AUSTRALIAN LEARNING AND TEACHING COUNCIL
Promoting excellence in higher education
Communiqué August
What's New?
- 2009 Fellowship Scheme Guidelines
- Benchmarking clinical learning in speech pathology to support assessment, discipline standards, teaching innovation and student learning - Final report
- Quantitative diversity: disciplinary and cross-disciplinary mathematics and statistics support in Australian universities - Final report
Celebrating citation success
Librarians at Murdoch University have broken down geographical barriers to learning support in typical library form - without
making a sound.
The Online Librarian is a unique library chat reference service that offers students a reference question service in real time, without being in the library.
The computer chat module is a brainchild of a collaboration between Murdoch University and Macquarie University Library.
The partnership means enquiries from a student at one university can be answered by staff at the other, which provides longer hours of operation because of the time difference.
The efforts of Ms Jean McKay and Ms Helen Bronleigh of Murdoch University were recently recognised for their roles in implementing the service by an Australian Learning and Teaching Council citation, worth $10,000.
Because many students conduct research online from their homes, the librarians recognised a need to be able to answer student enquiries in modes other than face-to-face.
The Online Librarian service has evolved over a number of years from an email service to a single operator chat service using MSN, to the current multiple operator chat service.
Chat has major advantages over the initial email service, as responses can be provided in real time, enabling the dialogue which is often required for complex queries, as opposed to simple question and answer queries.
"Once a problem has been resolved, the student can easily proceed with their research but without immediate assistance, they may have to delay work on part of an assignment until they can call the library," Ms McKay said.
"The service is especially useful for external students who cannot physically visit the library since it enables them to research without delay."
The Australian Learning and Teaching Council citation acknowledges Ms McKay and Ms Bronleigh for their outstanding contributions to the student learning experience.
Full list of 2008 citations recipients
This website is being progressively updated following the change of name from the Carrick Institute to the Australian Learning and Teaching Council in early May.
Read more about the renaming of the ALTC