In Search of Learning Communities:
Librarians and Faculty Partnering for Change
UCSC's NetTrail:
Academic Partnerships for Online Literacy
Ann Hubble
Electronic Information Resources Librarian
Science Library, UC Santa Cruz
Deborah Murphy
Instruction Coordinator
McHenry Library, UC Santa Cruz
ANN HUBBLE and Deborah Murphy described what it was
like to work on UCSC's NetTrail. A follow-up project to the 1997 All University
Conference, NetTrail was launched by a team of UCSC developers from the
library, the humanities division, linguistics, computer science, Porter
College, and communication and technology services.
A campus-wide, web-based computer literacy course, NetTrail is made up of
four modules that help students learn to use the Web, to use e-mail and
newsgroups, to negotiate online library resources, and to understand netiquette.
It can be viewed at www2.ucsc.edu/nettrail/master.
"It became clear that if librarians had not been on that team, the students
and the institution would have really missed out," said Hubble. Students
had high usage of and gave positive feedback about the library module. This
surprised Hubble's non-librarian colleagues on the team and, she noted,
improved the library's image.
Hubble and Murphy were realistic about the time it takes from their existing
jobs to maintain NetTrail. "For now, NetTrail isn't Everest. It's a one
mile nature trail bringing up the trailing edge of information literacy
for students."
Linda Salem
University of Redlands
Annual
Conference Highlights