Continuing education of librarians in Slovakia: ProLIB Project and pilot courses of distance learning

Milena Tetřevová

Summary

In her article, the author describes ProLIB, a Tempus Programme project that serves as a pilot model of distance learning for librarians in Slovakia. She also presents the principles of open and distance learning applied in the project, and gives a survey of activities in individual stages of the learning programme implementation.

Slovakia in the context of information society policy Information and telecommunication technologies cause the transformation of the contemporary post-industrial society into information society. The issues relating to the information society are shifting from a philosophical level to the level of applications. They also attract the interest of the producers of new information technologies and the open up possibilities for co-operation between EU countries and countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Opportunities are being offered to associated countries to take part in various programmes with an immediate impact on the effectiveness of selected areas of the life of their societies. In compliance with EU requirements in the area of information society for associated countries, the Slovak Republic (SR) has identified the following priorities [1]:

1. To develop a national strategy for the information society relevant for the situation in the SR.
2. To implement application projects of the Information Society Action Plan.
3. To stimulate the business sector.
4. To establish trust in e-business.
5. To develop activities of the national co-ordination centre.
6. To emphasize the role of science, research, education and professional training.
7. To rationalize the performance the state administration.

Libraries are not immune to the all-pervasive need for continuing learning and for the development of human resources if they want to maintain their position in the transforming information environment. At the second congress of Slovak librarians "Libraries for the 21st century" in November 1999 in Košice, the need for Slovak libraries to be integrated into international library structures - and for co-operation as the principal tool for achieving it - was mentioned time and time again. Lack of capital for investments into information technologies and education of librarians were identified as obstacles to a more effective co-operation with, and integration of Slovak libraries to, international structures [2]. For a long time, libraries have lacked qualified personnel able to fulfil demanding tasks brought about by the changing character of their work. Besides their insufficient flexibility and adjustment to the changing character of their work from manual to creative intellectual activities, librarians face another barrier, namely their insufficient foreign language skills and virtually minimum opportunities to participate in study stays abroad that would significantly contribute towards their professional development.

The ProLIB Project

The ProLIB (Professional Development Program for Librarians) Project is one of main priorities of the TEMPUS/PHARE projects for 1998/2000. These are intended to help prepare the associated countries for their entry to the EU in the area of the so-called Institutions Building (IB). It is the so-called Joint European Project (JEP), designated as ProLIB Tempus IB_JEP 13427-98. The ProLIB Project, for which the Technical University in Košice received a grant of 331,000 EUR in December 1998, is a pilot model of an educational programme for 180 librarians in Slovakia. Thanks to its curriculum and the chosen modern technology of distance learning, it meets the requirements of the contemporary library practice. It also gives an opportunity to 4 participants in the project, and includes two-week stays abroad for 20 Slovak librarians. The project was developed in co-operation with renowned experts from EU countries (England and Sweden), Slovak specialists from Technical Universities in Košice and Zvolen and the KOLIN consortium. The project was co-ordinated by the University Library of the Košice TU. The following are the goals set for the ProLIB Project:

1. To support continuing education of librarians in Slovakia.
2. To develop a curriculum of six courses for further education of librarians in Slovakia in co-operation with foreign partners in the project.
3. To establish two training centres for the education of librarians and furnish them with information technology.
4. To implement a pilot course in three stages for librarians from the whole of Slovakia and for different types of libraries.
5. To obtain accreditation for the courses developed from the Ministry of Education of the Slovak Republic.
6. To improve language skills of the best participants in the courses.
7. To organize two-week stays abroad for the best participants in the courses with project partners.
8. To evaluate the project and publish information about it.

Open and distance learning and the ProLIB Project

The concept and methods of open and distant learning in the ProLIB Project were designed as a modern alternative to traditional education to answer to the needs of the target group. Rowntree [3] explains open learning as a concept that places the control of the process to the hands of the students. The basic principles of openness in this concept are to improve accessibility of and remove barriers to education. The barriers may be geographic, financial and, in the case of continuing learning for adults, they may be barriers in the form of obligations in one's job or family. Distance learning is a part of the open learning approach. It allows students to follow an individual course of study using specially developed teaching materials, without day-to-day contacts with teachers or other students. They do, however, keep in touch on a regular basis but from a distance, which extends the learning opportunities for those adults who cannot afford to attend educational institutions regularly. The absence of direct contacts is compensated for by carefully designed study materials, the development of which is very demanding and usually very costly because it requires an involvement of a number of specialists.

Approved in 1998, the project has evolved through a number of phases:

1. Planning phase.
2. Preparatory phase.
3. Development phase.
4. Implementation phase.

   Subsequent stages will follow this year and until the end of the project in March 2001:

5. Evaluation of efficiency and effectiveness.
6. Optimization phase.

Planning Phase

Delay grant funds significantly complicated the entire planning stage and the activities in the first year of the project (1999). It affected the activities planned for Slovakia as well as those planned by the project partners abroad. The delayed grant money caused a six months' delay in the schedule relative to the original plans. It was only through extraordinary effort and personal enthusiasm of all the project partners that the first two courses did take place in November 2000 as originally planned.

Preparatory Phase

The preparatory phase included:

• analysis of the needs in librarian education;
• definition of the strategic objectives of education;
• draft syllabuses for individual courses during the initial Workshop, which was attended by all domestic and foreign partners of the project, the Slovak authors and the tutors for individual courses;
• study trips of 17 people engaged in the production of courses to foreign partners: University of Wales Aberystwyth - Department of Information and Library Studies (UK), Library Development Consultants (UK), University Library of Lund University (SE);
• "Training of Trainers in Distance Learning" seminar for 21 authors and tutors of the ProLIB courses, focusing on the open and distance education at the University of Wales Aberystwyth - Open Learning Unit.

Development Phase

The following activities took place in the development phase:

• preparation of educational materials for every course;
• reconstruction and preparation of teaching premises (University Library of Technical University in Košice - UK TU, Slovak Library of Forestry and Wood Technology of Technical University in Zvolen - SLDK TU), the installation of 15 PCs and their network connection to the Internet;
• draft of the educational program
  • methodology;
  • organization;
  • support system;
  • information system;
  • evaluation system;
  • monitoring of educational results;
  • definition of quality criteria.

For the ProLIB project, we proposed the combination of classical education, i.e. "face-to-face" teaching in the presence of domestic and foreign tutors, in the learning centres (LC) of university libraries with distance learning (DL) through the Internet, supported by two teachers of distant learning, a tutor of distance learning, and a DL support system.

The "face-to-face" teaching relies on the explanation of the subject matter in a series of lectures plus explanation of the method of study. It complements self-study with the activities that cannot be accomplished at a distance. The emphasis is placed on working in groups and interactive training methods promoting communication skills, opinion exchange in discussions, etc. Participation in the residence portion is mandatory, and forms part of the evaluation. The basic goal of distance learning is to absorb the educational material contained in the booklet which participants receive upon commencing their studies. In addition, a participant's handbook has been produced, where all aspects of distance learning are describes in greater detail. The handbooks have an identical basic structure which lends itself to easy orientation in the text and is conducive to self-study.

During the three months of distance learning, the students are expected to work on regular assignments to be submitted in two-week intervals to the electronic address of the course teachers. The teacher evaluate the assignments as to the content and form, and, within 3 working days of receipt, return their evaluation to the students by e-mail. Each course has a mailing list to facilitate a two-way contact between the teacher and the student, and amongst students themselves. The distance learning tutor functions as a liaison between the student, the coordinator and the teachers, he sends various news and announcements to the mailing list, handles administrative activities and maintains telephone contact with the students, both in the preparatory phase of a course (signing up, giving information), and in the implementation phase.

Implementation Phase

We started the implementation phase by offering the first two courses (Changes in Libraries and the Inevitability of Change Management - ZME and Customer Care in Libraries - ZAK) at two learning centres (UK TU Košice and SLDK TU Zvolen), in November 1999. The courses involve 60 people from different types of libraries in Slovakia, who work in the area of library management (the ZME course), and in the area of direct contact with library users (the ZAK course). The first two courses are scheduled to terminate towards the end of February 2000. The conditions for a successful completion of a course are participation in the face-to-face sessions in the learning centre at the beginning of the course, submission of term project within the allocated time, passing the final test, defending the term project in front of a commission, and attaining the total of 60% of points from the maximum established by the evaluation system. For successful graduates, a language-training course and study stays abroad are being planned.

Evaluation of the Educational Programme

Internal and external evaluations of the pilot courses according to predefined quality criteria will be made at the end of the first implementation phase. The Ministry of Education of the Slovak Republic will be responsible for the external evaluation performed as a part of the accreditation process. The goal of the evaluation is to optimize the pilot educational programme to make it meet the specific needs of Slovak librarians as much as possible.

Conclusion

Judging from responses of the participants in our courses, the ProLIB educational programme has been very favourably received. The people welcome the possibility to participate in it; they appreciate the quality of its organization, of its teachers and the proposed curriculum, which most of the participants considered intellectually stimulating. Observations, comments and suggestions from the participants in the course will be carefully studied and applied in the next phase of the course implementation, i.e. The Internet and New Information Technologies (INET); Library Management: Impact of Modern Information Technologies (KIT) this April. The following is a good illustration of (anonymous) assessments by the participants:

"I welcomed the possibility of participating in the courses of distance learning in the ProLIB programme. I would consider the format of distance learning to be acceptable for almost anybody who wishes to get further education in librarianship. The courses should continue for as long as the interest in them continues in order that as many people as possible get the chance of attending them."

The development of the ProLIB educational programme was an exceptionally demanding task from the point of view organization, expertise, time, and money. It is practically impossible to develop such a programme without grant money towards its implementation, without an effective assistance from foreign experts who have experience of a number of years organizing such programmes, and without good local expertise and collaborators always willing to help. We assume that some time in the future this will be an open project and that specialists from universities and institutions responsible for training of librarians in Slovakia that are not involved in this project will be invited to join to optimise the ProLIB programme, and to develop more courses and even new projects in this area. Let me by way of illustration mention the EduLIB project (http://www.lib.tuke.sk/edulib), which received a grant from the Open Society Institute Budapest foundation in December 1999 as a part of the Training Centres programme. The objective of the EduLIB project is to adapt the pilot ProLIB programme and the courses that come out of the testing phase (pilot courses) to the phase when they are ready for further use as an adapted educational programme that meets the contemporary educational requirements for librarians in Slovakia.

The question of financing the courses in the future when money from foundations is no longer available remains unanswered. To some extent, the EduLIB programme marks a transition from absolutely free-of-charge training to training that is partly (with minimum fees) paid for by the participants, the libraries or other information-providing institutions. This is connected with the need to provide incentives for all possible participants in educational courses. It should be demonstrated that the courses are effective, improve practical skills, and that they meet accreditation requirements. Then it will be necessary to make sure that libraries accept and support continuing education for their staff, and that legislation is eventually adopted that will provide for better pay for the graduates of training courses according to the "learn to earn" principle, which will improve their standard of living.

In conclusion I would like to thank all our partner organizations in the project, and particularly to the implementation teams in Košice and Zvolen for their excellent co-operation, and to our foreign partner organizations for their distance learning know-how that helped us avoid teething troubles in drafting our strategies of ProLIB distance learning, as well as for their assistance during the development of the courses. Our thanks are also due to all the authors of course materials, to teachers, who proved how good specialists they are, and to distance-learning tutors who, with technological support, were responsible for a smooth operation of the courses.

References

[1] Druga, P. Informatizácia spoločnosti - Príprava spoločnosti na modernú budúcnosť. Zborník prednášok, 5. konferencia s medzinárodnou účasťou, Informatika´99, Bratislava, 18.-19.11.1999, s. 14-22. ISBN 80-88992-01-X.
[2] Prokop, I., Androvič, A. Integrácia slovenských knižníc do medzinárodných knižničných štruktúr.Bulletin Spolku slovenských knihovníkov, 2.slovenský knihovnícky kongres 1999. Knižnice pre 21. storočie, s. 54-68. ISBN 80-85165-79-1.
[3] Rowntree, D. Exploring Open and distance learning. London: Kogan Page, 1992. ISBN 0749408138.
[4] Rymešová, J. Sledování evaluačných systémů v různých zemích. Zborník príspevkov zo seminára Budmerice 6.-8. mája 1996, Metodológia hodnotenia výsledkov vzdelávania, Bratislava 1996, s. 15-24. ISBN 80-8052-008-9.