Librarians and MOOCs

April 15, 2013

Things librarians do (or are asked to do) on campuses that produce MOOCs:

• Easy & quick
  • Connect with instructors to say hi
  • Promote public information literacy by producing simple, general guides for MOOC takers
• Moderate difficulty
  • Enroll in your campus's MOOC(s) to better understand the student experience
  • Advise faculty regarding open access content sources (see event detailed below)
  • Produce course-specific resource guides (see DLib)
• Hard & expensive
  • Be an embedded librarian: hold office hours and respond to common questions
  • Negotiate with publishers whose texts are used in the course (see Chronicle)
    • Can they offer the text for free? (see Inside Higher Ed)
    • Can using a text or portion thereof be considered fair use?

If you're in CUNY and interested in distance ed, there's a free online seminar coming up on April 30 on "How Recent Copyright Court Cases Affect Distance Education: What Educators Need to Know About Copyright," sponsored by CUNY Office of Library Services. We'll be screening it here at John Jay's Library from 2pm–4pm. RSVP to Kathleen Collins by April 19!