SOBA: How are MOOCs Changing Science Education? > December 10 2012 > 4PM - 5:30 PM ET

[Steven E. Patamia, Ph.D.]

Continuing with Jean's line of thought....

The Stanford AI course occasionally referred interested students to other
sources, but I have no doubt that many students ended up doing brush up
reviews or, in some cases, quick courses in probability theory.  Even for a
physicist, unless you are a particle physicist or in some other sub field
where standard probability calculations are part of the rigor of what you
do,  it  would be, as it was for me, necessary to do a quick review of
basic axioms and theorems that were going to be used a lot in the course.
 In such event, it is handy to go online and find -- guess what! -- online
tutorials or course handouts authored by profs who teach probability theory
courses.  The actual AI course lectures assumed way too much about how
facile students were in probability theory and sometimes even made outright
mistakes that would confuse and mystify a student with a weak background.
 All this demonstrates that once you are online because you lack access to
campuses and research libraries in the real world you are also vulnerable
to the lack of library resources unless your can also gain access the
*them* online.

This is a serious problem in the hard sciences and engineering and I am
sure a different flavor of it exists for other fields.  Research and
specialized libraries remain a practical necessity for advanced work and an
absolute necessity for any research on its own or connected directly to
advanced coursework.  Having full access to scholarly literature is
absolutely crucial to enabling the penetration of MOOCS or even less
broadly accessed online coursework.

Again, the publishers are the impediment to open access.  They are also
bankrupting library services even in large institutions not to mention
small ones.  In short -- they are the enemy.  They make obscene amounts of
money publishing research already paid for by others and tying up what
should be public knowledge with private rights.  There is push back, but
its a tough problem to solve.  The publishers are smart and even vicious at
times and they realize that they are fighting for their lives.  Scholars
are not very brave about circumventing the private publishers and some are
not easily convinced that in the new age you don't need those publishers to
cement your reputation.  This is the defining battle of open access -- and
it needs to be fought much harder than it has been.  Those publishers --
most of them foreign -- even have friends and lobbyists that promote laws
to protect their long term interests.  I for one think this is a crime
against taxpayers and the citizens of the planet.  Publicly funded
sholarship should not be forfeited to private interests.

I better get off my soap box for now....

On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 4:01 PM, Norma Jean Hewlett <hewlett at usfca.edu>wrote:

> I definitely think that if you want to understand what moocs are about,
> the way to do it is to enroll in a few.
>
> During the past year, I've taken 6 moocs in varying online formats. With
> one exception, none of them required any outside reading or research. Most
> only required watching lecture videos and perhaps completing some related
> projects.
>
> The one exception is GamesMooc, where the badge I want requires playing a
> number of online games, learning to share information via several different
> online formats, and reading or viewing a great deal of online material
> related to using games in education.
>
> All of the moocs I've taken so far have been on subjects related to
> computer science, business, or education. One of my goals for the coming
> year is to try one or two that are about traditional humanities subjects
> such as literature or history. I'm thinking those will probably involve
> more outside reading and possibly some original research.
>
> Jean Hewlett
> Librarian, Santa Rosa Campus
> University of San Francisco
>
>
> --
Steven E. Patamia, Ph.D., J.D.

============================

To unsubscribe: http://bit.ly/web4lib

Web4Lib Web Site: http://web4lib.org/

2012-12-05
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.nd.edu/pipermail/web4lib/attachments/20121204/e9eb08e8/attachment.htm>