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MOOCs and Libraries: What is our role?
- 1. MOOCs and libraries: What is our role? Paul Bond University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown paulbond@pitt.edu
- 5. Mean Streets © Warner Bros 1973
- 9. X vs. C “in an xMOOC you watch videos, in a cMOOC you make videos.” (Smithers, 2012) “cMOOCs focus on knowledge creation and generation whereas xMOOCs focus on knowledge duplication” (Siemens, 2012)
- 10. Where do these MOOCs come from?
- 13. Michael Branson Smith http://www.michaelbransonsmith.net/blog/2012/09/30/its-a-mad-mad-mad-mad-mooc/
- 16. What can we do about these MOOCs?
- 18. What is the role of librarians in a MOOC?
- 20. What is the place of information literacy in MOOCs?
- 22. ACRL Standards
- 27. Paul Bond University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown paulbond@pitt.edu
Notes de l'éditeur
- I’d like to talk a bit about MOOCs and libraries, and where we can go with them. I’m going to look a little bit at some of the nuances about what MOOCs are and where they come from. I will talk a little about how some libraries and librarians are involved, and look at the role of information literacy in MOOCs. But first, I’d like to give a little background on myself.
- Shortly after the turn of the millennium, while I was working in the graphic arts industry, I decided to pursue an advanced degree in Digital Printing and Publishing. It was mostly online, what was called distance ed back then, which fit my work schedule. One thing I learned through the program was that I would be better off becoming a librarian. The other main thing I gained from it was a fascination with online learning. Trolling the Googleverse and the blogosphere for information on the topic brought Innovate: A Journal of Online Education to my attention, as well as people like Stephen Downes, David Cormier, David Wiley and George Seimens who were all early movers in MOOCs.
- In late 2010 I heard about something called a MOOC, covering Learning Analytics and Knowledge. So I signed up and I've been more or less continuously enrolled in one or more MOOCs (or MOOC-like things) since then. I say all this not because my life story matters so much, but to establish a bit of credibility through my experience. There is a lot of misinformation out there, creating a lot of misconceptions. So let us consider what MOOCs are.
- What is a MOOC exactly?
- Some people don’t particularly like the term MOOC. Personally, I love it. It reminds me of a scene from the old Martin Scorsese movie Mean Streets, where Robert DeNiro and Harvey Keitel and the rest of their criminal crew go to shake down a pool hall operator. And he resists, saying, “We’re not going to pay, because this guy is a mook. And we don’t pay mooks.” “Mook? What’s a mook? You can’t call me a mook.” “No? I’ll give you mook!” And a serious debate ensues, complete with fisticuffs and swinging pool cues and all that fun stuff, but the question isn’t directly answered.
- As I was preparing for this presentation I had a number of ideas about what I would cover and how I would do it, and I kept running into other people doing it far more eloquently than I ever could. Here’s a poster done by Mathieu Plourde - MOOC: Every letter is negotiable. Massive - What is massive 100? 100,000? One hundred was mentioned in some early debates as a cutoff for massive. Then some courses started pulling in 100,000, which puts it on a different scale or order of magnitude. So what is massive? If you look at it in the context of the global audience, is 100,000 a lot or a rounding error? In my view, you can't know beforehand how many will sign up, and you don't know how many registrants will show up when the doors open, and you don't know how many will stick around afterwards. So I see massive as scalability. A MOOC has to be prepared to accommodate a large number of participants, and better yet, be prepared to take advantage of a large crowd. That’s the M. Let’s go to the other end and work our way forward. Course Typically, a course is an educational event, with a collection of content and some learning outcomes, organized around a central subject, following some kind of schedule. But some MOOCs are a little more opened ended. I've seen people join MOOCs just as they ended, planning to work through content and activities on their own if necessary. Sometimes Facebook groups affiliated with MOOCs stay active long after the course has officially ended. These seem like classes turning into communities of learning. And on the flip side some courses are so automated that they could be offered as self-paced tutorials. Is that really a course? Mike Caulfield, formerly of OpenCourseWare Consortium, described this kind of course as a “textbook with ambitions.” And Anant Agarwal, president of edX, has called MOOCs “the modern textbook equivalent.” Online This is the most straightforward part. They're all online and mediated through the web. Still, this part can get a little fuzzy. Some are tied to f2f courses. I’ve heard talk of people setting up real-life meet-ups in larger population centers. So there can be an offline component. Open This, I think, is the important part. Open can be interpreted in a number of ways. Open to anyone, at no cost. Open access. Open content. Open source (EdX). Open outcomes. Open ended. Open assessment. There are many kinds of openness, and many degrees.
- There’s the idea of Open washing (a play on greenwashing) calling things open, grabbing that open cachet, by things that aren’t really open. See Coursera terms of service (https://www.coursera.org/about/terms) 6,454 words long. "You may not take any Online Course offered by Coursera or use any Statement of Accomplishment as part of any tuition-based or for-credit certification or program for any college, university, or other academic institution without the express written permission from Coursera."
- xMOOCs and cMOOCs Plourde sees this as scalability vs. community. I beg to differ here. xMOOCs “scale” by turning the learning conversation into a teaching broadcast. cMOOCs try to foster many-to-many relationships among learners. Community and connections are scalable in a way that retains the learning conversation.
- I think it would be more accurate to say that xMOOCs focus of assessment and cMOOCs focus on participation. Siemens sees it as knowledge duplication vs. knowledge creation and generation. Someone explained it on Twitter as watching videos vs. making videos. If we look at the history of MOOCs we can define C and X a little better.
- So where do these MOOCs come from?
- Seimens and Downes formulated a new theory of learning, a theory for learning in the digital age, which they called Connectivism. They were teaching a course on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge at the University of Manitoba in 2008 to a typical class of 25 or so students, when they decided to put their money where their mouth was and open it up to anyone who wanted to join in online. Something like 2400 people signed up in the first week, which they didn’t really anticipate. A couple of the participants, Dave Cormier and Bryan Alexander, coined the term MOOC for this experience.
- Connectivism is the theory that underpins what are called cMOOCs Connectivism says "that knowledge is distributed across a network of connections, and therefore that learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks." In my limited understanding of neuroscience, that idea of connecting and making pathways also describes how the brain works. "Learning is the creation and removal of connections between the entities, or the adjustment of the strengths of those connections. A learning theory is, literally, a theory describing how these connections are created or adjusted. " MOOC principles: autonomy, diversity, connectedness, openness Autonomy – learners pursue their own goals, choose their own paths Diversity – education is not about making everyone the same – foster creativity and explore differences Connectedness – social & technological dimensions Openness – personal dimension: intellectual receptivity – open to new ideas & experiences MOOC activities: aggregate, remix, repurpose, feed-forward Sounds like information literacy, doesn’t it? We’ll be coming back to that.
- A few years later, in the fall of 2011, Stanford opened a few of its courses up to anyone who wanted to participate online. The AI course drew a reported 160,000 registrants, defining a new scale for MOOCs. In much of the media discourse, this is where MOOCs started. xMOOCs - Coursera/Udacity/EdX - try to mimic traditional courses, broadcast mode, typically employ some kind of LMS, focus on assessment Pros & cons to this. The familiar mode & environment may be comforting to faculty & students, but it retreats quickly from openness. MOOC 2.0 video – move towards collaboration 3 Generations of pedagogy (Anderson) instructivist – constructivist – connectivist – chronological rather than hieriarchical, but there is a suggestion of growth more and more MOOC professors/facilitators talk of adopting connectivist approaches
- Lately there have been major announcements, every week it seems, on developments related to MOOCs: partnerships with Chegg and Sage for example. We might want to think about that might apply to us. Is it disintermediation?
- Georgia Tech, Udacity and AT&T are offering a MOOC degree. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
- What do MOOCs mean to libraries?
- JISC-CETIS report – 21 page whitepaper – to help HE decision makers understand MOOCs Contains no mention of any form of the word library We’re not part of the conversation around MOOCs in most cases.
- We could just as well ask, “Do librarians have a role?” Or, “Why should we care?”
- public libraries are talking about it seriously, academic libraries a little, big MOOC providers not at all (EdX exception) clearing rights, identifying OA alternatives – roles in the development of institutional MOOCs – Q came up in conf: should libs support fac. or students? Consensus is faculty. Need to understand ID, pedagogy, online teaching & learning. Could require libs to think differently. organizing/curating/archiving – what to do about user generated content – could lead by example (mobiMOOC, CMC11 zotero libraries – see Brookes report) – also how-to advice/tutorials (Cormier quote “if something is missing, create it”)
- This is an area I’ve been interested in.
- connectivist MOOC activities of aggregate, remix, repurpose and feed-forward will be examined as information literacy skills. also associated learning principles: autonomy, diversity, openness and connectedness. Aggregate – massive amount of content provided- something for everyone – people should pick and choose – evaluate – Remix – keep track of what you’ve read/viewed – blog, social bookmarking/networking, discussion boards Repurpose – its not just repeating what’s been said, its making sense of it in context – repurpose=synthesize – creation of sorts – also computer/digital literacy: using tools to do it Feed forward – sharing, open learning – allows community to learn from you, you learn from community through comments & feedback – digital citizenship
- We’re all familiar with the ACRL standards. I want to look at how they line up with the aggregate-remix-repurpose-feed forward activities of a MOOC
- Here I have the performance indicators color coded by standard. If we put the aggregate-remix-repurpose-feed forward activities in here, I think all the indicators can be recoded to fit. Why this is important: if we go back to that MOOC 2.0 idea, that this connectivist route is the way to go, and I do see a lot of interest in moving in that direction, then those info lit skills become even more important. They’re the baseline skills one needs to succeed.
- One thing MOOCs offer us is an area to study. We can learn something about learning in an online environment, get new ideas, and take them back to our LibGuides and tutorials and embedded librarian activities. We’ll learn more about it by being in it than by looking at it from the outside.
- Kyle Denlinger at Wake Forest University set up this course, aimed at alumni and parents and based on their online info lit course. He had 713 people sign up and 166 were still going to the site in the final week.
- MOOCs can give us another avenue for continuing professional development. A blogger at I Need A Library Job put together this list of “MOOCs to watch.” It would be a good idea for more of us to get actively engaged. If Coursera and Udacity see us as irrelevant, maybe we can show them different. Credo Reference did a survey recently that found that most faculty don’t think we can help with their students information literacy skills. I don’t think we can afford to let more people get the idea that they have no use for us.