MELA Meeting Minutes 2003 - 2017

A. Ms. Kathleen Hutchison presented MELO which provides a collection of reliable and credible library resources for distance education students. Mark Smith commented that in his opinion, MELO is one of the best library systems in the United States. Ms. Hutchison stated that while it is small, quality is of top priority. Ms. Hutchison demonstrated teaching tools that are available through MELO. i. Course Websites & Online Teaching Tools 1. Merlot-Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching- collection of peer reviewed resources for teaching in a variety of disciplines. http://www.merlot.org 2. World Lecture Hall-collection of instructors’ course materials including syllabi, lecture notes etc. http://www.utexas.edu/world/lecture 3. MIT OpenCourseWare – a collection of complete courses offered by MIT that are made available online free of charge to anyone. ii. Digitized Collections – collection of documents, pictures, videos 1. Valley of the Shadow – http://www.iath.virginia.edu/valleyredirect.html 2. Library of Congress – http://memory.loc.gov 3. Documenting the American South – http://docsouth.unc.edu 4. Civil Rights in MS Digital Archive (USM) http://www.lib.usm.edu/~spcol/crda iii. Free online journals and books – Directory of Open Access Journals, Highwire, FreeMedicalJournals.com, etc. iv. MELO resources 1. Databases & indexes 2. 24/7 Live Chat Reference B. Ms. Hutchison would like to visit each college to present MELO to faculty. Contact Ms. Hutchinson at khutchis@mc.edu or melo@colin.edu . Please contact Ms. Hutchison two weeks prior to the date that you would like to have her present. C. Mr. Smith asked if MELO had access to AACE—American Association of Computing in Education. Ms. Hutchison said she would look into adding the database and encouraged members to provide her with other resources we would like made available. i. Beverlin Givens said that SBCJC would leave the enrollment tool open through Friday, Sept. 3 for cleanups. ii. Mark Smith stated that proctor exam information needs to be listed under methods of evaluation since test info is not displayed to students. Mr. Smith requested of Beverlin that the prerequisite item be displayed to the students. iii. Alicia Shows stated that course requirements that are not listed in course detail are causing problems. Hubert Yates suggested that we set up Blackboard to allow guest access to course information with syllabus info for students to have before registering. Most agreed that the best place to have this is in course offerings in the enrollment tool since this is what it is designed for. Special requirements should be listed under comments or in textbook information as “Other.” iv. DLCs should update course information each semester to ensure that required/special items are included. v. Laura Lofton asked when we could begin adding courses to local offerings. Colleges need to have their courses ready by October 1. Unfinished business A. Enrollment Tool

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