Anna Gabrielle, Online Coordinator, School of Social Sciences [HREF1] and School of Commerce and Management [HREF2], Division of Business, Southern Cross University [HREF3], NSW, Australia. Email: agabriel@scu.edu.au
Toni Ledgerwood, Courseware Coordinator, Division of Arts, Southern Cross University [HREF3], NSW, Australia. Email: tledgerw@scu.edu.au
This paper documents the experiences of online development staff at Southern Cross University in encountering issues in placing student reading materials online.
Southern Cross University offers a range of online accessibility of unit materials to students. Units range from web assisted to web enhanced and full online delivery. Many unit study resources include books of reading materials. These books are traditionally only supplied in print form. Of late, a number of academics have been requesting that the books of readings be made available in pdf format online.
The increased number of requests for online readings appears to stem from three quarters; concerns about the cost of printing, requests from students who can't afford to buy printed study guides and the perception that online 'just happens', in that files can be uploaded quickly and at no cost.
The trend of using pdf copies of the printery-scanned readings has evolved with the assumption they could be easily and quickly uploaded into the online shell.
It is possible to upload the files, however, because the printery scans for print optimisation, the objective being to create an exact replica of the reading, the documents are scanned as bitmaps and are very large - from 20 to 30m plus in file size. Ideally, a screen optimised pdf file will be 72dpi and less than 500Kb in size.
Placing the bitmap-pdf readings online doesn't make them readable online. In viewing one document of scanned newsprint, it was magnified +200% to enlarge the font size to a readable level, however at this magnification, the image pixelated and the text was unreadable.
Without the ability to change the font size, this raises issues for not only the sight impaired (Cantor 2001, p 204) but all students as reading online is slower and more difficult than reading print (Hall 2001, p 166)
Many students have old, low-end computers with 56k modems. Large pdf files take a very long time to open and can crash older computers.
In adherence to The Copyright Act 1968, each online reading must be assessed and registered. The University has an efficient system in place; development staff are well educated in copyright matters, registrations occur as a matter of course and so this is not seen as a major concern at this stage. The only potential issue would be one of additional resourcing for the time it takes to register as numbers of online readings increase.
The system would work if the readings were scanned at screen optimised resolution. This would enable a smaller file size, making them faster for the students to open, shouldn't annihilate their download quota, and it would allow for text recognition. If the pdfs were loaded into a simple e-book reader, the readings would be able to be annotated, highlighted, searchable and the view size/font changed without damaging resulotion. The Adobe e-book reader also contains a dictionary. The issue here is that online development is currently not resourced to carry out this function. Additional staff and a multi-feed OCR scanner is yet to be negotiated and this will include a balance-off against the straight $50 fee the printery charges to provide a bitmap pdf.
A very quick fix would be to obtain the large print optimised readings and place them on CD. Either a number of CDs could be created, or fewer CDs could created and placed in the library for loan. This would solve the quota and file size problems but resourcing would still need to be negotiated.
In an attempt to find a way to use the existing printery-scanned files, a bitmap pdf file was purchased (44m) and text capture applied. The results were not adequate. The readings scanned come from a wide range of sources: books, journals, newspapers, websites, etc and the result was a jumble of mostly unreadable marks.
A plugin was located called 'Quite a Box of Tricks' at http://www.quite.com and a demo downloaded. The plugin proved more fruitful. On application, it drastically reduced the file size from 44m to 15m. This was, of course, still too large, but it showed promise if the document articles were separated.
It would appear that a number of universities have created online reading systems whereby the online readings are links to library databases. In one sense, this forces students to search for their own readings, but this should be considered a plus as it enables the students to develop research skills.
There is much more to investigate about e-readings in an educational environment. Comparisons with and trends in the overall publishing industry have not been addressed as yet. It would be most beneficial at this stage to network with other universities.
Quite.Software (online) n.d. [HREF4] Online [Accessed 10 April 2003]
Cantor, A 2001, "Accommodating People with Disabilities in Web-Based Training Programs' in Khan, B.H. (ed) 2001, Web-Based Training, NJ: Educational Technology Publications Inc.
Hall, R 2001, 'Web-Based Training Site Design Principles: Literature Review and Synthesis' in Khan, B.H. (ed) 2001, Web-Based Training, NJ: Educational Technology Publications Inc.