Presentation given at 'Refresher Course in Library and Information Science', University of Pune, Pune, India, November 24, 2014

1. MOOCs and Libraries
UNIPUNE Nov 24, 2014
Dr Shamprasad M.
Pujar
Deputy Librarian
IGIDR, Mumbai
E-mail:
pujar@igidr.ac.in

2. Agenda
 Introduction
 What is a MOOC?
 Key players
 MOOCs and libraries
 MOOCs and LIS education
 Conclusion

3. Introduction
 Technological developments over a period of time have brought in
changes in a way the Higher Education (HE) is communicated and
delivered
 Class room  Distance  E-learning  Online
 The year 2012 saw a new model - MOOCs, which is set to revolutionize
the higher education
 World’s prestigious universities like MIT, Stanford, Princeton etc offering
courses to masses for free, irrespective of their age and geographical
locations
 Their popularity is such that, people in millions are taking these courses
to earn a certificate to improve their CV
 They are considered as purveyors of HE, by the same time concerns
raised about their disruptive nature, which may diminish the quality of
campus education and impact the support institutions like libraries

4. What is a MOOC?
 MOOC stands for ‘Massive Open Online Course’
 Delivering of content of courses virtually to anyone, who is
interested in taking the courses
 “It is an online platform aiming at large-scale interactive
participation and open access via the web. In addition to
traditional course materials such as videos, readings, and
problem sets, MOOCs provide interactive user forums, quizzes
that help build a community for the students, professors, and
teaching assistants (TAs)” - Wikipedia

6. Key players
862 Courses from 115 Partners
366 Courses
from 64 partners
Courses from
40 partners
50 Courses

7. MOOCs and Libraries
 Too early to predict what would be the role of
libraries
 According to Forest Wright , two characteristics of
MOOCs, their enrollment and hosting by third
parties make it difficult for libraries to integrate their
services
 OCLC in its event on ‘MOOCs and Libraries’ held in
2013 identified few areas in which libraries/librarians
have a role in MOOCs

8. Area-1: Take a Course on
MOOC
 To understand what it is and nuances attached with MOOC ,
best option is to take a course on MOOC

9. Area-2 Involve with MOOC
development
 Engagement with the faculty help in the betterment of course

10. Area-3 Inter-library cooperation and
Sharing
 Cooperation with other libraries may eventually help in
learning from each others experience in extending support for
MOOCs

11. Area-4 Educating about licensing
 Educating faculty about copyright, as they may misinterpret
‘fair use’ clause of copyrighted content

12. Area-5 Developing course specific
guides
 In collaboration with faculty, who are offering MOOCs, libraries
can develop guides or tutorials to help enrolling students in
locating scholarly resources

13. Area-6 Support MOOC learners
 Extending support to learners by providing facilities such as
Computers, Internet access, scholarly resources etc.

14. Area-7 Develop a MOOC
 Develop a MOOC to orient your library users about scholarly
resources

15. Area-7 Develop a MOOC
 You can develop a MOOC using any of the following free
platforms

16. Area-8 Preservation of Content
 Take a lead in preserving the content of courses developed by
your institute faculty for future use

17. MOOCs and LIS Education
 MOOCs extend an opportunity for librarians to update their
skills and earn a certificate
 There are already few courses in LIS offered through MOOCs
and many more are expected in the near future
 Some of the LIS courses offered include, course on Metadata,
Hyperlinked library, New Librarianship etc
 https://www.coursesites.com/webapps/Bb-sites-course-creation-
BBLEARN/courseHomepage.htmlx?course_id=_246846_1
 https://www.coursera.org/course/metadata
 MOOCs in other areas such as Computer Science, Web
Development, Research skills, Questionnaire design etc are
offered

18. Where to take the course?

19. Where to take the course?

20. Where to take the course?

21. Where to take the course?

22. How MOOCs can help LIS
Departments
 MOOCs may help in improving the overall quality of education
 May meet certain challenges faced by departments such as
shortage of faculty, funds, skill levels, infrastructure etc
 Possible for students to learn courses from different
universities (Similar to Choice Based Courses)
 Collaboration with other departments / faculty in building the
courses
 Help in raising the profile of a teacher, department and
university
 Adopting Flipped Classroom environment

23. Conclusion
 MOOCs have brought in opportunities for librarianship in
improving services and quality of LIS education
 Libraries and Librarians need to prop up this new breed of
education to sustain themselves for the future and to expand
their bases
 LIS teachers also need to embrace this new model as it is very
difficult for any single school to provide training in all segments
of modern librarianship

24. Reach me at: pujar@igidr.ac.in
Blog: http://spujar.wordpress.com
Twitter: @shampujar
Acknowledgements:
Photographs used in the presentation are from Flickr, Google Images (CC
license). Illustration on first slide by Mr Tejas Uthale (11th Std Student)