Abstract

Online education in the field of LIS has continued to spread out in university curricula or with collaborative online programs through consortia among universities. Unlike the traditional online education, however, MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) with the recent advent and advances have risen as a new paradigm in education of the future in that these are massive online learner-centered courses, free and open to any person with no limit on enrollment. With no exception to this phenomenon, the LIS field centered by overseas iSchool universities has been offering MOOCs for core LIS courses. This research conducted a case study of utilizing a part of overseas LIS MOOCs in a core LIS course at domestic University-A, in order to explore the potential for utilizing overseas MOOCs in LIS education. The results of conducting a survey and a focus group interview to students discovered that MOOCs content was interesting and useful and many of them were willing to take other MOOCs in the future, despite some language barriers. Based on these findings, this study suggested the need for establishing educational value, administering methods, ways to motivate students, and designing MOOCs by incorporating the characteristics of the LIS field, as ways to utilize MOOCs in LIS education.