This week the Dewey blog is coming to you from the Lone Star State (T2—764). From Fiesta City (T2—764351), to be precise -- the scene of not one but two sizzling shindigs: the Annual Conference of the Association of Library and Information Science Educators (ALISE), and then later in the week the Midwinter Meeting of the American Library Association (ALA). ALISE 2006 kicked off impressively yesterday with a workshop on Best Practices for Online Pedagogy, organized jointly by the WISE (Web-based Information Science Education) Consortium and ALISE’s special interest group on Distance Education. The thirteen leading LIS schools that make up the membership of WISE are “committed to furthering ... excellence” in distance education, and the workshop gave ALISE attendees the opportunity to learn from representatives of these schools, and to participate in panel and breakout discussions on the practicalities of online teaching and learning. In his talk “On becoming a website,” Keynote speaker Punya Mishra (Michigan State University) convincingly argued that online learning represents the most important development in education of our lifetime, and provided much excellent advice for designers of online learning support systems such as course web sites. Of course, OCLC and its regional service providers already provide a wide range of online training opportunities, and Team Dewey has had training materials on the web for a while with Dewey to the Rescue (the general introduction to the DDC developed by Karen Markey) and our WebDewey tutorial. We’re always keen to enhance our offerings for users of the DDC, and more online courses are in development. More Texan tales tomorrow!
Man! I'm just up the road in Austin. I would so be there if not for the rest of my life. :)
Posted by: texlex | 18 January 2006 at 02:10 PM