Pomerantz thinks that while “there are a lot of library types, I think they’re outnumbered by the non-library types.  “The result is a far more varied blend of backgrounds and experience levels than in a typical library/information science graduate program. When asked what has surprised him the most about teaching a MOOC, he said, “just how advanced some of the students are. I’m getting into RDF and XML and technologies that support metadata… And the level of argument is surprisingly high.”

Enrolling in a class, regardless of the subject matter, will give you a chance to experience a MOOC first-hand from the perspective of a student, see what sorts of challenges instructors run into when leading a course for thousands of students, and may spark new ideas for ways libraries can support MOOCs.

Libraries’ Support for MOOCs

Even though MOOCs are still a relatively new phenomenon, some librarians are starting to carve out roles to support students enrolled in MOOCs or instructors who are teaching MOOCs. Hoover sees librarians’ role as being a natural extension of the typical liaison role. He suggests that for academic librarians, “If your faculty are involved [in MOOCs], then you should be too.”

But naturally, that role needs evolves a bit in order to scale to the number of students enrolled in a MOOC:

Just as MOOC instructors are not in a position to offer individualized feedback to thousands of students, it’s unrealistic to expect that librarians could somehow overcome the same challenges. But there are several ways to get involved. How to best support and enhance instruction in a MOOC depends on the nature of the course in question, but many of the ways one would approach any other class are certainly applicable. 

For example, Hoover suggests helping faculty by identifying or collecting Open Access, public domain, or other freely-available materials to use as course readings or supplementary materials. Other possibilities Hoover suggests that scale well include creating screencasts, videos, or other instructional content to teach students: how to use WorldCat to find something at a local library, how to get census data, how to search the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), what is an institutional repository, or how to find primary source documents in a digital archive.

John Shank, Associate Instructional Design Librarian at Penn State Berks, also raised the issue of offering access to resources to be used in MOOCs: “One critical function we need to be able to provide is offering access to digital resources of all kinds, in all formats—not just videos or digital journals, but images, data sets, simulations, video games, and so on… MOOCs are increasing the prominence of digital resources for teaching. Librarians can provide a central role in providing access to the full range of digital resources, to faculty and students in any environment, including MOOCs.”

Shank sees providing access to information as one of the pivotal roles the library community should be playing in connection to MOOCs. “We’re still in the infancy stage of figuring out how others will view librarians as being part of the process [to support MOOCs]—how will faculty view librarians being involved? How will administrators view librarians being part of the process?” Yet providing access to openly-accessible resources—both Open Access research and other types of Open Educational Resources (OERs)—is a natural fit. Even so, Shank feels it is “an area where librarians by and large have not taken a leadership role… It’s an awesome opportunity and we can help so many people who don’t have access to traditional licensed resources. Why are we not jumping in here?”

Shank expressed a level of urgency and concern for the future if libraries don’t step up to the challenge and get more involved in conversations about MOOCs and how to best support online education with campus constituents:

My greatest fear isn’t that libraries will disappear…but that libraries’ relevance might disappear if we aren’t careful. If that decreases a lot, our capacity to influence the learning process will diminish, and that would be a real shame.

At Duke University, the Duke University Libraries are quickly moving into this space in a production mode. The Office of Scholarly Communications has set up a library-based copyright and permissions service for MOOCs. Kevin Smith, Director of Copyright and Scholarly Communications, and Lauren Fowler, who served as the Copyright and Permissions Intern at Duke before becoming the Electronic Resources and Serials Management Librarian at Caldwell College, described their experiences in detail in a recent D-Lib article. They developed a centralized library-based permissions and copyright service on the fly as faculty began offering MOOCs. As they wrote in their article:

…Issues related to copyright have generated considerably less public discussion, while still causing great consternation on many campuses. Specific provisions in the U.S. Copyright Act that allow classroom use of third-party material without permission, such as section 110(1) and (2), seem not to apply in the MOOC environment. Fair use is certainly still available, but its application may be much more limited than in traditional classrooms. As a result, instructors often find themselves unable to use the same resources they have long relied on in their on-campus courses. To reduce frustration and facilitate the best possible instruction for these courses, the Office for Copyright and Scholarly Communication at Duke University Libraries began working with faculty early on in Duke’s foray into MOOCs to address copyright-related challenges in course development.

MOOCs and Scalability

While it can be a challenge for many faculty members to find readings and other course materials for which they have permission—or are able to be granted permission—to use in MOOCs, this thorny issue does not appear to have diminished the enthusiasm many faculty members have for teaching MOOCs. As Shank noted: “All of the faculty I’ve heard interviewed or talk to about [teaching a MOOC], they love it. It excites them, it energizes them—how they can reach so many more people.”

For faculty, Shank surmises that the enthusiasm is because of the massive scale of MOOCs. He observed: “faculty are [so satisfied] with the interactions they’ve had with students”—which is unusual, because “generally faculty don’t have that feeling when they’re teaching 500 students who are right in front of them in a lecture. So it’s an interesting dynamic.”

And it’s this question—how to balance scalability with engagement and interaction—that librarians should be grappling with. Shank asked: “Could there be more of a personal interaction with the students taking the course? Scalability is a question. But almost all universities offer a virtual reference service. 50,000 students, if they were all actively engaged, could have a lot of questions. But it offers some really interesting possibilities.”

Perhaps those possibilities are tied to teaching information skills. Shank noted, “Librarians today offer a unique perspective when it comes to teaching research skills and standard information literacy skills that faculty may not be aware of. It’s not their focus. But it is our focus. We can help students become more aware of what they need to be more information literate in today’s world. MOOCs are a great way to do that.”

“MOOC-Like” Library Courses

While the number of institutions offering MOOCs is growing, at most institutions, MOOCs still have had little direct impact on library services. Even so, some librarians are leaping at the opportunity to loosely-adapt the concept of MOOCs to innovate, expand, and enhance library services in entirely new ways. At the bleeding edge of this path is the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University, where eLearning Librarian Kyle Denlinger kicked off ZSRx, what is quickly becoming a series of MOOC-style lifelong learning courses for the Wake Forest community.

Abby Clobridge is the Managing Director of Clobridge Consulting, a boutique firm specializing in knowledge management, information management, and Open Access. Abby has worked with a wide range of organizations throughout the world, including various UN agencies; colleges and research universities; non-profit, inter-governmental, and multi-stakeholder organizations; the news media; and private sector companies.