Massive open online courses or, MOOCs, are a very hot topic in education these days. The general idea behind a MOOC is that
professors teaching a class can put course materials, including instructional content
like videos of lectures, online in such a way that almost anyone with internet
access can follow along. Many colleges and universities have signed up with
companies like Coursera, Udacity and edX
to provide a platform that enables interested people from anywhere in the world
to “take a class.”
The “M” for massive
comes from the opportunity for thousands of students to take one of these courses
at the same time, but it also creates some problems that institutions of higher
learning are only beginning to address. Perhaps
the most obvious issue is convincing students that going to MIT or Harvard or
Stanford is still valuable, even if their classes are available online for
free? Many people argue that simply putting
materials online cannot
take the place of the in-person instruction and assistance that the paying
students receive. Certainly with a large
class, the professor does not have the time to respond to questions and help
every student who might be taking the course online. Sometimes with MOOCs, support comes from
online message boards where the online students respond to each other and
perhaps form subgroups for mutual support rather than hoping the professor might
find the time to address their particular question. It is a very interesting model.
The University of Baltimore is actively exploring the use of
MOOCs. Most notably, this semester renowned
historian and author Taylor
Branch is offering a MOOC based on his newest book The King Years. In addition,
UB is participating in a project being run throughout the University System of
Maryland to study how
content from MOOCs might be integrated into classes.
All this is a rather
long background to the topic suggested by the title of the post: where
does the library fit in with a MOOC? Academic libraries tend to pay for and license electronic content that
could not be made available to thousands of online users who are not paying for
a course. So
what does one do? There are a few
options. If professors rely on their own notes and writings (to which they have
retained the copyright), they can put them online. Perhaps MOOCS will provide momentum to those
wishing to promote open
access publishing models. On many campuses with MOOCs, librarians have
helped to find resources and navigate copyright issues surrounding the
implementation of open online courses where licensed content did not seem a
viable option. For several years now, the primary role of
academic libraries has been shifting away from being curators and repositories of
information to that of being guides for navigating the oceans of information currently
available. If MOOCs continue to gain in
popularity, this shift may continue on at a much faster pace.
