THE LIBRARY WILL BE CLOSED FOR THE HOLIDAY BREAK
DECEMBER 22nd - JANUARY 1st
SEMESTER BREAK HOURS
JANUARY 2nd - JANUARY 21st
Monday - Friday
8:00 - 5:00pm
Saturday and Sunday
CLOSED
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Classroom of the Future is Virtually Anywhere
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES, OCTOBER 31, 2007
On Education
By JOSEPH BERGER
HERSHEY, Pa.
The university classroom of the future is in Janet Duck’s dining room on East Chocolate Avenue here.
There is no blackboard and no lectern, and, most glaringly, no students. Dr. Duck teaches her classes in Pennsylvania State University’s master’s program in business administration by sitting for several hours each day in jeans and shag-lined slippers at her dining table, which in soccer mom fashion is cluttered with crayon sketches by her 6-year-old Elijah and shoulder pads for her 9-year-old Olivia’s Halloween costume.
In this homespun setting, the spirited Dr. Duck pecks at a Toshiba laptop and posts lesson content, readings and questions for her two courses on “managing human resources” that touch on topics like performance evaluations and recruitment. The instructional software allows her 54 students to log on from almost anywhere at any time and post remarkably extended responses, the equivalent of a blog about the course. Recently, the class exchanged hard-earned experiences about how managers deal with lackluster workers.
Those students, mostly 30-ish middle managers and professionals trying to enhance their skills, cannot be with her in a Penn State classroom at a set time. One woman is an Air Force pilot flying missions over Afghanistan; other global travelers filed comments last week from Tokyo, Athens, São Paulo and Copenhagen. Dr. Duck cannot regularly be at Penn State, largely because of her three children. Yet she and other instructors will help the students acquire standard M.B.A.’s next August at a total cost of $52,000, with each side having barely stepped into a traditional classroom.
Welcome to the brave burgeoning world of online education. It’s a world most of us, whether we like it or not, will have to grapple with, as students, tuition-paying parents or employees. Nearly 3.5 million college or graduate students, one of every five, took at least one online course last fall, double the figures of five years earlier, according to a survey of 2,500 campuses published last week in a collaboration among the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the College Board and a Babson College research group.
Taken at face value, the study was chilling. This writer’s first impulse was to recall a college course taught by Irving Howe, who read Robert Frost’s poems with tenderness and an edge of menace that conveyed the poet’s respect for the sinister beauty of nature. Those poems would not be as richly appreciated online.
Yet for now such fears would be misplaced. The study’s fine print makes clear that growth is not across the board. Selective private four-year colleges that are the subject of so much angst this season are barely dipping their toes, typically providing online courses for students studying abroad or slackers who needed that 8 a.m. math course to graduate. Some, though, have taken note; for example, Columbia for several years has offered online master’s degrees in some engineering fields.
Still, the surge is mostly among community colleges, professional programs like business and education, specialized online schools like the University of Phoenix, and public universities like Penn State and Illinois that feel obligated to accommodate far-flung residents. And the numbers are expected to grow partly because Congress last year dropped a requirement that colleges deliver half their courses on actual campuses in order to qualify for federal aid, a move critics saw as an enticement for diploma mills. Just as newspaper and television professionals are fumbling to figure out how to survive in an Internet world they did not grow up in, professors and students are realizing that they will have to learn, as one wag once said, to play the violin while performing at Carnegie Hall. QUESTIONS persist. What kind of content works best online, and what gets lost in translation? Which instructors and students function best in the virtual classroom? What happens to all those brick-and-mortar dormitories? How do you calculate the price of tuition?
Barmak Nassirian of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers wonders what will happen, should campuses go exuberantly online, to the intangibles — the late-night bull sessions, the serendipitous strolls with professors, the chance to feel one’s oats in student government? And what will one more switch to electronic conversation do to our need for intimate human connections, he asks?
Andrew Delbanco, the Columbia humanities professor, said flatly that it would be impossible to put his seminar on war and culture online because “the energy and spontaneity of discussion among people sitting together in a small room cannot be replicated by electronic exchanges.”
His statement, not surprisingly, came in an e-mail message. For we live, for better or worse, in a harried world where people spend a good part of their lives on airplanes, where professionals are obliged to upgrade skills, where friends would rather chat via the screen of e-mail than face to face.
It’s instructive for a skeptic to talk to Dr. Duck’s students — online, of course. They point out that online postings are more reasoned and detailed than off-the-cuff classroom observations. Students learn as much from one another’s postings, informed by the real business world, as they do from instructors, they say. And Kevin Krull, a technology executive, pointed out that introverts reluctant to speak up in class can strut their stuff.
For those who shrug off online courses as watered-down soup, Dr. Duck and her students say courses like theirs at Penn State’s World Campus — the university’s online division, with 300 courses for 7,500 undergraduates and graduate students — require many more hours of work; discussion is not limited by a classroom hour. They confess, however, that they miss the ability to read expressions and body language that confirm that a point has been truly understood.
Online courses may not be suited to subjects like laboratory science or theater, but can work fine for the nut-and-bolts information and analysis required in a history survey or for the editing needed for a basic writing course. Still, even in those fields many professors would feel lost online.
Dr. Duck, a respected instructor who taught conventionally for nine years and online for five, said she “wouldn’t go back to the classroom if they doubled my salary.” Her work, she thinks, is on the frontier of education in a global economy
In her dining room, her children sometimes pause beside her as she teaches, and she does not shoo them away.
“It’s good for them to see this in action,” she said. “It’s going to be their world.”
E-mail: joeberg@nytimes.com
Correction: November 5, 2007
On Education
By JOSEPH BERGER
HERSHEY, Pa.
The university classroom of the future is in Janet Duck’s dining room on East Chocolate Avenue here.
There is no blackboard and no lectern, and, most glaringly, no students. Dr. Duck teaches her classes in Pennsylvania State University’s master’s program in business administration by sitting for several hours each day in jeans and shag-lined slippers at her dining table, which in soccer mom fashion is cluttered with crayon sketches by her 6-year-old Elijah and shoulder pads for her 9-year-old Olivia’s Halloween costume.
In this homespun setting, the spirited Dr. Duck pecks at a Toshiba laptop and posts lesson content, readings and questions for her two courses on “managing human resources” that touch on topics like performance evaluations and recruitment. The instructional software allows her 54 students to log on from almost anywhere at any time and post remarkably extended responses, the equivalent of a blog about the course. Recently, the class exchanged hard-earned experiences about how managers deal with lackluster workers.
Those students, mostly 30-ish middle managers and professionals trying to enhance their skills, cannot be with her in a Penn State classroom at a set time. One woman is an Air Force pilot flying missions over Afghanistan; other global travelers filed comments last week from Tokyo, Athens, São Paulo and Copenhagen. Dr. Duck cannot regularly be at Penn State, largely because of her three children. Yet she and other instructors will help the students acquire standard M.B.A.’s next August at a total cost of $52,000, with each side having barely stepped into a traditional classroom.
Welcome to the brave burgeoning world of online education. It’s a world most of us, whether we like it or not, will have to grapple with, as students, tuition-paying parents or employees. Nearly 3.5 million college or graduate students, one of every five, took at least one online course last fall, double the figures of five years earlier, according to a survey of 2,500 campuses published last week in a collaboration among the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the College Board and a Babson College research group.
Taken at face value, the study was chilling. This writer’s first impulse was to recall a college course taught by Irving Howe, who read Robert Frost’s poems with tenderness and an edge of menace that conveyed the poet’s respect for the sinister beauty of nature. Those poems would not be as richly appreciated online.
Yet for now such fears would be misplaced. The study’s fine print makes clear that growth is not across the board. Selective private four-year colleges that are the subject of so much angst this season are barely dipping their toes, typically providing online courses for students studying abroad or slackers who needed that 8 a.m. math course to graduate. Some, though, have taken note; for example, Columbia for several years has offered online master’s degrees in some engineering fields.
Still, the surge is mostly among community colleges, professional programs like business and education, specialized online schools like the University of Phoenix, and public universities like Penn State and Illinois that feel obligated to accommodate far-flung residents. And the numbers are expected to grow partly because Congress last year dropped a requirement that colleges deliver half their courses on actual campuses in order to qualify for federal aid, a move critics saw as an enticement for diploma mills. Just as newspaper and television professionals are fumbling to figure out how to survive in an Internet world they did not grow up in, professors and students are realizing that they will have to learn, as one wag once said, to play the violin while performing at Carnegie Hall. QUESTIONS persist. What kind of content works best online, and what gets lost in translation? Which instructors and students function best in the virtual classroom? What happens to all those brick-and-mortar dormitories? How do you calculate the price of tuition?
Barmak Nassirian of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers wonders what will happen, should campuses go exuberantly online, to the intangibles — the late-night bull sessions, the serendipitous strolls with professors, the chance to feel one’s oats in student government? And what will one more switch to electronic conversation do to our need for intimate human connections, he asks?
Andrew Delbanco, the Columbia humanities professor, said flatly that it would be impossible to put his seminar on war and culture online because “the energy and spontaneity of discussion among people sitting together in a small room cannot be replicated by electronic exchanges.”
His statement, not surprisingly, came in an e-mail message. For we live, for better or worse, in a harried world where people spend a good part of their lives on airplanes, where professionals are obliged to upgrade skills, where friends would rather chat via the screen of e-mail than face to face.
It’s instructive for a skeptic to talk to Dr. Duck’s students — online, of course. They point out that online postings are more reasoned and detailed than off-the-cuff classroom observations. Students learn as much from one another’s postings, informed by the real business world, as they do from instructors, they say. And Kevin Krull, a technology executive, pointed out that introverts reluctant to speak up in class can strut their stuff.
For those who shrug off online courses as watered-down soup, Dr. Duck and her students say courses like theirs at Penn State’s World Campus — the university’s online division, with 300 courses for 7,500 undergraduates and graduate students — require many more hours of work; discussion is not limited by a classroom hour. They confess, however, that they miss the ability to read expressions and body language that confirm that a point has been truly understood.
Online courses may not be suited to subjects like laboratory science or theater, but can work fine for the nut-and-bolts information and analysis required in a history survey or for the editing needed for a basic writing course. Still, even in those fields many professors would feel lost online.
Dr. Duck, a respected instructor who taught conventionally for nine years and online for five, said she “wouldn’t go back to the classroom if they doubled my salary.” Her work, she thinks, is on the frontier of education in a global economy
In her dining room, her children sometimes pause beside her as she teaches, and she does not shoo them away.
“It’s good for them to see this in action,” she said. “It’s going to be their world.”
E-mail: joeberg@nytimes.com
Correction: November 5, 2007
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
COLLEGE AND CAREER COLLECTION
Are you career searching? There’s help for you in the library.Have you chosen a major? There’s help for you in the library.
Are you writing a cover letter and resume? There’s help for you in the library.
Are you taking certification exams? There’s help for you in the library.
Check the WCC Catalog for help.
Browse the College and Career Collection for help.
Helen Goodspeed, WCC Librarian
Browse the College and Career Collection for help.
Helen Goodspeed, WCC Librarian
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
A LIBRARIAN COMING TO YOUR EXTENSION SITE
ATTENTION FACULTY!! (If you are a student, tell your professor)
Librarians are now available for Library Instruction sessions at ALL
Westchester Community College extension sites.
Our information sessions can be tailored to your specific assignment or a
general overview of resources in your discipline can be provided.
To schedule your class go to the Library homepage:
Click on Faculty
Click on Library Instruction Request Form
DONE!!!!
If you have any questions, contact Outreach Librarian Beth Seelick at 606-8529 or beth.seelick@sunywcc.edu
See you at the extensions!!!!
Monday, October 08, 2007
TOP TEN THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR LIBRARY
1. All of the books, magazines, and DVDs in the Library are FREE! to borrow
2. The Library is wireless!
3. You can chat with a Librarian online.
4. The Library is open 7 days a week.
5. The Library keeps copies of textbooks and other course materials.
6. The Academic Support Center, Writing Center and Computer Lab are on the ground floor.
7. The Library has a great collection of movies!
8. Group Study Rooms are available for use.
9. Our electronic resources are available 24/7.
4. The Library is open 7 days a week.
5. The Library keeps copies of textbooks and other course materials.
6. The Academic Support Center, Writing Center and Computer Lab are on the ground floor.
7. The Library has a great collection of movies!
8. Group Study Rooms are available for use.
9. Our electronic resources are available 24/7.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
DATABASE OF THE WEEK
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
Billed as the largest paid subscription news site on the WEB, the WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE provides in-depth business news and financial information 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with insight and analysis, including breaking business and technology from around the world
- More that 1,000 news stories added per day
- Global market covering 25 exchanges; 30,000 in-depth background reports on publicly traded companies from around the world
- Content from The Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Wall Street Journal Asia, Dow Jones Newswires and Barrons
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
COURSE RESERVES
Course Reserves are the TEXTBOOKS, materials and media required or recommended for Westchester Community College classes.
These items are located behind the Circulation Desk and are available to WCC students to check out for a limited time period--2 hours with a WCC ID card.
Course Reserves are "Library Use Only". Ask a Circulation Staff member for more information for the particular item you need to borrow.
To see if we have a particular textbook, search for your item in the COURSE RESERVE section of the Library Catalog.
- Bring your course syllabus with you.
- Items check out for 2 hours, Library use only.
- No overnight checkouts.
- Only one reserve item can be checked out at a time.
- Reserve items must be returned in person at the Circulation Desk.
- Books are available on a first come, first served basis and cannot be reserved or put on hold.
- Non-return of items will result in a financial hold placed on your student record. Your professor will be notified.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
LIBRARY HOURS - FALL '07
REGULAR HOURS
SEPT. 4TH - DEC. 21ST
Monday - Thursday
8:00am - 9:30pm
Friday 8:00am - 5:00pm
Saturday 9:00am - 5:00pm
Sunday 1:00pm - 5:00pm
CLOSINGS
THANKSGIVING BREAK -Nov. 22nd and Nov. 23rd
HOLIDAY BREAK - Dec. 22nd - Jan 1st
SEMESTER BREAK HOURS
Jan. 2nd - Jan. 21st
Monday - Friday
8:00am - 5:00pm
CLOSED Saturdays and Sundays
CLOSED - Monday, Jan. 21st
REMINDER--Access to the Library Website is Available 24/7 from any computer with an internet connection
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
EXTENDED FRIDAY HOURS
Beginning August 13th through August 31st
the Library will be open Monday - Fridays from 8:00- 5:00pm
Check back here for Fall 2007 Hours
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Empire State Games
The Valhalla campus will be used for public parking for the Opening Ceremonies of the Empire State Games on July 24th
THE VALHALLA CAMPUS WILL CLOSE DOWN COMPLETELY AT 2pm
ALL CLASSES/EVENTS WILL END BY 2pm.
Evening classes have been cancelled (rescheduled).
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
SUMMER 2007 HOURS
May 14th - May 18th
8:00am - 5:00pm
May 21st - July 27th
Monday - Thursday - 8:00am - 7:00pm
Friday - 8:00am - 12:00pm
July 30th - August 10th
Monday - Thursday - 8:00 - 5:00pm
Friday - 8:00am - 12:00pm
August 13th - August 31st
Monday - Friday 8:00am - 5:00pm
The Library will be CLOSED WEEKENDS from May 13th - Sept. 2nd
Closed Memorial Day - May 28th
Closed Independence Day - July 4th
Closed Labor Day - Sept. 3rd
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
CREEPY READING IN OUR PAPERBACK COLLECTION - AVAILABLE NOW!
King, Stephen
Now in paperback!
Now in paperback!
The Cell - You’ll never look at your cell phone the same way again!
Storm of the Century
The Shining
Four Past Midnight
Other Stephen King titles in our collection:
Black House (with Peter Straub)--PS3561.I483B57 2001
The Shawshank Redemption--PS3561.I483D5 1994
Firestarter--PS3561.I483 F57 1980
Carrie--PS3561.I483 1974
LISEY'S STORY -- HIS LATEST --PS3561.I483L57 2006
The Shawshank Redemption--PS3561.I483D5 1994
Firestarter--PS3561.I483 F57 1980
Carrie--PS3561.I483 1974
LISEY'S STORY -- HIS LATEST --PS3561.I483L57 2006
Prefer to watch?
The Shawshank Redemption--DVD 896
The Green Mile--DVD 459, 37; VC 1625
Stand By Me--DVD 149
If you like Stephen King, you might also like these Dean Koontz paperbacks
The Shawshank Redemption--DVD 896
The Green Mile--DVD 459, 37; VC 1625
Stand By Me--DVD 149
If you like Stephen King, you might also like these Dean Koontz paperbacks
Forever Odd
Life Expectancy
The Face
One Door Away From Heaven
False Memory
And in the same vein, try these authors:
Sherrilyn Kenyon
Jean Kalogridis
Anne Rice
Thursday, April 19, 2007
DATABASE OF THE WEEK - CUSTOM NEWSPAPERS
Thomson Gale's InfoTrac® Custom Newspapers is an extraordinary new Web-based collection of full-text newspapers from around the United States and the world, including THE NEW YORK TIMES and THE NEW YORK POST.
Custom Newspaper database allows you to search articles electronically by title, headline, date, author, section or other assigned fields. Search results are organized according date of article, from most recent to oldest, allowing you to conduct research in a chronological order.
To take a look at this database, go to the Library Homepage, choose E-RESOURCES, then ARTICLES/DATABASES. Choose NEWSPAPERS, then CUSTOM NEWSPAPERS.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
DATABASE OF THE WEEK - CQ RESEARCHER
Looking for a place to begin your research?
Looking for background information on your topic?
Want to know what the current issues are on your topic?
- The CQ RESEARCHER database is an excellent place to start research for your papers.
Covering a variety of topics, CQ RESEARCHER is known for its in-depth, unbiased coverage of health issues social trends, criminal justice, international affairs, education, the environment, technology and the economy.
Included in each report - Introductory Overview, Background and chronology on the topic, an assessment of the current situation, tables and maps, pro/con statements from representativers of opposing positions and bibliographies of sources.
Access to CQ RESEARCHER is available on campus or from any remote location: - From the Library Homepage - www.sunywcc.edu/library
- Choose E-RESOURCES, ARTICLES/DATABASES
- Choose CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES from the choices on top
- CHOOSE CQ RESEARCHER
- START SEARCHING!!!!
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
SPRING 2007 HOURS
JANUARY 16th - MAY 12th
Monday - Thursday 8:00am-9:30pm
Friday 8:00-5:00pm
Saturday 8:00am-5:00pm
Sunday 1:00pm-5:00pm
CLOSED EASTER SUNDAY, APRIL 8th
CLOSED SUNDAY, MAY 13th
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
DATABASE OF THE WEEK - NETLIBRARY
NetLibrary offers the most comprehensive collection of eBooks available online.From the LIBRARY HOMEPAGE, you can access electronic full-text copies of published print materials , including reference books, scholarly monographs, fiction and non-fiction books from any location, at any time.
A sampling of full-text titles available:
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Age of Innocence
The House of the Seven Gables
Babbitt
Heart of Darkness
Young Goodman Brown
Pride and Prejudice
The House of the Seven Gables
Babbitt
Heart of Darkness
Young Goodman Brown
Pride and Prejudice
The House of Mirth
My Antonio!
Monday, February 05, 2007
RESEARCH WORKSHOPS ON CAMPUS WEEK OF FEB 19th
Are you STRESSED as term paper time approaches?
TIRED of not being able to find the information that you need?
FRUSTRATED with the amount of time you spend looking for that information?
CONFUSED over the difference between a database and the net?
LEARN HOW TO USE YOUR RESEARCH TIME EFFECTIVELY!!!
DROP BY FOR AN INFORMAL WORKSHOP
FEB. 19 --------- 10:00am--------CLA103--------Academic Research with GOOGLEFEB. 20-----------12:00am------- TEC137--------Online Encyclopedias and EBooks
FEB. 21------------ 9:00am--------AAB304------- Academic Research with GOOGLE
FEB. 22---------- 11:00am-------- SCI371--------Online Encyclopedias and EBooks
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Thursday, January 18, 2007
RESOURCES YOU CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT
Watch this space each week where we will highlight one of the many subscription databases the Library offers 24/7 to all faculty, staff and students.
This week take a look at:
GALE VIRTUAL REFERENCE LIBRARY
This is a database of encyclopedias, almanacs and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research. These reference materials once were accessible only in the Library, but now you can access them online from the library or your home or office 24/7.
If you're looking for a comprehensive overview of your topic as you begin your research process or have a quick reference question, GVRL is the place to start your searching.
To gain access to any of our databases, go to the LIBRARY HOMEPAGE and click on ARTICLES, DATABASES.
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