THE USE OF ONLINE RESOURCES assoc. prof. dr. Mihaela IONESCU UTCB Bucharest

1. Strategies ’21 “Security and Defense in European Community” UNAP “Carol I “- Bucharest – April 17-18 THE USE OF ONLINE RESOURCES assoc. prof. dr. Mihaela IONESCU UTCB Bucharest

2. AGENDA • “on line anything” • What are e-resources? • Which are the on ground resources? • The Use of Resources for Students Attending a Culture and Civilisation Course • Difficulties Encountered by the Teacher in Evaluating the Project • The Advantages of Using E-resources by the Road, Bridges and Railroad Students in learning Culture and Civilization • Conclusions

3. 1. “on line anything”(A) • The best way of obtaining information, purchasing (buying and selling) and even getting a Diploma for online studies. • Does the “on line” do all these better than it was done before? • Learning pedagogy had to face new challenges concerning “the way in which learners approaches learning tasks, the conceptions they have about what they are doing and the factors that influence learning in complex environment

4. “on line anything”(B)a study case • A study case - first year students of Bucharest Civil Engineering Technical University who attended an optional Course in Culture and Civilization. • The course has been introduced in the curriculum for more than five years but the switch of more recent generations to online resources when information is concerned rather than the use of hardback books should be considered in the learning process of learning from resources.

5. 2. What are e-resources? • The advertisement for digital learning resources goes as such:” they are the best solution to solve your problems…” “Dreams come true –They can provide a wide range of information”. “Click more to read the full text about the information you are interested in”. • Loraine Blaxten and Alia 2004 analyze, in the second edition of How to Research [1], the Resources be they a) on ground library catalogues, dictionaries, open shelves, librarians or b) the resources obtained from the databases and computers. • [1] Lorain Blaxter, Christina Hughes and Malcom Tight How to Research­ 2005, Maidenhead, Philadelphia, p 106

6. 3. Which are the on ground resources? • Librarians - which are considered an “endangered species” are usually keen to help and able to advice; • Catalogues –which are traditionally card index can also be computer-based and can usually be searched using key words, subject titles or authors’ names; • Abstracts and Reviews –are of considerable use. Abstracts can be found in books, journals online and they contain summary materials from recent materials. Reviews either specialized or popular can influence or guide to what is new; • Dictionaries and Encyclopedias - can be starting points, though they will not be far enough into a particular topics; • Open shelves -containing books and journals, can guide to the area of interest. The problem with books is that they can beon loan or in use already by other readers, while the book on line is always there waiting for you to click and read it.

7. 4.The Use of Resources for Students Attending a Culture and Civilisation Course • The main target of the course is to offer students information on the evolution of culture and civilization with focus on the evolution of constructions, of innovations, of fine arts, letters and technologies. • Evaluation is done through projects they prepare at home on the topics of the course or in other adjacent ones that seem to interest them and make them follow the research

8. 5. Difficulties Encountered by the Teacher in Evaluating the Project • The time left for feedback and evaluation - the teacher rushes and is not able to listen to all that the students • COPY-PASTE.Students’ tendency to solve problems quickly by accessing the internet, name the topic and download a project already chewed by another person students’ own perspective is not obtained. • The solution is to give them proper resources consisting in a mixture of on ground and online resources

9. ITC versus on ground resources Alexander and Boud from the University of Technology in Australia consider online learning as another space for learning which “has been far more successful in eliminating the limitation of time and space for learning transactions with origins in face to face learning and text to text encounters” (Shirley Alexander and David Boud – 2004 Learners Still Learn from Experience When Online in Teaching &Learning Online – Pedagogies from New Technologies, London & NY p4 )

10. ITC versus on ground resourcesFIGURES • The British Library site, if visited, offers information on 16 million books and periodicals, 660.000 newspaper titles, 295.000 manuscripts, 4 million maps, 205.000 photographs. • http://portico.bl.uk/gabriel/en/ countries.html. It provides information to Europe’s national libraries. • The Information Quality page http://ciolek.com/wwwvl-InfoQuality.html gives information relating to the use of net based sources of information in academic research.

11. Conclusions • Many students prefer a larger variety of resources that could be accessed at anytime from everywhere • For some students, reliable sources of scientific value that could be trusted when used were on ground resources, encyclopedias, books, national and international magazines, scientific publications issued by famous international Universities and Academies • Although old books in Romania are not yet on the web, making any paradigmatic research, that involved such an analyze impossible, many new titles are on the contrary immediately disseminated for the information of those interested.

12. Thank you for attending thispresentation QUESTIONS?