MOOCs: More Questions
Than Answers
ASERL
April 23, 2013
Catherine Murray-Rust
This presentation
Combination of information about MOOCs at Duke from
Deborah Jakubs and Lynne O’Brien, information about
MOOCs at Georgia Tech, and comments/questions about
Library resources to support MOOCs
Academic credit and degree approvals
Changes in classroom education
2
Some of the MOOC Companies/Partnerships
Coursera—partners with 62 global universities, does not
plan to offer degrees, revenue is generated from
licensing courses and job placements, $26 million
Udacity—no traditional university partnerships yet,
partners with San Jose State to pilot for-credit online
courses, focus on computer science and business,
revenue generated from job placements, $21+million
edX—Harvard and MIT are founding partners, plus ten
university partners including the University of Texas
system, revenue source unknown, $60+ million, including
$5 million from UT and Berkeley
3
Duke University
4
MOOCs at Duke
• 11 courses developed and taught in 2012-13
(2 re-launched so far)
• 13 Duke faculty (and 1 UNC) from 13
departments and 5 schools
• 623K (non-unique) registrations across all
Duke courses
• Significant positive feedback
• Rapidly changing technology
and educational models
5
Library:
• Center for Instructional
Technology consultants
& tech support
• Librarians
• Scholarly
Communications intern
• Assessment specialist
• Liaison to OIT, Provost’s
Office, other groups
6
Looking ahead
• Experimenting with for-credit courses that have
some of the same library challenges as MOOCs
• Additional 15 – 20 MOOCs next year
• Shifting to more experimental models
• Promoting open access publishing and use of open
access materials
• No boundaries between course, textbooks, library
resources, learning activities
7
Georgia Tech
8
Georgia Tech’s MOOC Experience
• Udacity
– Three courses under development
• Coursera
– registration underway for eight courses, enrollment to
date is over 300,000
– Three Gates funded general education courses are ready
to be released, English Composition, Physics 101, and
Introductory Psychology
– 10-15 more courses under development
– Non-exclusive agreement
9
Georgia Tech Partners
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Center for the 21st Century University
Distance Learning and Professional Education
Council on Educational Technology
Provost’s Office
Office of Information Technology
Center for Teaching and Learning
Library (to a limited degree so far)
Issues of sustainability, organization, scale, and funding
10
Access to Library Resources
Concerns about students not having access to the best
sources and new forms of scholarly communication
because of pay walls, corporate agreements, and export
controls
Growing awareness of rights issues in MOOC community
Discussions about licensing directly from publishers
Reliance on open access sources may encourage faculty to
be more aware of retaining their rights and depositing
publications in an open repository
Lawsuit potential
11
Course Credit and Degree Approval
• American Council on Education
– Five courses approved for credit
• State university systems
– California proposal
– Less expensive college degrees
– State funding being used for out of state/international
students
– Disaggregating degrees ?
• Regional accrediting bodies are beginning to weigh in
– SACS (if it includes academic credit, we are involved)
– NC—may have to reapprove degrees
12
Two Cheers for Web U! (A.J. Jacobs)
•
•
•
•
•
•
Professors B+
Convenience A
Teacher-to-student interaction D
Student-to-student interaction BAssignments BOverall experience B
– New York Times, Sunday April 20, 2013
13
Changing Classroom Education?
Just as librarians need to re-imagine what a library is
without books, faculty need to redefine how they use
face-to-face classroom time
Seven mini-hub experiments
Flipped classrooms
Problem-based learning
Embedded librarians
14