They are being fully supported by a federal Library Services and Technology Act grant from the California State Library. Each course is designed in a modular fashion, consisting of four modules that should each take between one and a half and two hours to complete. They will, however, be self-paced, so although they are designed to take place over a month, it is possible for individuals to complete a course more or less quickly. The instructor will be available for a total of six weeks for each course. The particular distance education product that InFoPeople uses is called Blackboard .
Blackboard is one of the most popular and widely used distance education products.
You do not have to install anything on your computer. You need only have a Web browser to access these courses. Because Blackboard has many capabilities, and because many people have not taken Web-based courses before, we have devised an Introduction to Distance Education course as the first of our 2001 distance education offerings. While this course is not required as a prerequisite to other InFoPeople distance education courses, we do strongly urge you to take this course if you have not taken a Blackboard course before and if you want to take other InFoPeople courses later in the year. The course will not only provide participants with proficiency in Blackboard, but will also teach computer skills useful in many work settings.