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Lister Hill Letter
Newsletter of the Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences at UAB

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July/August 1997

Distance Learning

The modern student is typically a multifaceted individual coping with a full-time job and a busy family while at the same time looking to increase his or her professional and personal expertise. Working, living and learning are no longer mutually exclusive activities and technologies that facilitate the combination of these activities are becoming more and more valued. These technologies allow new and flexible forms of education to be offered by higher education institutions to a diverse and widely distributed group of students. These new technologies, collectively known as "distance learning," are meeting the educational needs of these students with a flexible curriculum that can be accessed anytime and anywhere. The methods of advanced education will be based on the direction and requirements of the distance learning technologies, and the sooner and more thoroughly higher education institutions adopt distance learning the more successful they will be in competing for students of the future.

The stated objective of the Learning Technologies Center is to develop and test educational software, provide technical services for distance learning efforts, and to support Web product/service implementation. With respect to distance learning, the technical services being provided are:

     
  1. assist the department in evaluating hardware and software available in the marketplace that can be used to implement a curriculum directed toward remote learners;
  2. provide system administration and support for the installation, configuration, and ongoing operation of selected hardware/software systems;
  3. assist the faculty and other content experts in the implementation of a robust and efficient curriculum through individual training sessions and group training classes on the selected hardware/software systems; and
  4. provide support for faculty and students to resolve questions and problems related to the operation of the hardware/software systems.


The Learning Technologies Center can provide any or all of these services to interested departments. The center also uses internal computer equipment to establish prototype systems for product evaluation and to facilitate the start-up phase of course implementation. Experience gained in supporting the Health Services Administration's distance learning based Executive MSHA program and experience with the prototyping of various distance learning software products (First Class, Learning Space, NetMeeting, Exchange and others) will be combined with future distance learning efforts to provide a strong, well-established service program.

Individuals interested in getting further information on opportunities related to distance learning are welcome to contact the Lister Hill Library's Learning Technology Center (934-0410), the Computer Services Division (934-6318), or e-mail Mike McBride at .

Please note that this is a newsletter.
The information and links in individual articles are current as of the date of publication, but they are not kept up-to-date thereafter.

Please send comments about this page to: Pat Higginbottom at