MOOCs: An Opportunity for Innovation and Research

The acronym “M.O.O.C.” could be a candidate for the most popular new word of 2012: massively open online courses, a large scale form of what we used to call online education. One can’t scan a newsletter or conference program related to any aspect or constituency of higher education without seeing some reference to MOOCs, whether it’s pro or con or just exploratory. Many universities are actively developing these courses with one of the for-profit or non-profit ventures that have emerged to promote this approach to education; any institution that isn’t doing it yet is busy investigating and consulting and debating the costs, benefits, and relevance to its mission.

There are many complicated legal, financial, governance, accessibility, and technology issues; a good overview was prepared last fall by the Association of Research Libraries, and no sooner was it distributed than many suggestions were made for additional concerns to be included.¹ MOOCs were or will be the focus of programs at ALA, ACRL, OCLC, and EDUCAUSE conferences. As librarians, faculty, and technologists discuss the possible ways to design and deliver academic content in this medium, we are seeing innovative pedagogical techniques and creative multi-media courseware. There will be much documentation of best practices, but let’s try to move beyond simple how-to’s and think now about systematically studying and testing these techniques and identifying the ones with the greatest success in terms of student learning.

It’s rare to have such a clear-cut transition to a new service that spreads so rapidly across so many institutions, and that offers such challenges to our previous ways of doing business. While of course we are all struggling with the logistics, technology, pedagogical and policy issues raised by MOOCs, what I would urge us to consider are the research opportunities. The timing is such that one can actually articulate hypotheses that could be tested by comparing “before” and “after” data, by comparing the outcomes of varied models of delivery (Coursera, 2U, EdX, Udacity), the possible impact of different home institutional characteristics, and the effectiveness of MOOCs in different disciplines or levels of courses. The critically important step is – start now to gather data and test effectiveness in the traditional or “control” setting. Research with the greatest validity and potential for change will result if we can do a well-designed comparison of, for example, different bibliographic instruction approaches in the same exact class, one on campus and one via a MOOC; or one via existing small-group online delivery versus later in a MOOC. We can do a cross-institutional study of students on different campuses – or in the general public – all taking the same MOOC but with backup library services provided through different libraries or no library at all. We can apply instruments like those of Project SAILS (https://www.projectsails.org/) to test information literacy in on-campus courses and MOOCs. What are the various learning outcomes? What are the equity issues? What are the implications for library services – not only things like e-reserves, but the massive collections built to support a full academic program – how much material is used by students in a MOOC other than what a teacher presents through the course web site? Does chat reference crash when you offer it to 100,000 students scattered across 24 time zones? Does information literacy instruction work better if it is integrated, parallel, or asynchronous? And something we need to study as soon as possible is, what entirely new sets of digital literacy skills are needed for students to participate, study, and perform effectively in a MOOC?

The partnerships and models we develop for MOOCs may well be extended into other areas of regular campus teaching and research. What new forms of collaboration and joint partnerships might evolve among librarians, disciplinary faculty, advising, writing instructors, educational technology experts, and vendors? Will MOOCs be integrated across academic departments, only in a few, or perhaps in a special parallel center, and how might these organizational models apply more broadly to the development and delivery of information services...