarians, in consultation with faculty atour Law School, interpret US copyright law, I canmake this material available online providing that accessis restricted to students in the class for which itis intended and isn’t available after the class is over.And this highlights the poignant fact that the realbarriers to creating online courses are not technicalbut legal.The interpretation of copyright regulations is influx, and US rules may not apply elsewhere. From thelegal point of view, I’ve been told, linking to materialthat is publically available on the web is safe: legal liabilityis not transitive. Legal questions however ariseif you take down material to which access is restrictedand give students access to locally stored copies fortheir convenience. Making scanned copies of hardcopymaterial that is under copyright means complying withfair use regulations comparable to those that apply tophotocopies distributed to students. Faculty who areconcerned about legal issues should consult librarians,who are sensitive to legal issues and informed aboutcurrent issues in copyright law.Creating an online “book” for a course is not significantlymore difficult or time-consuming than selectinga textbook and putting together a list of readingsfrom it. Arguably, it is less difficult and time-consumingthan selecting a textbook, putting together a listof readings and getting students access to those thatare not in the textbook by distributing photocopiesto students or putting them or library reserve andmakes the mechanics of access less cumbersome forstudents. From the end user’s perspective all the readingsare in one place, all linked to the class websiteand accessible from any place on earth.More importantly, the online “book” format makesit possible to include “readings” that are neither conventionaljournal articles nor book sections but linkintensiveresources for topics under discussion. So,for example “Zombies on the Web” (http://consc.net/zombies.html) one of the readings for the discussionof the problem of other minds by David Chalmers, withpictures, cartoon, links to popular, entertaining sitesbut also to the most important philosophically seriouspapers on the issue and other relevant websites.Pedagogically, this is invaluable. Locked into thehardcopy textbook paradigm students get the ideathat mastering the material in the textbook is thewhole of learning. But that is not the way in which seriousresearch in any humanities discipline proceeds.Working in these fields, as academics, we exploreand that is what, I believe, we are supposed to beteaching students to do. Online “books” are not onlycheaper, more efficient and more accessible traditionaltextbooks – they are better because they obliteratethe line between learning and research.Textbooks distill knowledge for those who want tonail the basics in a field and move on to go further anddeeper. Good textbooks include footnotes, annotatedbibliographies and suggestions for further readingso that students can go on. Students however rarelyfollow these suggestions. Online textbooks can linkthose additional resources and make access to themseamless.Finally, online textbooks for courses can be integratedinto class websites that effectively includeeverything students need and can be updated asrequired. The class website 15 for my survey of analyticphilosophy, for which this collection of readings isthe textbook, includes the syllabus for the course,the schedule of topics and readings, powerpointsfor all lectures, handouts and links to selected onlineresources for further reference. For students’convenience I include also a message board, a linkto my university’s academic calendar, the location ofmy office, my email address and phone number. Forstudents who claim that they are unable to find myoffice I include a link to a campus map (http://home.sandiego.edu/~baber/myoffice.pdf) with the locationof my office clearly marked.Commercial firms like WebCT/Blackboard(http://www.blackboard.com/) provide “coursemanagement tools” to create integrated onlineresources like the ones described here. These productshowever are time-consuming and difficult forinstructors to use and relatively inflexible. Worst ofall, they password protect class materials.I created my class website on a Dreamweaver templatewith only minor tweaking and minimal effort.I could have simply used MSWord. All the materialsat my site are open and freely available to the world.One of the most important reasons for creating onlineclass websites and online textbooks, I believe, is tomake them accessible to the world so that we canlearn from one another, get ideas to improve our ownsyllabi and handouts and, if we find class materialsonline that are excellent, like Jim Pryor’s handoutson reading and writing philosophy, to use them asthey stand. Anything we put up to the web and makeaccessible contributes to knowledge and the progressof our disciplines, even if not to research narrowlydefined, to pedagogy.Online resources in other fieldsPhilosophy is not uniquely blessed. Texts forcourses in other disciplines are readily availableonline. The Free Library (http://www.thefreelibrary.com/) provides free, full-text access to hundredsof classic literary works as well as a massive collectionof articles in various disciplines. I found it in undera second by googling “online Jane Austin” – andsure enough the entire text of Pride and Prejudiceas well as Jane Austin’s other novels were there. Fortheologians, the Christian Classics Ethereal Library(http://www.ccel.org/) provides free open access to allclassic Christian writings.15http://home.sandiego.edu/~baber/analytic/index.html, [02.02.2009].luty 2009 99