Information Seeking MOOCs at the University of Helsinki

Interactive and Integrated

Abstract

The University of Helsinki is a multidisciplinary university with about 31 300 students and 7800 staff. Our bachelor’s and master’s degree programmes were recently redesigned and started off in the autumn semester 2017. At the Helsinki University Library, this led to the reorganization of our information literacy teaching in order to be able to connect with larger amounts of students.

In autumn 2017, we launched two new MOOCs: a Finnish language one for bachelor’s level and an English version mainly for master’s level students. Currently, the MOOCs are compulsory in some study programmes and voluntary in many others. Our main goals were to make the MOOCs interactive and to collaborate with departments to get these courses integrated into their curricula at the point when students need these skills the most.

This article discusses what we have learned during the process of constructing MOOCs and how we tackled the main challenges of meaningful content, integration and interaction. The MOOCs are in continuous development based on received feedback.