Soon graduate archive students in library and information sciences will attend class with other students from throughout the Southeast — all from the comfort of Middleton Library.
Distance education courses, called the Southeast Archives Education Collaborative, will begin in the fall semester and will include students from Auburn University, the University of Kentucky and the University of South Carolina.
The program works by connecting the host campus to a receiving campus using real-time compressed video on Internet-2, which is a research and academic center connection outside the commercial Internet, said Elizabeth Dow, LIS assistant professor.
Although distance learning classes have been used for a while at the University for students taking courses from home, students in a classroom can interact simultaneously with students at other schools. Using Internet-2 allows students to see and hear the other students with only a minor time delay.
“I feel a particular responsibility to give our students the best education we can possibly provide,” Dow said. “That education will be better by sharing resources.”
Dow received a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services for nearly $500,000 to finance travel expenses to coordinate the project. She developed SAEC after realizing sharing resources was the only way to teach all of the courses she desired in a timely manner.
The SAEC is feasible because archiving is a small department that cannot afford all desired resources, including instructors and sections. Although America has many archivists, they tend to spread out geographically. Dow hopes SAEC will connect professional and learning archivists to broaden their knowledge and enable future networking.
The SAEC is a research project that serves as a potential model for other small graduate departments because the program allows students from specialized fields to expand resources.
In her grant proposal, Dow said, “The Southeast lacks the sense of regional cohesion found among archivists in other regions of the country.” She also said connecting the schools will allow instructors to strengthen their curriculums beyond their individual capability.
“Students will get a wider range of course knowledge, and faculty will get to focus on what they are really good at,” she said. “There is essentially nothing I can’t do through distance education.”
Many graduate students are excited about the program because archive classes are limited, said Ally Aran, a library information sciences graduate student.
She said she only has heard positive remarks about the program and said the program is the most exciting thing to hit the LIS department.
However, distance education is a difficult endeavor that demands more planning, flexibility and coordination than traditional land-based classes, Dow said.
“I have no doubt the program will work,” Dow said. “The hard part is developing an administration model.”
The four schools are spread over two time zones and four state boundaries, making coordination difficult. Although only two schools will interact at one time, all the schools have to agree on prerequisites, course curriculum, grading procedures and class times. Also, the schools must decide how to pay teachers and where tuition money should go.
“We are very pleased to have this collaborative, multi-state effort taking place,” said Pauline Rankin, vice provost for Academic Affairs. “This kind of cooperation benefits all four universities and all of the students who are involved.”