Digital Pedagogy - A Guide for Librarians, Faculty, and Students

Hannah Gore denotes four challenges of MOOCs that are particular to academic libraries’ involvement with MOOCs. These include:

1.         Influencing faculty involved in the creation of MOOCs. Librarians discussions with the faculties have the potential to be fundamental to the successful development of a MOOC. These discussions can ensure that factors, usually seen as the remit of the library service to lead on, such as copyright, licensing, digital, and information literacy are taken into consideration in the course design.

2.         Copyright and licensing. Librarians will need to be aware of copyright status of the MOOC and the course materials within it and should be seen as the point person for the licensing of content to be made available through the course. They will also need to be aware of the copyright status of learner-created content, potential avenues for access to wider reading content for MOOC learners, and accessibility of MOOC content for learners with disabilities.

3.         Delivering remote services. The content of the MOOC, due to its broad availability on line, may be accessed and posted to by learners twenty four hours a day, due to time zone differences, and therefore, may post requests for assistance out of hours of where the MOOC has been developed. Because learners can enroll in a MOOC from anywhere, learners’background and understanding of digital and information literacy may vary greatly, so understanding how to search, analyse, and remix

learning content ethically may be of concern, and many students’ whose first language is not English may be enrolled.

4.         Diverse demographics and scale: MOOC participants’ demographic vary largely. They may be high school students, might already have a degree, or may be changing professions.