A New Polemic: Libraries, MOOCs, and the Pedagogical Landscape

The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) has emerged in the past few years as the poster child of the online higher education revolution. Lauded and derided, MOOCs (depending on who you ask) represent the democratization of education on a global scale, an overblown trend, or the beginning of the end of the traditional academic institution. MOOCs have gained so much critical traction because they have succeeded in unmooring educational exchanges and setting them adrift in the sea of the internet. Although the MOOC is a new and evolving platform, it has already upended facets of education in which librarians are heavily invested including intellectual property, digital preservation, and information delivery and curricular support models. Consequently, to examine the MOOC as a microcosm is also to explore how the scope of academic librarianship is changing and will continue to change. Librarians and information professionals—who serve as bibliographers, purchasing managers, access advocates, copyright and preservation experts, and digital pioneers on many campuses—are uniquely situated to mediate this disruption and to use this opportunity to develop strategies for navigating an environment in flux

MOOC Educators: Who They Are And How They Learn

This study set out to answer the following research questions: who teaches in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and how do these different educators learn to teach? To do this, it utilised Tynjälä’s theoretical model of Integrative Pedagogy that brings together different elements of professional expertise. To this end, a ‘multiple case study’ was conducted, with a focus on teaching activities and who is involved in them, as well as on educators’ ‘processes of knowledge building’, and the forms of knowledge they integrate. The data comprised 28 interviews with professionals with teaching responsibilities in seven MOOCs on the subject of History and of Politics on the FutureLearn platform. The seven cases were analysed using different strategies (theoretical propositions, ground-up data, and rival explanations). The analysis showed that the role of ‘educator’ is filled not only by those with the titles used by the FutureLearn platform, but also by other professionals who take pedagogical decisions. MOOC teaching activities are diverse, different from face-to-face teaching and it is difficult for them to be carried out by a single individual. Educators in different courses and different universities used diverse models of work practice, each of which had advantages and disadvantages. MOOC educators learned to teach effectively when they had a shared goal, worked in transparent ways and involved interdisciplinary teams in a timely manner. These findings can help institutions and platforms to design better Continuing Professional Development programmes and, ultimately, more effective MOOC learning journeys. Drawing on this evidence, the original contribution to knowledge of this thesis is a new conceptualisation of who the educators of MOOCs are, developed by uncovering the roles of professionals who carry out teaching on these courses, the wide variety of teaching activities involved and the ways people learn to work towards these

Down the yellow brick road to singularity… : how our misuse of technology is leading us to a gruesome fate

The human being is increasingly undervalued vis-­‐à-­‐vis machines. They surround us and are praised as essential to our daily lives; slowly but surely, these products of our uttermost creativity and ingenuity are pushing us out of employment and leave us with a reduced sense of purpose. Since the turn of the 21st century, our race seems to have taken a wrong turn along the road to progress, and left us in an undesirable position in which we may be becoming slaves to technology. The issue is as economic as it is social. Loss of employment and economic welfare seems to go hand in hand with an overall loss of social well-­‐being, and life satisfaction. In a world where our Facebook “News Feed” is often more important than the person siting across the table at a family dinner, one cannot deny that such a widespread introverted behavior contributes to the fall of healthy relationships and social love. Are these changes inevitable? Are they desirable? Allow this dissertation to present the fruits of revealing exploratory research about the topic. It combines the analysis of articles and books from some key authors with scientific research and on-­‐field interviews with qualified candidates

O combate à desinformação: qual o papel das bibliotecas?

A sociedade atual digitalizada e hiperconetada expõe fragilidades nunca antes conhecidas. Nos últimos anos, assistiu-se a uma expansão súbita do fenómeno da desinformação, que se repercutiu negativamente em todo o mundo. A União Europeia, em parceria com diferentes instituições, tomou medidas de combate à desinformação no pleno reconhecimento de que esta é uma ameaça ao paradigma de sociedade livre e democratizada. A desinformação é transformada em info weaponization e põe em risco os valores éticos e de liberdade em que assenta a democracia. As bibliotecas têm um papel a desempenhar para a consciencialização e mitigação da desinformação. O presente estudo tem como objetivo responder às seguintes perguntas sobre as bibliotecas e profissionais de informação em relação à desinformação: (Q1) Qual o seu compromisso ético?, (Q2) Quais as suas práticas? e (Q3) Qual o seu papel no combate à desinformação? A partir de uma Revisão Sistemática da Literatura entre 2017 e junho de 2021, foi recolhida uma amostra final de 42 documentos, cujo processo está documentado utilizando o fluxo PRISMA. Os resultados demonstram que as bibliotecas, sendo instituições de conhecimento, devem continuar a promover a prática de cidadania e aderir ao novo conceito de «construção de comunidades», bem como alinhar-se com as recentes políticas de combate à desinformação, como o Plano de Ação Contra a Desinformação (PACD). Propomos que o perfil dos PI encontra-se em transformação e em plena expansão e que o código ético de conduta dos PI poderá vir a sofrer alterações que se adequem ao PACD, e, em Portugal, à Carta Portuguesa de Direitos Humanos na Era Digital (CPDHED) (2021). Da nossa RSL, concluímos que a maioria dos autores reconhece a desinformação como um problema sistémico, apontando fatores como information bias, filter bubbles, pensamento crítico, entre outros, como obstáculos para a deteção da informação falsa. A maioria dos autores centra-se na implementação de programas de Literacia Informacional para mitigar o problema, sendo que estas práticas foram categorizadas usando o quadro de Revez & Corujo (2021).In the recent years there has been a sudden expansion of the phenomenon of disinformation, which had negative repercussions throughout the world, and the current digitalized and hyper-connected society exposes fragilities never seen before. The European Union, recognizing disinformation as a threat to the paradigm of a free and democratized society, partnered with different institutions to take measures to fight it. Disinformation is transformed into info-weaponization and jeopardizes the ethical values and freedom on which a democracy is based. Libraries play a role in spreading awareness and mitigating disinformation. This study aims to answer the following questions about libraries and Information Professionals concerning disinformation: (Q1) What is their ethical commitment?, (Q2) what are their practices to fight it?, and (Q3) what is their role in fighting disinformation? From a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) from 2017 to June 2021 a final sample of 42 documents was collected, whose process was documented with the PRISMA flow chart. The results show that libraries, as knowledge institutions, should continue to promote citizenship and adhere to the new concept of «community building» as well as aligning themselves with recent policies to combat disinformation, such as the Action Plan Against Disinformation (APAD). We propose that the profile of the IP is changing and expanding, and that the ethical code of conduct of these professionals may undergo changes that fit the APAD, and in Portugal, the Portuguese Letter of Human Rights in the Digital Age (PLHRDA) (2021). From our SLR, we conclude that most authors recognize disinformation as a systemic problem and point out confirmation bias, filter bubbles, critical thinking, among others, as obstructors to the process of distinguishing false information. Most authors focus on implementing Information Literacy programs to mitigate the problem; these practices were categorized using the Revez & Corujo framework (2021)

MOOCs @ Edinburgh 2013: Report #1

A report summarising the experience of the University of Edinburgh of offering our first 6 massive open online courses (MOOCs) in partnership with Courser

Town of Sullivan, New Hampshire annual report for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016.

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire

European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN). Conference Proceedings

Erasmus+ Programme of the European UnionThe powerful combination of the information age and the consequent disruption caused by these unstable environments provides the impetus to look afresh and identify new models and approaches for education (e.g. OERs, MOOCs, PLEs, Learning Analytics etc.). For learners this has taken a fantastic leap into aggregating, curating and co-curating and co-producing outside the boundaries of formal learning environments – the networked learner is sharing voluntarily and for free, spontaneously with billions of people.Supported by Erasmus+ Programme of the European Unioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Designing and implementing online assessment in the clinical workplace

Peer reviewe