Category Archives: Commentary

Time wasted or time invested?

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Yesterday afternoon was our kinda-monthly Library Council meeting. Most academic libraries have a Library Council or something like it: a group made up of  all librarians and/or academic staff in the Library, meant to discuss and make decisions and/or recommendations on matters relating to the academic work of librarians. (This description is probably over-generalized and over-simplified, but I didn’t want to just say, “a bunch of librarians”).

Here at the McGill Library, Library Council was only recently (i.e. in the last few years) reinstated, which means that we are still in the process of figuring out the nuts and bolts of how it will work and the role it will play in the Library. This means that a fair amount of time in these meetings is consumed discussing process, procedures, rules of order, etc. Quite frankly, this kind of thing drives me crazy, not because I don’t think it is important (although I don’t think it is as important as some others feel it is), but mostly because discussing these things ad nauseum in large groups violates one of my guiding principles, and that is the value of abstraction. In this case, there are other people who have more experience, knowledge, and interest in drafting these policies and procedures, and I trust them to be able to put together a draft for the rest of us to review, comment on, and move forward for adoption. I am entirely comfortable abstracting the entire process and letting it run under the guidance of others.

My point here isn’t to get into the tangle of issues that have brought about the current state of our Library Council, but rather to point out that for the most part, I usually feel that the 1.5 hours per month I spend in Library Council is not the best use of my time.

But sometimes great things can happen. Back in October, we passed a motion in support of open access. Then yesterday, we passed a motion in support of Dale Askey, a librarian from McMaster who is being sued by a publisher for having criticized the quality of their publications on his blog.

In the grand scheme of things, passing motions alone will not change the world. But being able to make even these small things happen at the Library is important, if only because they point to the fact that we are starting to have a mechanism by which librarians can come together, discuss issues, and then decide upon a collective course of action.

So it is these small things that remind me that maybe after all having to spend 1.5 hours each month trying to make Library Council work is worth it after all. After all, if we can achieve these things in our current state, just imagine what we’ll be able to accomplish once we get past the start-up phase and start to tackle some of the bigger challenges we face!

MOOCs: Why now?

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This is a question that came to mind while I was at CNI last month, and I think it is a very important one. There are a lot of players getting involved in the promotion and development of MOOCs in higher education, and not all of them have the improvement of teaching and learning as their primary objective. Understanding the various agendas and motivations is critical if we are to take advantage of the attention and funding being directed toward these kinds of initiatives.

So: Why now?

Distance education isn’t new.

The Internet isn’t new.

The Web isn’t new.

E-learning isn’t new.

Open learning isn’t new.

This is a time of extreme financial crisis for most institutions of higher education, so there should be no crazy money available for ego projects.

And yet, we have major universities investing millions of dollars in initiatives to make their teaching and learning experience, supposedly one of their key value offerings, available to anyone for free.

Why now?

I have some ideas to potential answers to this question, but for now I think I will just let this question stand as-is.

I don’t think there is a simple answer to this question, nor do I believe that the answers are the same at every university.

I do feel very strongly, though, that anyone who cares at all about the teaching and learning that goes on in higher education needs to think about this question in their own context. They need to not only pay attention to what is happening at their college or university, but get involved in the discussions and decision-making that is happening.

Don’t get me wrong: I believe there is a tremendous amount of potential in MOOCs to do good in the world, and this renewed, wide-spread interest in teaching and learning has if anything the potential to provide the impetus for a much-needed review and revision of how teaching and learning takes place in higher education.

However, we owe it to ourselves and to our institutions to question the fundamentals of these initiatives and make sure that the priorities are in line with our goals and values.