Florida Christian College Conducts Study to Help Institution Plan for Needs of New Distance Education Program

Florida Christian College (FCC) is a small four-year Bible college located in Kissimmee, Florida. The college is a single-focused institution with the purpose of training people for Christian service. FCC is accredited by both the Accrediting Association of Bible Colleges (AABC) and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). FCC has recently begun a distance education program: at this time the distance education program consists of four correspondence classes which began in Fall 1997, one extension site in the South Florida which began Spring 1997, and a degree completion program, to be held on campus for commuter students, added in Spring 1999.

In order to help the Library prepare a management plan for meeting the needs of the distance education students, a study was completed to investigate the areas of finances, personnel, facility and equipment needs, resources, and student services. The main focus was the extension site. The current ACRL Guidelines suggest that it is the responsibility of the library management to ensure the proper development, funding, and staffing of the extension site library.

This study was designed to investigate a management plan for an extended library services program for a select group of privately-funded, Bible college libraries, based on the ACRL criteria. Bible colleges with similar demographics to FCC were selected from the list of AABC accredited schools as participants in this investigation. These schools were primarily selected because of their previous participation in a dissertation project completed by James R. Buchanan, Academic Dean of FCC. The study described here was based on Dr. Buchanan's preliminary work and consisted of an examination focusing on the library services of the institutions included in Buchanan's previous work.

According to the results of this survey, library services for distance education students seem to be lacking. The ACRL recommendations are not followed with much consistency, nor does there appear to be any commonality in methods used to reach students in need of such library support. The comments received indicate that many of the librarians are interested in pursuing better arrangements; several included requests for information regarding the results of our survey, even when they themselves did not participate in the study. In the future, it would be desirable to investigate management plans for such programs from larger institutions with a history of distance education, in order to get a broader view of library services.

In further studies I would like to extend the research to explore services to commuter students and those involved in correspondence programs. I also plan to survey students participating in distance education programs to determine their perceived needs. It is interesting to note that I have had very few requests from distance education students in any area of library services.

In the meanwhile, FCC has taken the following steps to assure that appropriate library services are available to meet the needs of our distance education students.

1. Site libraries are checked to maintain an adequate collection; additional resources are sent from the main library when supplements are needed.

2. A local library is contacted to make arrangements for reciprocal borrowing privileges for extension site students.

3. On the FCC library web-site, an area has been created which includes links to on-line databases which allow OCLC searching and ILL, as well as other full-text databases.

4. Email, fax, and telephone reference services have been instituted.

5. Commuter students (defined as anyone who travels more than 20 miles to attend on-campus classes) have been identified during registration; these students are being given additional help and instruction on use of the web-site.

6. Brochures are distributed to all extension and correspondence students, which provide useful phone numbers, the URL for the FCC web-site, and instructions on using library services.

Distance education presents many challenges to the library. With flexibility and creativity, however, librarians can help move their institutions to a new level of service to the students and communities they serve.

Debbie Jones
Florida Christian College (Kissimmee, FL)
E-mail: Debbie.Jones@fcc.edu

Debbie Jones is the Assistant Librarian at Florida Christian College in Kissimmee, FL. She received her MLIS from University of Southern Mississippi School of Library and Information Science in December 1997.