Education information FEATURE


And with a move to a mix of free and paid-for content comes an increased demand for high- quality information resources. ‘Today it’s home- grown content and people are encouraged to use it for free. However, because it is moving towards paid for and credit bearing MOOCs, course providers are using more paid content.’ This brings challenges for both MOOC providers and publishers. Unlike traditional university courses with perhaps a hundred or so students, MOOCs can have tens of thousands of students, and drop-out rates of 90 per cent. With these kinds of figures the traditional sales approaches flounder.


‘The first question a publisher licensing agreement


generally asks is how many


students are on the course. If you say 50,000, the publisher is going to charge you $84,000. Publishing systems were designed for courses with up to about 50 or 100 students,’ explained Bowen.


In response to this, CCC has put together a partnership model and signed deals with several online content providers. The idea is that course providers license content through CCC then they get links to put into their MOOCs. Students then buy the materials directly and the MOOC provider doesn’t have to pay for materials and then try to reclaim money from students or try to second-guess how many will stick with a course.


‘This enables them to disseminate the costs of distribution to students,’ explained Bowen. ‘It’s on average a couple of bucks per article per student, not like pay-per-view pricing levels. Students can buy materials for all or just one part of a MOOC.


‘From a legal standpoint, using content for


MOOCs is very much the same as for traditional classes. It’s the same types of content, just a much larger audience,’ he added. ‘We’ve had several referrals already but it’s not hundreds per month yet, though. I think we’re ahead of the game.’


Some publishers are already working on pilot projects with MOOC providers, where offerings would take a sort of freemium model, with students getting some materials for free as part of the course but if they want to study the topic further then they buy the book or related books. Bowen said he applauds publishers for trialling such approaches but points out that the sheer numbers and range of MOOCs makes this a challenge. ‘They are going to have to make a lot of content available for free to make a difference. With the huge expansion of MOOCs, offering 50 books for free is not even a drop in a bucket,’ he said.


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And, while MOOCs and traditional degree courses may attract different students, there are plenty of lessons to be learned. For example, MOOCs rely heavily on short videos and students are very used to using YouTube in their leisure time.


‘While the role of the physical library has changed


over time, the modern librarian


remains the core centre for many researchers and students on campus for their information needs. This could especially happen when MOOCs are used at an institution in the “class-flipping” scenario whereby even on-site students utilise their professor’s MOOC for the more lecture-oriented teaching, which maximises class time for personal interaction and workshops,’ observed Siebert of Elsevier. Shoman of SAGE agreed: ‘Faculty are finding it harder to get students to read so are increasingly looking at video and seeing if this is a way in. It can often be easier for faculty to


‘Publishers have to be more imaginative


and move beyond lecture and textbook to use


technology more’ Timo Hannay, Digital Science


tell students to watch a video, take a quiz or listen to a podcast than to tell them to read a particular chapter.’


SAGE is looking to develop these ideas in its


products, for example with its Speech Planner tool, which is interactive, online and includes examples of speeches. Shoman said that the company is also building a suite of pedagogical video products that will offer pedagogical tools for students and faculty, as part of their classroom experience, for assignments, or for use in ‘flipping’ the classroom.


‘Offline institutions will have to make better use of online resources to serve users better. Classroom time shouldn’t be just transferring facts. That could be served by digital,’ agreed Ick of Digital Education.


Meanwhile, other boundaries are blurring too. While MOOCs have not really been around long enough for the word ‘traditional’ to apply, the original vision of MOOCs is that they are free and open to all to register. However, there are spin off ideas, where there


is a charge for services such as getting credits towards a degree or indeed a charge for the whole course, as well as courses run for invited participants, moving back towards the idea of more-established online courses. And the use of MOOCs is interesting too. Although the idea might be for a basic level course it seems that many participants have degrees and postgraduate degrees and are using MOOCs to brush up on core skills and knowledge. So there is a diverse picture. Students don’t necessarily want to use the same approaches to information as their fellow students. Technology makes it much simpler to differentiate between and respond to the needs of individual students. Online courses and resources provide a way for people to discretely fill in knowledge gaps. Print remains popular.


When the student of 20 years ago went to his campus bookstore he carried the same reading list as his fellow students – and, likely as not, fought for short-loan copies of the same library books as his classmates too. Today, as with medicine and many other things, the word ‘personalisation’ has crept in. Technology has begun to and will continue to enable students’ learning resources to be tailored for them. ‘Students needs are more diverse than ever, with high numbers of mature, part-time and international students. There is also a greater focus on personalised learning, utilising adaptive technology and flipped learning to allow students to progress at their own pace and to use their preferred learning style,’ noted the Palgrave Higher Education team. Williams of MacMillan New Ventures observed: ‘Students are not interested in reading textbooks, or at least not in a linear way. They use them more like reference books. They are not all going through at the same pace or all looking at the same stuff. It’s about personalising learning to students in the same way that medicine is personalised to the genome.’


MacMillan New Ventures is sister to some well-known and long-established publishing brands but Williams is not afraid to challenge the whole structure of publishing and its role in education. ‘These are disruptive technologies. We didn’t acquire or develop things in order to maintain the status quo,’ he said. Timo Hannay of another sister company agreed: ‘Publishers have to be more imaginative and move beyond lecture and textbook to use technology more. It seems to me that the job of publishers is to innovate. We are still just at the beginning of this.’


JUNE/JULY 2014 Research Information 23


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