INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE
PREFACE
3. Course CD-ROM entitled Digital Libraries in Education (distributed with the course), which is set of additional readings, example collections, and Greenstone digital library software that is used for the practical component of the course runs on Windows, Linux, or Macintosh OS/X. This is the context for the course of study that you are embarking on. Before beginning, here is a summary of what the course is about, who it is for, how it is organized, and the assumptions we are making about how you will study it.
What can you expect to learn? This course will tell you:
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what digital libraries are; how they are being used in education – and how they might be used; what metadata is and how it helps in organizing digital libraries; the different formats in which electronic documents are represented; how multimedia can be used in digital libraries; how to build and manage digital library collections; what standards exist for digital libraries and educational metadata; what systems are available for constructing institutional document repositories.
Who is the course for? The target audience consists of two main groups: 1. Educators:
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teachers; teacher trainers; tutors.
2. Information professionals in the field of education:
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librarians; digital library developers; information system managers; educational authorities.
The course also has a secondary audience comprising: 3. Students. 4. Researchers. The focus of the course is on education at the secondary level and higher level.
What previous knowledge is assumed? This course has been designed on the assumption that you have some experience in organizing course material for conventional classroom teaching environments, and that you have some practical hands-on experience of using a computer for tasks, such as word processing. We so assume that you are a library user.
How much study time is needed? We are assuming that you will devote approximately 50 hours of study time to this course, including answering all the assignments – and up to 70 hours if your native language is not English or you are slow at working with computers. This includes 10–15 hours of practical exercises building digital library collections of various kinds; it also includes 3 hours of optional “enrichment” exercises. 5