About the Webinar
The development and rising popularity of the massive open online course (MOOC) presents a new opportunity for libraries to be involved in the education of patrons, to highlight the resources libraries provide and to further demonstrate the value of the library to administrators. There are, of course, a host of logistics to be considered when deciding to organize or support a MOOC. Diminished library budgets and staffing levels challenge libraries both monetarily and administratively. Marketing the course, mounting it on a site, securing copyright permissions and negotiating licensing for course materials, managing the course while in progress and troubleshooting technical problems add to the issues that have caused some libraries to hesitate in joining the MOOC movement. On the other hand, partnerships such as that between Georgetown University and edX, itself an initiative of Harvard and MIT, allow a pooling of resources thereby easing the burden on any one library. In some cases price breaks for certain course materials used in MOOCs can help draw students to the course, though the pricing must still be negotiated by the course organizer. A successful MOOC, such as the RootsMOOC, created by the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University and the State Library of North Carolina, can bring awareness of library resources to a broad audience.
In the end, libraries must ask whether the advantages of participating in a MOOC outweigh the challenges. The speakers for this webinar will consider these issues surrounding MOOCs and libraries and try to answer the question of whether the impact of libraries on MOOCs has been realized or is still brewing.
Event Sessions
Introduction
Speaker
MOOCS: Assessing the Landscape and Trends of Open Online Learning
Speaker
We’ve come a long way since our first MOOC in the fall of 2012, the so-called “Year of the MOOC”! After working with a broad range of courses, across four MOOC platforms and numerous sponsor institutions, we have noticed some trends. While there seems to be little danger now that MOOCs will displace traditional education, there are exciting developments that seem to indicate that MOOCs—or at least MOOC-like-objects are here to stay and influencing teaching and learning for all of today’s students.
This presentation will detail some of what ProQuest SIPX has learned working with both schools and publishers during the last three years.
The RootsMOOC Project or: that time we threw a genealogy party and 4,000 people showed up
Speakers
In order to teach a large audience the basics of genealogy research, the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University (ZSR) and the State Library of North Carolina (SLNC) entered into a yearlong partnership to develop RootsMOOC, a massive open online course (MOOC) for beginning genealogy researchers. This IMLS grant-funded project eventually enrolled more than 4,000 learners, more than 500 of whom were from North Carolina. RootsMOOC provided participants easy, free access to high-quality genealogy instruction in a highly interactive and social learning environment, which sits squarely within the philosophical mission of libraries to foster lifelong learning in their communities.
This presentation will highlight the logistics of and challenges involved in producing, marketing, and managing the course, including content creation and course building, forming partnerships with libraries of different types and with external organizations, and collaboratively managing an online community of learners.
MOOCS and Me: Georgetown's Experience with MOOC Production
Speaker
The good, the bad, the ugly. By now you've probably seen MOOCS that fit in each category, but from an academic digital creator's standpoint, how do you go about creating a great looking MOOC, while implementing effective and substantive pedagogical practices? My participation in the "MOOCS and Libraries" talk will walk you through the production highs and lows of MOOC creation at Georgetown University. You will be able to gain insight of the procedures that were undergone during MOOC pre-production and learn how this planning translated into a finished product on EdX's platform.
Additional Information
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Registration closes at 12:00 p.m. (ET) on August 12, 2015. Cancellations made by August 5, 2015 will receive a refund, less a $25 cancellation. After that date, there are no refunds.
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Registrants will receive detailed instructions about accessing the webinar via e-mail the Monday prior to the event. (Anyone registering between Monday and the close of registration will receive the message shortly after the registration is received, within normal business hours.) Due to the widespread use of spam blockers, filters, out of office messages, etc., it is your responsibility to contact the NISO office if you do not receive login instructions.
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If you have not received your Login Instruction email by 10:00 a.m. (ET) on the Tuesday before the webinar, at please contact the NISO office or email Juliana Wood, Educational Programs Manager at jwood@niso.org for immediate assistance.
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Registration is per site (access for one computer) and includes access to the online recorded archive of the webinar. You may have as many people as you like from the registrant's organization view the webinar from that one connection. If you need additional connections, you will need to enter a separate registration for each connection needed.
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If you are registering someone else from your organization, either use that person's e-mail address when registering or contact Juliana Wood to provide alternate contact information.
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Library Standards Alliance (LSA) members receive one free webinar connection as part of their membership and DO NOT need to register for the event for this free connection. Your webinar contact will receive the login instructions the Monday before the event. You may have as many people as you like from the member's library view the webinar from that one connection. If you need additional connections beyond the free one, then you will need to enter a paid registration (at the member rate) for each additional connection required.
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Webinar presentation slides and Q&A will be posted to the site following the live webinar.
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Registrants and LSA member webinar contacts will receive an e-mail message containing access information to the archived webinar recording within 48 hours after the event. This recording access is only to be used by the registrant's or member's organization.