Abstract
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have evolved in past decade and become one of the prominent parts of the higher education system. The MOOCs provided a promising platform to aspirants who wanted to study further to either enhance their educational status or learn new technologies. With the evolution of MOOC, many platforms started to offer such courses, and many of them are not free as these courses need to register with some nominal fee. The role and need of libraries come at this point for MOOC courses as the courses are bundled with corresponding study material. The print library needs to assist e-library so that it may be compatible with the MOOCs and corresponding resources. The technological shift from print to e-library has a great impact on e-learning followed by MOOCs; however, the issue of MOOC libraries and resources is yet to be resolved to ensure the availability to all the users. The chapter deals with the need of library for MOOCs, its structure and technology shift from print library to e-library, along with the differentiation between e-learning and MOOCs.
TopBackground
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are web based distance learning programs that provide training to learners at a nominal or no costs (Allen & Seaman, 2013, Pant, 2018, Soyemi & Babalola, 2018). The name itself suggests that MOOCs are massive collection of courses which are open to all through online platforms. The registrations are free and the course contents are open and mostly free of cost to the interested participants (Clow, 2013, Klobas, 2014, Pant, 2018, Teixeira et al., 2016). The mere requirement to access such courses is an internet connection which is the backbone of MOOC based study. MOOCs are large-scale educational courses where the registered students are brought together to learn collaboratively through various internet resources including blogs, online discussion forums, tweets, messages etc. (Calter, 2013, Milheim, 2013). MOOCs constitute a new force in higher education as they are the educational innovations having the potential to reach a massive scale of learners from different countries (Ma & Lee, 2019), however they also disrupt traditional higher education system (Stöhr et al., 2019).
Key Terms in this Chapter
E-Learning: The use of computer network technology through Internet to deliver the information to individuals.
Online Learning: Learning through online platforms where the interaction with the instructor may be through video conferencing.
Massive Open Online Courses: Web-based distance learning programs for training the users.
App-Based Learning: A new approach of education involving smart devices equipped with learning apps.
MOOC Library: The library defined for the MOOC users for accessing the contents through web-based portals.
E-Library: An online library for the users, possibly free to access the contents.