MOOCs: The Challenges for Academic Librarians

Abstract

Over the next few years, librarians at many Australian universities will participate in the creation of local Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). This article aims to prepare librarians for this task. It begins by summarising the development of the MOOC concept and then moves on to review the growing literature on MOOCs and librarians. It concludes by looking at possible developments relating to copyright.

Keywords:

• MOOCs
• online learning
• academic libraries
• embedded librarians
• copyright

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to provide Australian academic librarians with an introduction to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). It begins with an overview of the evolution of the MOOC, including developments in Australia over recent months. The article then reviews the emerging literature on librarians' roles in the MOOC context. Finally, this paper concludes by considering the possible impact of future changes in copyright law on MOOCs in Australia.

What are MOOCs?

The term Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) refers to a specific type of online course. The main features of such courses are that:

•	there are no formal entrance requirements;
•	participation is free;
•	they are delivered entirely online; and
•	they are massively scalable, being designed for thousands of users.

The enthusiasm for MOOCs is relatively recent. The first MOOC was created at the University of Manitoba in 2008 (Mackness et al. 2010). It was not, however, until 2011 that MOOCs became widely known outside a few North American institutions. Worldwide interest in MOOCs was stimulated by events at Stanford University. In the Northern autumn of 2011, an open online course in artificial intelligence taught by two Stanford professors attracted over 160,000 students from more than 190 countries. Two other open courses in computing offered by Stanford were similarly successful in attracting international participation. The success of these experiments led to a rash of MOOC start-ups in the United States (Mahraj 2012).

The first was MITx, a not-for-profit initiative begun by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in December 2011. Two for-profit start-ups followed a month later: these were Udacity and Coursera. In May 2012, MITx became part of edX, a partnership between MIT and Harvard (Mahraj 2012). By the end of 2012, universities across the United States were delivering MOOCs, either on their own or in partnership with one of the new platform providers.

One result of this trend was a radical change in the nature of most MOOCs. The first generation of MOOCs had been connectivist, student-driven, chaotic and open-ended (Fini 2009; Rodriguez 2012). These MOOCs had also typically been released under open licence, so that their contents could be remixed and reused (Downes 2012). The MOOCs offered through the new start-ups were quite different.

The latest generation of MOOCs are firmly embedded in the educational mainstream. Most are based on strongly instructivist pedagogies (Mahraj 2012). There are also fewer opportunities for the reuse and remixing of their contents (Porter 2013). Only one start-up, Udacity, offers its courses under a Creative Commons licence. However, the terms of this licence forbids remixing and permits reuse only in a non-commercial context.

In terms of content, each of the three start-ups has a different approach. Although Coursera offers some self-contained MOOCs, others are built around recommended readings and include links to free content. All Udacity MOOCs are designed to be self-contained. Many of the MOOCs offered through edX make extensive use of textbooks licensed from academic publishers (Wright 2013). Other edX MOOCs include teaching materials from the MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) collection.

From mid-2012 onwards, the three start-ups have created international networks of partner-institutions. Coursera was first, announcing agreements with universities in Canada and Great Britain in July 2012 (McIntosh 2012; Stone 2012). It is still the largest, with 62 partners in 17 countries. EdX has 21 participating institutions in five countries. Udacity has the smallest network, with only five partners: one in Canada and four in the United States (Menard 2013).

The growth of these networks has encouraged educators in other countries to consider similar initiatives. In December 2012, a dozen UK universities led by the Open University announced FutureLearn, the first non-US MOOC consortium (Cook 2012). The European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) announced a Europe-wide MOOC initiative in February 2013 (Mulder 2013). This new MOOC platform, OpenupEd, was officially launched in April with 11 launch partners, including universities in Turkey, Israel and Russia.

Australian universities have not been far behind. In September 2012, the University of Melbourne announced it had become a Coursera partner. In the same month, the University of Queensland stated that it would offer MOOCs in the near future. The first Australian university to release its own MOOC was the University of New South Wales, which did so in October 2012 (Dodd 2012). The University of Southern Queensland soon followed with a pilot MOOC for the OERu (a New Zealand-based educational consortium which has rebranded itself as a MOOC provider). By the end of 2012, a number of Australian universities had given notice that they intended to offer MOOCs in the near future. These included institutions such as Deakin University, the University of Tasmania, and the University of Western Australia (Rowbotham 2013).

The first part of this year has seen some significant announcements. In February 2013, the University of New England launched uneOpen, an initiative in which MOOC participants will be able to earn credits towards a UNE degree (Rowbotham 2013). The Australian National University joined edX in the same month, with plans to launch the first ANUx MOOCs in 2014 (Macdonald 2013). In March 2013, the Open Universities Australia (OUA) consortium announced its own MOOC platform: Open2Study. In May, the University of Queensland announced that it had joined edX and would release its first MOOCs in 2014.

Librarians and MOOCs

When assessing the research in this field, it is essential to recall that the current wave of enthusiasm for MOOCs is less than two years old. Research on the role of librarians in MOOCs is still sparse. The blogosphere remains the main source of commentary. Another issue is that almost all of the available research relates to the United States. This means that some of the advice offered may not always be relevant to the Australian situation.

Local MOOCs will not always be identical to their United States counterparts. Many Australian universities have indicated that they intend to explore alternative approaches to the MOOC concept. The University of New England is one example, but other institutions (such as the University of Tasmania) have also stated that they have their own notion of what a MOOC should be (Barber 2013; Sadler 2012). In particular, it is likely that many local institutions will offer MOOCs specifically designed for smaller enrolments, an approach which will have significant implications for librarians.

Where are the librarians?

Opinion regarding the role of academic librarians in MOOCs is divided. One view is that librarians will simply not be required. The fear is that the “bleakest outlook for academic libraries in the MOOC environment may be that no one needs us” (Gremmels 2013, 15). There are also those who believe that for “the most part, librarians can expect to take on roles that are similar to those they have with traditional courses” (Creed-Dikeogu and Clark 2013, 11).

Pessimism regarding the role of librarians in MOOCs is not entirely groundless. Librarian participation in MOOCs offered by some universities in Canada and the United States has been limited or even non-existent. This has been the general rule in the case of MOOCs delivered on the Udacity platform (Dill 2012; Proffitt 2013). As Udacity MOOCs are designed to be entirely self-contained, this is perhaps only to be expected.

Realistically, librarians probably do not have much of a role in some MOOCs. Coursera, Udacity and edX prefer to base their MOOCs around a series of short video segments (typically no more than 8–12 minutes in duration). Participants view these segments before completing exercises. Instructor intervention and feedback are minimised. Instead, exercises are auto-graded or graded by the students' peers. The aim in many cases is simply for participants to master a set body of content.

This instructivist approach may be appropriate for many of the disciplines that have so far attracted the interest of most MOOC developers. Despite his own constructivist leanings, Anderson concedes this point in relation the design principles behind the latest generation of MOOCs. He is “not so quick to denigrate this pedagogy” pointing out that it:

… remains cornerstone of training activities in commercial and military domains … different disciplines, different students and different media require different mixes of pedagogical approaches (Anderson 2013, 4).

This is an important observation and it is important to remember that many MOOCs are short, vocationally oriented courses lasting as little as four to six weeks. Where a MOOC aims to equip individuals with a very specific set of skills and knowledge, librarian input may well be superfluous.

It would be premature, however, to discount the future role of librarians in Australian MOOCs on this basis. The experience of librarians in Udacity-affiliated institutions is not the inevitable rule. Many of the Coursera and edX partner institutions go beyond the simple transmission of knowledge. Among the MOOCs currently offered through Coursera are courses on topics such as the dialogues of Plato or the challenges of performing Beethoven sonatas. Such MOOCs require participants to build their own understanding of complex issues. If so, then participants are likely to benefit from access to a wider set of resources. In such instances, room exists for librarians to take up a more significant role.

The experience of many Coursera and edX institutions is that librarians are important. Librarian inclusion in MOOC project teams is now regarded as best practice at many Coursera-affiliated institutions, such as the University of Toronto or Brown University (Bordac 2013; University of Toronto 2013). At Coursera partner institutions, librarians play a leading role in assisting academics to make the transition to teaching in the MOOC environment (Bordac 2013; Lougee 2013; O'Brien 2013; Rogers 2013; Tuchler 2013). A similar trend is also apparent within the edX network, in which libraries at the different institutions are already working together to document best practice approaches in the MOOCs context (MIT Libraries 2013).

The United States experience would indicate the potential for librarians to have a role in MOOCs. If so, what are some of these functions? They are likely to include:

•	copyright clearance;
•	content licensing;
•	alerting MOOC developers to open content;
•	helping to ensure that MOOC content is accessible to all users, including those using assistive technologies;
•	providing instruction in information literacy; and
•	encouraging the use of open licensing.

The next part of this article will review the emerging literature in each of these areas.

Copyright clearance

Librarians at many universities in the United States and Canada play a major copyright clearance role. This responsibility is most evident in the case of Coursera affiliated institutions. Coursera policy is that all content must be copyright-cleared. In most cases, this task falls to librarians at the relevant institution. This responsibility can be daunting: involving an average of 380 staff hours for each Coursera MOOC (Proffitt 2013). Not surprisingly, the legal aspects of copyright clearance have been the topic of extensive discussions among research librarians in the United States (Butler 2012; Butler et al. 2013; Creed-Dikeogu and Clark 2013).

In the Australian context, there are claims that the licensing of third party content for MOOCs is too time-consuming to be seriously considered (Palmer 2013). For this reason, it is often assumed that local MOOCs will be created either entirely in-house or will rely on open content. In light of the Coursera experience, this assumption may not hold in every instance. In such cases, the task of copyright clearance is likely to fall often to academic librarians at the relevant institutions.

Content licensing

Copyright clearance often involves licensing negotiations with third-party copyright holders. The dimensions of this task have been the subject of frequent discussions in the United States. A recurring theme has been the difficulties involved (Butler et al. 2013). The problem has been summarised in these words:

In some cases research libraries are facing significant challenges and delays in seeking licenses for uses that would have been considered fair use or otherwise exempt in the traditional teaching context. Some publishers, museums, and other content owners are asking extraordinarily high prices or refusing to license for MOOC teaching, citing the for-profit nature of the platforms as well as the unprecedented scale. Others are simply not responding to these requests (Butler 2012, 3).

Solutions to this problem remain elusive. Smith advises that librarians can leverage the open nature of MOOCs when negotiating with publishers. He observes that publishers “are slowly figuring out the marketing advantage they gain by allowing small excerpts of books and textbooks to be made available freely” (Smith 2013, 1). Smith admits, however, that this tactic does not guarantee a rapid resolution:

… the negotiation option is slow and labor-intensive; often we must explain the purpose and the conditions over and over again, to ever-shifting groups of officials, before we can get a decision (Smith 2013, 1).

Australian academic libraries need to be mindful of the United States experience when considering the possible role of statutory licensing in the MOOC context, an issue that is discussed at the end of this article.

The promotion of open content

The difficulties involved in licensing third-party content have led many librarians in the United States to concentrate on alternatives. Among these is the use of open or public domain content:

Where possible, research libraries are also working to help faculty identify and locate alternative materials that are free of copyright constraints either because they are in the public domain or because they are made available under Creative Commons or analogous open licenses (Butler 2012, 3).

This preference for open or public domain content is shared by many academic librarians active in the field (Butler 2012; Creed-Dikeogu and Clark 2013; O'Brien 2013; Proffitt 2013; Smith 2013). This approach can also yield longer-term benefits. Smith provides the following account:

One story will illustrate this growing interest in open access. A faculty member who was recently preparing to teach his first MOOC wanted his students to be able to read several of his own articles. When we asked his publisher for permission on his behalf, it was denied. A rude awakening for our professor, but also an opportunity to talk about open access. As it turned out, all of the articles were published in journals that allowed the author to deposit his final manuscripts, and this author had them all. So we uploaded those post-prints, and he had persistent, no-cost links to provide to the 80,000 students who were registered for his course. An eye-opener for the author, a missed opportunity for the publisher, and a small triumph for our OA repository (2013, 1).

Librarians can raise the awareness of MOOC creators regarding the value of open content in a number of ways. The ideal is probably a face-to-face conversation between librarian and content specialists (Butler 2012; Creed-Dikeogu and Clark 2013; Proffitt 2013; Smith 2013). Given time constraints, this strategy is not always possible. Another method is for librarians to produce web-based guides that provide teaching staff with links to appropriate public domain and open access resources. This approach has been employed at a number of United States institutions. Examples include pages at the University of Pennsylvania (University of Pennsylvania Libraries 2013).

Accessibility

Local libraries are acutely aware of the challenges involved in providing users of assistive technologies with access to library materials used in online teaching (Borchert and Conkas 2003). Ensuring accessibility has long been seen as best practice (Australian Library and Information Association 1998; Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee 2006), but it is now a legal requirement (Conway 2010). If so, then librarians will need to consider how to achieve accessibility goals in the MOOC context.

Designing MOOCs to meet the needs of vision-impaired users is not an unrealistic goal. In the United States, universities providing MOOCs work within a legal framework that requires educational materials to be accessible to all. The result is that most MOOCs in the United States have already been designed to meet the needs of the print-disabled (Butler 2012). There is no reason why Australian institutions cannot achieve the same outcomes.

If this goal is to be reached, librarians will often need to do more than raise awareness of this issue among MOOC developers. At many institutions, it is likely that librarians will play an essential role in negotiating with copyright holders for the permissions required to modify content for users of assistive technologies. Fortunately, this is not a new issue. There are established guidelines which provide librarians with advice on what is and is not legally permitted in the Australian context (Australian Copyright Council 2007).

Library instruction

For a decade or more, academic libraries both here and overseas have employed the embedded librarian approach to support online learners (York and Vance 2009). The embedded librarian becomes “an active teacher throughout the entire length of the course” (Chisholm and Lamond 2012, 224). Embedded librarians typically participate in online discussions, respond to student posts, offer classroom-type instruction using web conferencing, and even troubleshoot problems using desktop sharing software (Hoffmann and Ramin 2010; York and Vance 2009). Embedded librarianship “is currently a hot topic in library research” (Becker 2010, 239). It is not surprising, therefore, that the feasibility of this concept in the MOOC environment has been the subject of discussion.

The debate was opened by Mahraj in her 2012 article. She argues that librarians should work as a team with MOOC instructors:

… to support participants as they assess their own information needs, identify useful resources, and develop skills in finding, evaluating, accessing, managing, synthesizing, and using information in an online learning environment (2012, 366).

Mahraj suggests, for example, that librarians should post advice on MOOC blogs when individuals show signs of struggling to evaluate information. In addition, she recommends that librarians aggregate “a set of posts to highlight patterns in participants' struggles with and methods for source evaluation and synthesis” (Mahraj 2012, 366).

Creed-Dikeogu and Clark (2013) have addressed Mahraj's recommendations in their review of the role of librarians in MOOCs. They conclude that her proposals are probably impractical in the context of MOOCs with large enrolments, a point that has been made elsewhere (Wright 2013). However, Mahraj's suggestions may still be relevant in the case of some local MOOCs, which are likely to have relatively small enrolments. Where this is the case, the embedded librarian approach may well be feasible. If so, then librarians can draw upon a growing literature in the field, including recommendations on best practice (Held 2010; Hoffmann and Ramin 2010; York and Vance 2009).

There are also a number of alternatives to the embedded librarian model in the MOOC context. Wright recommends that librarians “start small” with “a solution that is scalable” (Wright 2013, 4). He suggests that librarians begin by providing MOOC designers with links to existing library tutorials and research guides on the Library site. The next step is:

… for librarians to review the scope and content of their tutorials and research guides, because most will include paths to proprietary databases which will not be accessible to many MOOC students (Wright 2013, 4).

Wright argues that librarians will not have to create “new open-access only tutorials” (2013, 4). Instead, he suggests that they can supplement their current web-based tutorials using the:

… peer-reviewed research tutorials that are freely available from the American Library Association, as well as the Multimedia Education Resource for Learning and Online Teaching initiative … (Wright 2013, 4).

In a similar vein, Creed-Dikeogu and Clark believe that “MOOCs offer the opportunity to increase the information literacy skills of huge numbers of students” (2013, 12). They recommend that librarians provide “information literary skills self-assessment tools” and create “online information literacy tutorials” designed to meet the specific needs of MOOC participants (Creed-Dikeogu and Clark 2013, 12). In this context, it is probably worth reconsidering how to deliver information literacy training online. Text-based instruction and link-heavy pages will probably seem old-fashioned in the MOOC context. Multimedia learning resources (such as screencasts) provide a flexible, low-cost alternative (Kammerlocher et al. 2011; Oehrli et al. 2011; Oud 2009). Although time-intensive, the effectiveness of such tools in information literacy instruction is now firmly established and there is no shortage of practical advice on best practice methods (Bowles-Terry et al. 2010; Ergood et al. 2012; Wyant 2013).

Librarians and their responsibilities for MOOC students

An unanswered question is how librarians will be able to balance support for MOOC students against their continuing responsibilities for students in award courses. Unfortunately, there is no easy solution. The potential demands on librarians will depend not only on the numbers involved, but also on institutional policies regarding the status of MOOC participants. In some cases, librarians may be able to help shape these policies by demonstrating that they are able to take on specific support tasks.

The problem is not insurmountable, particularly if librarians at different institutions are willing to exchange resources and approaches. Opportunities for informal collaboration already exist. To take one example, many academic libraries in Australia make use of Springshare's LibGuides software, a platform that facilitates content sharing. At the University of New England, LibGuides materials have been created to assist MOOC participants to find free, online content relevant to their studies through uneOpen. There is the potential for such resources to be reused and repurposed by librarians at other institutions, greatly reducing the burden involved in supporting local MOOCs.

Open Licensing

Many academic librarians in the United States see MOOCs as creating opportunities for advancing “the conversation on open access” (Association of College & Research Libraries Research Planning and Review Committee 2013, 4). Butler argues that:

MOOC courses are essentially a mode of scholarly publishing: they are authored by scholars, intended for use in education, and are subject to copyright protection and its associated limitations and exceptions. It makes sense, therefore, for research libraries to advocate for open access as the default status of MOOC course materials (2012, 14).

These calls probably accord with the feelings of many Australian research librarians. Advice on best how to frame this conversation is readily available (Bissel 2009; Kleymeer et al. 2010; de Langen 2011). In particular, the flexibility of the Creative Commons licences has emerged as a major element in the successful promotion of open licensing within institutions (Kleinman 2008).

MOOCs as a tool for developing best practice

Educators are already using data mining techniques in order to better understand how MOOC participants learn online (Breslow et al. 2013). The richness of the data streams generated by the latest MOOCs is expected to yield new insights into learner behaviour. Not surprisingly, librarians in the United States have already noted that MOOCs offer their colleagues a chance to evaluate best practices in information literacy instruction:

One of the touted benefits of teaching courses online is the ability to test what is successful and what is not by evaluating the copious data that the providers can generate and analyze. What can librarians learn from this data? Are there opportunities to improve library instruction? (Association of College & Research Libraries Research Planning and Review Committee 2013, 4).

Pritchard points out that, if librarians are to make the best use of this opportunity, they need to begin by collecting baseline data:

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 (Pritchard 2013, 128).

If librarians intend to go down this route, they might like to begin by reviewing the literature on how to best evaluate the effectiveness of information literacy instruction, such as Edwards et al. (2010), Oakleaf (2009), Oakleaf et al. (2011), and Oakleaf et al. (2013).

Statutory licenses and MOOCs

For many years, Australian universities have used the Part VA and VB statutory licenses in online learning. The application of these licenses to MOOCs is therefore of potential relevance to librarians. It has been asserted that the statutory licences do not apply to MOOCs (Palmer 2013; Trounson 2012); a view repeated in the recent Universities Australia submission to the Australian Law Reform Commission (Universities Australia 2012).

In a recent conference paper, Whitehead and Padgett discuss the issue and conclude that there are no insurmountable legal obstacles to the use of the statutory licenses in the MOOC context. They see a more practical problem: “MOOCs do not provide a revenue stream to pay for this” (Whitehead and Padgett 2013, 17). In addition, they observe that the statutory licenses require that access to third party content be restricted to registered users. Whitehead and Padgett allow that “universities could enrol and authenticate MOOC students”, but warn that, “MOOCs would not be MOOCs any more” (2013, 17).

The issue is still not resolved. If a way can be found for MOOCs to generate revenue, then Whitehead and Padgett's first objection could be met. Another point is that statutory licensing may not be prohibitively expensive in the context of the smaller enrolments expected for many local MOOCs. In addition, it is worth recalling why the Part VA and VB statutory licenses exist in the first place: that is, they substantially reduce the costs involved in licensing third-party materials for educational use. The experience of Coursera-affiliated institutions in the United States and Canada suggest that there may be a room for the statutory licences in the context of local MOOCs. Finally, Whitehead and Padgett's last argument is probably irrelevant to all but purists. They admit that many local MOOCs will probably be better described as “free online courses (FOCs)” than MOOCs proper (Whitehead and Padgett 2013, 11).

There is, of course, the hope that future changes to the copyright law will make this debate redundant. In June 2012, the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) began an inquiry into the adequacy of the current copyright exceptions and statutory licences in the digital environment. The ALRC released an issues paper in August, requesting submissions from interested parties. This paper raised the question of whether Australian copyright law should include a broad “fair use” exemption along the same lines as the United States law. This issue has been addressed in a number of submissions, including one by Universities Australia, which argued strongly for a fair use exemption in educational contexts (Universities Australia 2012). The ALRC is expected to release a discussion paper by November 2013. Although there are grounds for optimism, it is worth noting that the fair use exemption has been less helpful to MOOC providers in the United States than might be expected. As MOOCs are open to international audiences, the common practice in the United States has been for institutions to seek copyright clearance. Otherwise, MOOC providers risk suits for copyright infringement in an overseas jurisdiction (Butler 2012; Butler et al. 2013; Proffitt 2013).

Conclusion

MOOCs are now a part of the Australian higher education scene, with a number of competing local models, as different institutions explore alternatives. In this evolving environment, librarians have a critical role to play in the development and support of local MOOCs. They can offer advice on a range of topics: content licensing, copyright, accessibility and information literacy support. There are also areas where librarians might seek to influence institutional policies. Librarians should not hesitate to alert course developers as to the benefits of using open access materials or releasing MOOCs under open licence. In addition, MOOCs present librarians with new opportunities to evaluate how they can best teach information literacy skills in the online environment. Fortunately, librarians can now call upon a growing body of research to assist in developing appropriate responses to these challenges.