Beyond MOOCs Into Greater Openness | From the Bell Tower

"No single term has dominated the higher education landscape as MOOC did in 2012. By far, it is the number one higher education trend of 2012. But, looking back—and ahead—the concept of openness in higher education might be more worthy of our attention. It would be great if I could ease into the new year using the Family Circus method. It requires little new thinking. Just provide some 'rememberies' that rehash last year’s old stuff. While I’m sure FTBT readers would appreciate a column dedicated to my best work of 2012, I prefer to use the first column of the year to ponder the most significant themes or notable trends that emerged in higher education over the past year. It’s a good exercise for getting us thinking about what’s to come in higher education and what it means for academic librarianship. When I began thinking about this year’s review a few months back, it was pretty much a no-brainer that the MOOC revolution was the single biggest higher education development in 2012. Back then I thought that this column would devote itself to that topic. Now I am hesitant to concentrate on MOOCs because I am reasonably sure you are sick of reading about Udacity, Coursera, EduX, and all the others. What more can I add to the huge volumes already written, which is more than you could possibly ever read, even if you read just one article about MOOCs every hour of every day for all of 2013? Instead, I decided to expand our horizons and think more broadly about an even bigger trend in higher education, 2012’s noticeable advancement of the acceptance of openness.  It’s undeniable that the Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) revolution brought the concept of open education into the public arena. It is amazing to consider that at the start of 2012, few people had ever heard the term MOOC, yet by November the New York Times has already labeled 2012 the 'Year of the MOOC.' That’s what happens when hundreds of thousands of individuals around the globe are captivated by a single phenomenon...  While there are still many individuals and institutions that have yet to grasp the benefits of the multiple layers of openness, the one group that matters most is faculty. More than any other stakeholder in higher education, it is faculty members who have the most power to make change happen. They can choose to publish their scholarly output in open access journals. They can decide to forego costly commercial textbooks in favor of free, open texts. They can opt to teach open courses or use open source software as the platform to deliver the learning. We saw faculty demonstrating their acceptance of open options in all these ways in 2012.  Among the most powerful of examples was the work of Timothy Gower, who organized a protest against Elsevier as the symbol of a broken scholarly publishing system in need of an overhaul. Thousands of faculty joined the protest... In a year when the high cost of college and crushing student debt continued to be prominent in the media, it’s hard to imagine there was any good news for students. The one front on which students increasingly enjoyed some savings was textbooks... A new trend that got attention near the end of 2012 was faculty members emerging as independent educational operators. Much like in the Middle Ages, when college educators sold their wares directly to students, more faculty sought to create and manage their own courses—no university required. Realizing that they only needed a few technology tools, including the learning platform, to offer their personalized version of a MOOC, several faculty went out on their own and connected directly with students...  Looking back, 2012 was a good year for academic librarians on multiple fronts. There was positive progress in the causes that they support and for which they advocate. Court decisions in both theGeorgia State University and HathiTrust cases gave reason for hope that the tide might finally be turning in favor or greater openness, enlightened content sharing, and sensible fair use. Ebooks? Maybe 2013 will hold better news..."