Another Modest Proposal:  
Build Selective Master Clusters 
of Instructional Resources 
If You Can’t Have A Personal Internet-Savvy Librarian
Steven W. Gilbert, The TLT Group

PROBLEM:  Too Many Choices.
SCARCE SOLUTION:  Personal Reference Librarian
UNREALISTIC(?) SOLUTION:  Comprehensive Collection

MODEST PROPOSAL:  Master Clusters

So, what is the solution?  My “modest proposal” is that we encourage and support more academic support professionals  (librarians, faculty development, technology support, instructional design, etc. – or teams or combinations thereof) to develop small “clusters” or highly organized, highly-focused sets of Web links to a modest number of highly selected instructional resources.  I urge these professionals to develop these clusters with the needs of specific faculty with whom they work clearly in mind.  It would be nice if there were good mechanisms for those who build these selective clusters to tell others about them and make them accessible for use and further improvement. 

Some of the tools developed by the Open Source software development community may be helpful in moving closer to some of these goals and, especially, in sharing the workload, expertise, and wisdom. 

A commercial tool that provides an attractive model is the XanEdu system that enables faculty members to find and assemble printed articles or book chapters into “digital coursepacks” accessible to students.  XanEdu has also commissioned some faculty members to develop “Master CoursePacks” which can serve as a starting placer for other faculty members who have interests in teaching similar courses.  Faculty members can easily modify the Master CoursePacks and make their own improvements available to their own students and to other faculty.

This is a good model for what could also be done in assembling collections of instructional resources that were not limited only to print-published materials.  I would be delighted to see someone integrate a tool like the XanEdu system with a valuable and growing collection of Web-based instructional resources like MERLOT.  Too bad the dot.com economy isn’t available to lavish start-up funding on those who would take up this challenge!

SOME USEFUL LINKS:  Right Now!