The world is a changing rapidly and with this has come a change in the way we approach many of the tasks we undertake and the means we use to perform them. This shift has included the way people are trained and educated for the workforce and the means that information once delivered almost entirely in the classroom is now available via different modes of study.

Library technicians in Australia have traditionally been trained both practically in the work place and in a more theoretical way at TAFE (Technical and Further Education) colleges. TAFE Colleges have always had a commitment to equity of access, flexibility and support of the adult learner. This has led, at least in our case, to a willingness to embrace a variety of delivery modes, though at times our willingness has been tempered by the sheer enormity of the task that faced us. As library technician educators we have had to not only embrace the changing technologies of our students workplace but also of our own.

Those of you who have undertaken any form of distance education whether it is in print or electronic format may have little insight into the learning curve involved for the teacher/developer. This is not just in terms of technology but also in teaching practice, philosophical understandings, material design and delivery. Some institutions may have a phalanx of support services available to them in the form of designers, administration and support staff. In our instance at least, all of the design, research, writing, input and technological skills have, through necessity, become ours. We suspect this is the more common course as the skills involved are increasingly seen as part of the teacher's 'toolbox'.

In addition there is a constant tension between bureaucratic cost-cutting and educators' genuine professional desire to deliver quality and to do the best by those they are teaching no matter their study mode. Despite a feeling that distance modes of education are less costly our experience has been that this does not take into account staff training, equipment, cost of electronic or traditional communication and development time. There are literally hundreds of hours of development involved in each module. Constant fine-tuning, changes, revisions, transference to new delivery modes and maintenance also means that time is a constant factor in delivery. Even after all that effort we are often faced with disappointments in things that do not work, instructions that may be clear to us but not so to someone else, disappearing web sites, changing access details, typographical errors, the list is endless. We have developed an attitude of resigned determination to try and make it work perfectly next time!

We began to deliver print-based distance education (Non-Campus Flexible Delivery) of the Diploma in Library and Information Studies in response to demand and the National accreditation of the Diploma which meant that students from anywhere in Australia could study with us at Victoria University and receive recognition throughout Australia. . We launched into writing non-campus material with a wealth of teaching experience (70 years between the 3 full time staff members) and little idea of how to translate that wealth of classroom experience onto paper. (More problematic was how to convey our scintillating personalities to those we would not meet!)

It was perhaps lucky that we did have little idea of what this first move would entail or we may have never moved from our traditional classroom practice to where we are now. What that first seemingly small decision did mean was hundreds of hours of work, writing and re-writing modules of study, developing new means of record keeping, re-imagining our delivery so that at those who could not come to our classrooms in anyway feel they were missing out or were second best. We, in fact, had to re-define our teaching. We learned new techniques and strategies and developed a new perspective on our students and ourselves and what we did.

This re-defining of what we did has led us to a clearer understanding of what we want our outcomes to be and presented us with the opportunity to develop skills in flexibility and creativity which we may never have learned or exercised otherwise - inside or outside of the traditional classroom setting. This task is far from complete as we change, edit, discover and add to our ever-growing skills and understanding of our new teaching strategies. In fact we don't expect it to ever be complete. Just as in traditional teaching constant refining delivery occurs, so too in this new world the delivery is dynamic.

In many ways one of the most difficult things to contend with when embarking on any type of distance education delivery is the change in our communication with the groups we deal with. While in many ways communication became easier, using all the electronic tools at our disposal, we were very concerned about the quality of our communication and relationship with our students. Often we have to contend with our own tradition of being oral communicators and grapple with the transformation of this form of communication into an effective written or visual form. Much trial and error has been involved but the development of our skills is tangible, if at times somewhat slow. This path has led us inevitably toward electronic delivery of material. This is in its infancy for us but once again our launch into this mode of delivery has opened up more questions than answers. Many of the lessons learned from our experience of print-based delivery apply but many others don't. We are once again embarking on a voyage of discovery and being surprised all over again.

While preparing to deliver on-line we experienced a huge learning curve as we came to terms with our own on-line learning environments and with the on-line teaching tools we were to use. We've had to work through what works and doesn't work for us as teachers and for the students - email or chat; discussion or telephone conferencing etc.

But the biggest realization we have made so far is that we presumed that the students' IT skills would be much greater than they in fact are. While some of the younger students have reasonable familiarity with things such as word processors, email, the web and the on-line library catalogue, even these students may have somewhat limited capabilities and even more limited access - far less than is often assumed by those of us who work in technology rich environments. Few, for the most part, other than those working in an industry which uses technology, have extensive access to or experience with IT and many come with no experience at all.

It took us some time to work this out and so we were constantly being brought undone by trying to use a "one tutorial suits all" tactic for introducing our students to online learning. We were using an on-line environment to deliver instructions about how to use an on-line environment, but if students don't know how to get on-line in the first place they might never discover how to do so!

A convoluted problem with a simple solution - deliver the instructions for getting on-line the old fashioned way. Write them down, print them out and send them in the mail. And that's what we did. We produced a package of print instructions for getting on-line with regard to all aspects of a student's on-line learning - getting an email address, using the library catalogue, getting on to the internet, accessing the on-line module in which they have enrolled and using the features an on-line classroom environment offers.

From here on we hope it's all systems go but we're waiting and seeing and learning all the time.

Written by Mary Carroll and Sue Reynolds