After the higher ed frenzied clamor to hop on the MOOC bandwagon in the 2012s, MOOCs have settled into maturity — or more accurately back to the refinement and continued maturation that open courses have enjoyed for over a decade. As expected, more recent courses are more focused, defined, and demonstrate a more disciplined practice than the wild early days of higher education’s jockeying to align and produce courses on Coursera, edX, or Udacity.
To support higher education’s continued interest in this area, Susan Alman and Jennifer Jumba have edited a book titled MOOCs Now: Everything You Need to Know to Design, Set Up, and Run a Massive Open Online Course.
In the chapter about Brown University’s experience developing courses for Coursera, I write about “Library as Partner, Negotiator, and Information Wrangler: Reflections on Early MOOC Development at Brown University.”
The book is now available and hopefully will support ongoing and emerging open courses, both the massive and not-so-massive. I am honored to have had the opportunity to talk about three courses produced at Brown. There is also a chapter by Dorothy Pawlowski, of the Ridgefield Public Library, who selected one of the Brown courses as part of her curriculum for Ridgefield’s adult summer reading program. Thanks to Susan and Jennifer for their idea for the book and the coordination to pull it together!