- Email: [email protected]
MOOCs and Serials
Serials Review 39 (2013) 258–260
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Serials Review journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/serrev
The Balance Point
MOOCs and Serials Paul Bond, Contributor Owen Library, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, 450 Schoolhouse Road, Johnstown, PA 15904, USA
Faye Leibowitz, Column Editor University Library System, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Available online 17 November 2013
a b s t r a c t Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are becoming increasingly common (and controversial) as platforms for course delivery. Paul Bond shares his insights on MOOCs from the perspectives of class participant and librarian. © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Everyone these days is talking about MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses. Some people love them; other people hate them. Some universities see them as a transformational innovation that will open higher education to communities that could never have availed themselves of college-level coursework. Others fear that the appearance of MOOCs signals the demise of higher education as we know it. Library-focused MOOC discussions are appearing frequently in the blogosphere. For example, Gerry McKiernan of Iowa State University maintains the MOOCs and Libraries blog (http://moocsandlibraries. blogspot.com). Shannon Bohle, in her Scilogs blog, ponders the role of the librarian, as well as the technical skills needed by librarians, in the development of MOOCs: “The question of the librarian's role in the development of MOOCs, which is still an emerging educational technology, is one rooted not only in technology but also in the fundamental questions of science and technology innovation policy. MOOCs, and the librarians wanting to support them, are currently struggling to find their place in, rather than disrupting, American education”. [Bohle, 2013] Bohle asks some provocative questions: “The questions librarians should be thinking about are: in what ways can we leverage our skills and build tools to fit the values of personalization, “big data” modeling and analysis, as well as peer socialization and networking for the MOOC environment? Would an embedded librarian work in the future for the commercial MOOC vendor or would this be part of an Emerging Technologies
E-mail address: [email protected] (P. Bond). 0098-7913/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2013.10.007
Librarian's duties at a participating university? Would libraries actually benefit financially from MOOCs when considering the added costs for access to consortial databases with copyrighted material, or would library administration need to make yet more cuts to their budget elsewhere to make room for MOOCs? Price and copyright negations with vendors are another consideration. Libraries are often charged by the number of enrolled students, how would that work if they suddenly had hundreds of thousands of students paying for a single course credit? How willing and what system will scientific journals use, for example, to allow copyright use for a selection of individual articles for a course reserve list?”. [Bohle, 2013] A short video by EDUCAUSE about MOOCS evaluates the unique benefits of this medium of education (EDUCAUSE, 2013). It focuses on the social networking aspect of the MOOC format. Social networking in general is becoming a priority for libraries of all kinds. Perhaps the MOOC can somehow function as a back door, allowing librarians to reach out and provide service to thousands of students. But Bohle's concern relating to the economic model required for this type of outreach certainly comes into play here — not only would there potentially be exponentially higher subscription costs for journals that are not open access, but the number of librarians needed to support such an effort might not be sustainable for an academic institution. One wonders if even the commercial MOOC vendor could support this type of initiative. One possible answer to the copyright and distribution problem may be addressed at least in part by a new initiative, SIPX, which acts as a distributor of public domain, royalty-free and other content provided by copyright holders such as university libraries (http://www.SIPX. com). Some MOOC students may also be “traditional” students at colleges or universities, so they would have access to many electronic resources through their academic libraries. The EDUCAUSE video also focuses on the importance of MOOCs in continuing education. I would not be surprised if continuing education,
P. Bond, F. Leibowitz / Serials Review 39 (2013) 258–260
rather than traditional academic coursework, becomes the primary audience for MOOCs. In her presentation at the 2013 IFLA Conference in Singapore, Mariellen Calter stated: “While MOOCs are now debated as a tool for supporting higher education broadly, they are clearly an effective tool for implementing skills training, continuing education, and user instruction”. [Calter, 2013] MOOCs can potentially empower employees worldwide to advance in their professions and improve their lives. If MOOCs take a more vocationally-oriented path, perhaps they will become more of an issue for public librarians as these students look to their local public libraries for resources. Would serials and databases provided for free through public library systems be adequate to serve the needs of these MOOC students? Paul Bond (library instruction coordinator, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown) approaches MOOCs from a unique perspective. He has participated in MOOCs as a student, and he can also see the librarian's perspective. His insightful contribution to this Balance Point column will answer many questions that serials librarians might have regarding the new MOOC educational platform.
2. A Serial MOOCer on MOOCs and Serials, Paul Bond Some of the questions about MOOCs that librarians have are, “What does this mean to us? Is this an area of our concern? Should it be?” In addition to what it means to us, a question some librarians may have is, “What does it mean anyway?” I stumbled upon MOOCs about three years ago and have been more or less continuously enrolled in one or more ever since. I thought I might share some of my insights as a serial MOOCer. By now, most of us know that MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course. Over the past year and a half or so MOOCs have gone through the hype cycle from blogosphere to higher education press to national news to near ubiquity. Something that hasn't received so much coverage is that MOOCs come in different flavors. These have been labeled cMOOC and xMOOC, although it might be better to consider them as a continuum than two separate camps. The cMOOCs are so named for connectivism, the learning theory that underpins their pedagogy. The xMOOCs, which have garnered the majority of the hype, follow an instructivist or behaviorist pedagogy. I do not intend to go into the details of the differences in philosophy and practice, other than to say that content in xMOOCs comes mainly from the instructors, whereas content in cMOOCs is contributed and generated by facilitators and participants alike. This has some bearing on the presence of articles from serials and databases in the courses. Because MOOCs are more or less open, and academic databases and subscription serials are mostly closed, issues arise regarding copyright and fair use. This was discussed in a recent OCLC Research conference in Philadelphia (OCLC, 2012). While fair use was discussed, and was also addressed in a recent ARL Issue Briefing (Butler, 2012), I am not sure that it even applies. Fair use is a United States (US) concept, and MOOCs go outside of US jurisdiction. So, if MOOC participants are to have free access to all course materials, as per major MOOC provider Coursera's policy, rights need to be cleared for copyrighted material. In Coursera's case, this work is left to their institutional partners. Coursera indicated that it takes an average of 380 man-hours per course to manage rights clearances (Proffitt, 2013). Some libraries are involved in this process. One of the speakers implied that the process is often unsuccessful. Most queries to publishers go unanswered. One role for librarians then is to identify accessible readings, and further to advocate for Open Access in general. It is considered a best practice to link to content on the Web, rather than to host readings in a MOOC, as a means to avoid copyright issues. In cMOOCs, where participants contribute to the content mix presented by the facilitators, citations to subscription materials may
259
show up. An example of this from my personal experience was in MobiMOOC, a course on mobile learning (De Waard, 2011). This course was fascinating for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that it was put together by one woman, Inge de Waard, with no institutional support whatsoever, as far as I could tell. Some participants contributed numerous citations to readings related to discussion topics. These were collected in a collaborative Zotero bibliography, which is currently accessible at http://www.zotero.org/groups/mobimooc. In keeping with the participatory spirit of traditional MOOCs, the bibliography was initiated by one of the participants rather than a facilitator, although the facilitator did contribute some citations. In total, the list contains 84 citations. After merging duplicates, 77 unique citations remained. Fifty of these citations listed URLs, so it can be assumed that they are accessible through the Web. Most of the 27 remaining titles could be located through a Google search. Some were PDFs stored online, some were Open Access journals, and a few were partially available through Google Books. Only five articles were restricted to subscribers or otherwise hidden behind paywalls. Just because articles are not openly accessible does not mean MOOC participants do not have access. The MobiMOOC citations were contributed by participants, who hopefully had looked at the articles before recommending them to the rest of the group. Many MOOC participants are connected with universities, either as students or faculty/staff. Inside Higher Ed reported on a study Coursera did of the registrants in one of their courses, which found that 31.6% of them were graduate or undergraduate students. As students, they would have access to material beyond the open Web through their home institutions' library services (Kolowich, 2012). Another study looked at how participants in the E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC looked for information beyond the basic course content. Eleni Zazani, one of the participants, surveyed her peers for the study, and blogged about it at http://zazani.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/ our-edcmooc-paths-to-finding-information-results/. A little more than half of the respondents searched for additional information, through footnotes in readings or otherwise. Seventy-two percent had access to subscription content through their employers or schools. This is in keeping with the general impression of MOOC participants that I have taken from my experience: A high percentage of them appear to be involved in higher education in some capacity. For the most part, MOOC participants are not in a position where they need access to serials or subscription databases, although it appears that a significant percentage have some access to that sort of content. The larger MOOC providers try to make their courses self-contained, so participants have no need to search for outside content. The general preference is for content that is Open Access or otherwise available on the open Web. Librarians do have a role behind the scenes in identifying useable content, or in some cases clearing usage rights for copyrighted materials. 3. Conclusion MOOCs represent a new trend in higher education, and the verdict is still out regarding their future. They present exciting challenges and opportunities for librarians, particularly those librarians involved in providing access to electronic resources and serials. Many universities around the world are entering the fray and experimenting with this potentially transformational way of educating students. Librarians in academic and public libraries may encounter MOOC students requiring their help, and these library professionals will draw upon their experience and creativity to find dynamic solutions to these user needs. References Bohle, Shannon (2013). Librarians and the era of the MOOC. (Web log comment). SciLogs (Retrieved from http://www.scilogs.com/scientific_and_medical_libraries/librariansand-the-era-of-the-mooc/?utm_source=buffer)
260
P. Bond, F. Leibowitz / Serials Review 39 (2013) 258–260
Butler, Brandonb (2012). Issue brief: Massive open online courses. Legal and policy issues for research libraries. Association of Research Libraries (Retrieved from http:// www.arl.org/bm doc/issuebrief-mooc-22oct12.pdf) Calter, Mariellen (2013). MOOCs and the library: Engaging with evolving pedagogy. Paper presented at IFLA World Library and Information Congress, August 17–23, 2013, Singapore (Retrieved from http://library.ifla.org/160/) De Waard, Inge (2011). Join the open and free course on mobile learning: #MobiMOOC. (Web log comment). http://ignatiawebs.blogspot.com/2011/03/join-open-and-freecourse-on-mobile.html EDUCAUSE (2013). MOOCs and beyond: A short video about MOOCs and the connected age. Video presented at EDUCAUSE Sprint 2013, Beyond MOOCs: Is IT
creating a new, connected age? July 30–August 1, 2013 (Retrieved from http:// vimeo.com/70811271) Kolowich, Steve (2012). Who takes MOOCs? : Inside Higher Ed (Retrieved from http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/06/05/early-demographic-datahints-what-type-student-takes-mooc) OCLC Research (2012). MOOCs and libraries: Massive opportunity or overwhelming challenge? Retrieved from http://www.oclc.org/research/events/2013/03-18. html Proffitt, Merrilee (2013). MOOCs & libraries: An overview of the (current) landscape. Retrieved from http://www.oclc.org/content/dam/research/presentations/proffitt/ moocs2013.pptx
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Serials Review journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/serrev
The Balance Point
MOOCs and Serials Paul Bond, Contributor Owen Library, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, 450 Schoolhouse Road, Johnstown, PA 15904, USA
Faye Leibowitz, Column Editor University Library System, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Available online 17 November 2013
a b s t r a c t Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are becoming increasingly common (and controversial) as platforms for course delivery. Paul Bond shares his insights on MOOCs from the perspectives of class participant and librarian. © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Everyone these days is talking about MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses. Some people love them; other people hate them. Some universities see them as a transformational innovation that will open higher education to communities that could never have availed themselves of college-level coursework. Others fear that the appearance of MOOCs signals the demise of higher education as we know it. Library-focused MOOC discussions are appearing frequently in the blogosphere. For example, Gerry McKiernan of Iowa State University maintains the MOOCs and Libraries blog (http://moocsandlibraries. blogspot.com). Shannon Bohle, in her Scilogs blog, ponders the role of the librarian, as well as the technical skills needed by librarians, in the development of MOOCs: “The question of the librarian's role in the development of MOOCs, which is still an emerging educational technology, is one rooted not only in technology but also in the fundamental questions of science and technology innovation policy. MOOCs, and the librarians wanting to support them, are currently struggling to find their place in, rather than disrupting, American education”. [Bohle, 2013] Bohle asks some provocative questions: “The questions librarians should be thinking about are: in what ways can we leverage our skills and build tools to fit the values of personalization, “big data” modeling and analysis, as well as peer socialization and networking for the MOOC environment? Would an embedded librarian work in the future for the commercial MOOC vendor or would this be part of an Emerging Technologies
E-mail address: [email protected] (P. Bond). 0098-7913/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2013.10.007
Librarian's duties at a participating university? Would libraries actually benefit financially from MOOCs when considering the added costs for access to consortial databases with copyrighted material, or would library administration need to make yet more cuts to their budget elsewhere to make room for MOOCs? Price and copyright negations with vendors are another consideration. Libraries are often charged by the number of enrolled students, how would that work if they suddenly had hundreds of thousands of students paying for a single course credit? How willing and what system will scientific journals use, for example, to allow copyright use for a selection of individual articles for a course reserve list?”. [Bohle, 2013] A short video by EDUCAUSE about MOOCS evaluates the unique benefits of this medium of education (EDUCAUSE, 2013). It focuses on the social networking aspect of the MOOC format. Social networking in general is becoming a priority for libraries of all kinds. Perhaps the MOOC can somehow function as a back door, allowing librarians to reach out and provide service to thousands of students. But Bohle's concern relating to the economic model required for this type of outreach certainly comes into play here — not only would there potentially be exponentially higher subscription costs for journals that are not open access, but the number of librarians needed to support such an effort might not be sustainable for an academic institution. One wonders if even the commercial MOOC vendor could support this type of initiative. One possible answer to the copyright and distribution problem may be addressed at least in part by a new initiative, SIPX, which acts as a distributor of public domain, royalty-free and other content provided by copyright holders such as university libraries (http://www.SIPX. com). Some MOOC students may also be “traditional” students at colleges or universities, so they would have access to many electronic resources through their academic libraries. The EDUCAUSE video also focuses on the importance of MOOCs in continuing education. I would not be surprised if continuing education,
P. Bond, F. Leibowitz / Serials Review 39 (2013) 258–260
rather than traditional academic coursework, becomes the primary audience for MOOCs. In her presentation at the 2013 IFLA Conference in Singapore, Mariellen Calter stated: “While MOOCs are now debated as a tool for supporting higher education broadly, they are clearly an effective tool for implementing skills training, continuing education, and user instruction”. [Calter, 2013] MOOCs can potentially empower employees worldwide to advance in their professions and improve their lives. If MOOCs take a more vocationally-oriented path, perhaps they will become more of an issue for public librarians as these students look to their local public libraries for resources. Would serials and databases provided for free through public library systems be adequate to serve the needs of these MOOC students? Paul Bond (library instruction coordinator, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown) approaches MOOCs from a unique perspective. He has participated in MOOCs as a student, and he can also see the librarian's perspective. His insightful contribution to this Balance Point column will answer many questions that serials librarians might have regarding the new MOOC educational platform.
2. A Serial MOOCer on MOOCs and Serials, Paul Bond Some of the questions about MOOCs that librarians have are, “What does this mean to us? Is this an area of our concern? Should it be?” In addition to what it means to us, a question some librarians may have is, “What does it mean anyway?” I stumbled upon MOOCs about three years ago and have been more or less continuously enrolled in one or more ever since. I thought I might share some of my insights as a serial MOOCer. By now, most of us know that MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course. Over the past year and a half or so MOOCs have gone through the hype cycle from blogosphere to higher education press to national news to near ubiquity. Something that hasn't received so much coverage is that MOOCs come in different flavors. These have been labeled cMOOC and xMOOC, although it might be better to consider them as a continuum than two separate camps. The cMOOCs are so named for connectivism, the learning theory that underpins their pedagogy. The xMOOCs, which have garnered the majority of the hype, follow an instructivist or behaviorist pedagogy. I do not intend to go into the details of the differences in philosophy and practice, other than to say that content in xMOOCs comes mainly from the instructors, whereas content in cMOOCs is contributed and generated by facilitators and participants alike. This has some bearing on the presence of articles from serials and databases in the courses. Because MOOCs are more or less open, and academic databases and subscription serials are mostly closed, issues arise regarding copyright and fair use. This was discussed in a recent OCLC Research conference in Philadelphia (OCLC, 2012). While fair use was discussed, and was also addressed in a recent ARL Issue Briefing (Butler, 2012), I am not sure that it even applies. Fair use is a United States (US) concept, and MOOCs go outside of US jurisdiction. So, if MOOC participants are to have free access to all course materials, as per major MOOC provider Coursera's policy, rights need to be cleared for copyrighted material. In Coursera's case, this work is left to their institutional partners. Coursera indicated that it takes an average of 380 man-hours per course to manage rights clearances (Proffitt, 2013). Some libraries are involved in this process. One of the speakers implied that the process is often unsuccessful. Most queries to publishers go unanswered. One role for librarians then is to identify accessible readings, and further to advocate for Open Access in general. It is considered a best practice to link to content on the Web, rather than to host readings in a MOOC, as a means to avoid copyright issues. In cMOOCs, where participants contribute to the content mix presented by the facilitators, citations to subscription materials may
259
show up. An example of this from my personal experience was in MobiMOOC, a course on mobile learning (De Waard, 2011). This course was fascinating for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that it was put together by one woman, Inge de Waard, with no institutional support whatsoever, as far as I could tell. Some participants contributed numerous citations to readings related to discussion topics. These were collected in a collaborative Zotero bibliography, which is currently accessible at http://www.zotero.org/groups/mobimooc. In keeping with the participatory spirit of traditional MOOCs, the bibliography was initiated by one of the participants rather than a facilitator, although the facilitator did contribute some citations. In total, the list contains 84 citations. After merging duplicates, 77 unique citations remained. Fifty of these citations listed URLs, so it can be assumed that they are accessible through the Web. Most of the 27 remaining titles could be located through a Google search. Some were PDFs stored online, some were Open Access journals, and a few were partially available through Google Books. Only five articles were restricted to subscribers or otherwise hidden behind paywalls. Just because articles are not openly accessible does not mean MOOC participants do not have access. The MobiMOOC citations were contributed by participants, who hopefully had looked at the articles before recommending them to the rest of the group. Many MOOC participants are connected with universities, either as students or faculty/staff. Inside Higher Ed reported on a study Coursera did of the registrants in one of their courses, which found that 31.6% of them were graduate or undergraduate students. As students, they would have access to material beyond the open Web through their home institutions' library services (Kolowich, 2012). Another study looked at how participants in the E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC looked for information beyond the basic course content. Eleni Zazani, one of the participants, surveyed her peers for the study, and blogged about it at http://zazani.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/ our-edcmooc-paths-to-finding-information-results/. A little more than half of the respondents searched for additional information, through footnotes in readings or otherwise. Seventy-two percent had access to subscription content through their employers or schools. This is in keeping with the general impression of MOOC participants that I have taken from my experience: A high percentage of them appear to be involved in higher education in some capacity. For the most part, MOOC participants are not in a position where they need access to serials or subscription databases, although it appears that a significant percentage have some access to that sort of content. The larger MOOC providers try to make their courses self-contained, so participants have no need to search for outside content. The general preference is for content that is Open Access or otherwise available on the open Web. Librarians do have a role behind the scenes in identifying useable content, or in some cases clearing usage rights for copyrighted materials. 3. Conclusion MOOCs represent a new trend in higher education, and the verdict is still out regarding their future. They present exciting challenges and opportunities for librarians, particularly those librarians involved in providing access to electronic resources and serials. Many universities around the world are entering the fray and experimenting with this potentially transformational way of educating students. Librarians in academic and public libraries may encounter MOOC students requiring their help, and these library professionals will draw upon their experience and creativity to find dynamic solutions to these user needs. References Bohle, Shannon (2013). Librarians and the era of the MOOC. (Web log comment). SciLogs (Retrieved from http://www.scilogs.com/scientific_and_medical_libraries/librariansand-the-era-of-the-mooc/?utm_source=buffer)
260
P. Bond, F. Leibowitz / Serials Review 39 (2013) 258–260
Butler, Brandonb (2012). Issue brief: Massive open online courses. Legal and policy issues for research libraries. Association of Research Libraries (Retrieved from http:// www.arl.org/bm doc/issuebrief-mooc-22oct12.pdf) Calter, Mariellen (2013). MOOCs and the library: Engaging with evolving pedagogy. Paper presented at IFLA World Library and Information Congress, August 17–23, 2013, Singapore (Retrieved from http://library.ifla.org/160/) De Waard, Inge (2011). Join the open and free course on mobile learning: #MobiMOOC. (Web log comment). http://ignatiawebs.blogspot.com/2011/03/join-open-and-freecourse-on-mobile.html EDUCAUSE (2013). MOOCs and beyond: A short video about MOOCs and the connected age. Video presented at EDUCAUSE Sprint 2013, Beyond MOOCs: Is IT
creating a new, connected age? July 30–August 1, 2013 (Retrieved from http:// vimeo.com/70811271) Kolowich, Steve (2012). Who takes MOOCs? : Inside Higher Ed (Retrieved from http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/06/05/early-demographic-datahints-what-type-student-takes-mooc) OCLC Research (2012). MOOCs and libraries: Massive opportunity or overwhelming challenge? Retrieved from http://www.oclc.org/research/events/2013/03-18. html Proffitt, Merrilee (2013). MOOCs & libraries: An overview of the (current) landscape. Retrieved from http://www.oclc.org/content/dam/research/presentations/proffitt/ moocs2013.pptx