Slashdot Mirror

you. post. on. slashdot. you of all people should know anecdotal evidence means squat.

especially in the face of ample evidence contradicting your naive claim: http://www.latimes.com/busines... http://www.npr.org/sections/al... http://genderandset.open.ac.uk...

" online degrees are a high-priced joke"
Your experience shows a US bias, though my understanding is that distance education provision is often of low quality in your country. It looks as if you still have distance learning which has quality control and pedagogical models from 100 years ago. I'm not sure whether this is to lack of regulation, "the invisible hand of the market" driving quality down or other reasons?

Teaching over distance creates specific challenges, though does not imply poor-quality per se.

  In other countries, there are higher quality distance learning systems. Check out The Open University in the UK for example. Degrees from this university are considered to be equivalent to a good quality face to face university. In Europe and other places the idea of using technology for learning purposes is considered valid and not necessarily a joke. There is more of an acceptance perhaps of the concept of "lifelong learning", that studying at a higher level is not necessarily something that can only be done fulltime when one is between the ages of 18 and 25.

If you are going to do that, look at the Open University

http://www.open.ac.uk/

It's what it does.

Have you checked the Open University? [http://www.open.ac.uk/] Not an US institution but could be what you are looking for.

I did check the Open University, but the CS (or IT) courses aren't offered to US residents.

The list of courses available for American residents is here: http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/countries/USA.shtm

Now answer this one: what's been the single biggest innovation in education?

The Open University, 1971 http://www8.open.ac.uk/about/main/the-ou-explained/history-the-ou

Compendium

The Open University has been available on television since at least 1969 and online at OpenLearn since 2006.

Perhaps you should check out the Open University. And that's a real univesity too - one of the top 50 in the UK.

(I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet. Maybe it looks too much like socialism. But it's the good sort I promise you:-)

Cost is a main reason for teaching one to many.

Videoing decent presentations (rather than a professor messing around with a cheap web cam) also costs (equipment, recording and editing staff), so probably is more expensive to run initially than teaching lectures in big halls.

Getting people together in one space probably has other pedagogical values - though you are correct it is possible to have distance based university level education, e.g. The Open University. Even the Open University tries to find group learning spaces for its students though (online forums, residential summer schools) as it believes there is pedagogical value in students sharing a space to work and learn in.

Education as a racket that's all about money? - I suppose this depends on your philosophy. Many people believe there is more to education than just making money, e.g. the bettering of people, social value, psychological self-realisation, broader socio-economic concerns like reducing crime.

The Open University have been doing this stuff literally for decades. I fondly remember as a child watching lectures from teachers with excruciatingly bad 1970s hair styles and clothes.

http://www.open.ac.uk/

Note the fees are the standard (substantial) UK university fees, so it isn't free by any means.

The Open University is a distance-learning university in the UK. They used to broadcast material (not just lectures) overnight on BBC 2, but it seems they stopped this a few years ago. Shame.

Some of it might be here, or else that might be the new "general audience" stuff.

The OU website says "Virtual microscopes, interactive laboratories and online collaborations have taken the place of home experiment kits sent through the post, while late night TV programmes have been replaced by DVDs and online videos".

If distance learning is OK with you, I think the Open University could get on your list.

Huh? The OU has 2.6 million students? 4% of the UK's population?

Huh? Ever heard of "the rest of the world"?

From About the OU :

Our 250,000 students...

-- jch

The Open University in the UK does distance learning courses. Their new course starting this year is T100 - Your Digital Life. http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/course/tu100.htm I was involved in setting up the predecessor course a few years ago (You, Your Computer and the Internet). The basic idea is to take people with little experience of using computers through to being confident with word processing, spreadsheets, navigating the web and building some of it for themselves.

Yes, but did you include the fact that the wind doesn't blow all the time? You would need a helluva lot of batteries to buffer all that fluctuation. What about the environmental impact of disposal of those? Also, how much power is that per unit area? Last I checked, they're not making new land (except a few volcanos...). With breeder reactors, it's possible to reduce the waste from a nuclear plant by over 90%. It also reduces fuel requirements. If you have a 1GW plant, it would take 10,000 tons/day of coal, or 1534 tons/day of 0.3% grade uranium (standard fission), or 1.6 tons/day (breeder). Coal has no future, it doesn't pack enough punch. Wind and solar are unstable and aren't always available. Hydroelectric is limited by the environment. Geothermal may be plausible for baseload generation, but is limited by being readily available mainly in unstable geologic regions (i.e. Yellowstone caldera). Meeting future energy demands is a multi-faceted issue.

We need nuclear breeder reactors located at least 50 miles from civilization in a stable location that is secure from leakage in the event of catastrophic failure and hundreds of miles of superconducting transmission line to efficiently get the power to where it's needed. We're lacking in that - the longest superconducting cable is only 50 miles.

The Open University has over 200,000 distance learners world wide. It frequently gets high ratings in student satisfaction surveys - for three years running it was the highest rated UK university by this measure (beating off Oxford, Cambridge, London, etc). In the UK at least courses from the Open University are recognised as equivalent to those from other good universities, it's not a mickey mouse correspondence place like some "distance universities" but rigourously examined and with its own postgrad and PhD programmes. It's not the cheapest but you pay your money and you get what you pay for. This page seems to tell you about some of the courses aimed at US students.

The Open University has over 200,000 distance learners world wide. It frequently gets high ratings in student satisfaction surveys - for three years running it was the highest rated UK university by this measure (beating off Oxford, Cambridge, London, etc). In the UK at least courses from the Open University are recognised as equivalent to those from other good universities, it's not a mickey mouse correspondence place like some "distance universities" but rigourously examined and with its own postgrad and PhD programmes. It's not the cheapest but you pay your money and you get what you pay for. This page seems to tell you about some of the courses aimed at US students.

Did anyone notice, everyone is so busy squabbling that no-one really answered the question?

I'm 60 this year and have the same problem, I got quite a long way in that I studied some quantum machanics about 40 years ago. As i'm in the UK, I'll probably do an Open University course: http://mathschoices.open.ac.uk/routes/p5/index.html I'm not sure what the equivalent institution is elsewhere.

My university is also switching to not just gmail, but integrating the other Google apps also.

If you look at the pic the crack is in the bottom of the eye bar. meaning the center of the center of the eye bar tried to move in the direction of the crack (compresion force) but cracked the eye bar since it is the portion that has the highest stress concentration.

This is where I disagree with you. I think the crack is consistent with a stress fracture with the bar in tension. Google for "eyebar stress fracture" and you'll find all sorts of links to the Silver Bridge like this one, and it was clearly a failure under tensile loads.

I'm also an engineer, though of the mechanical variety. I took that EIT test years ago, but haven't worked under a PE for enough time so haven't gone that route. I did work for a corrosion laboratory as a co-op back in college, though. I never tested an eyebar, but did test metal to tensile failure quite often - usually to look for hydrogen embrittlement.

http://www.rawfoodinfo.com/articles/art_GEyieldstudies.html
and here
http://technology.open.ac.uk/cts/pita/AnnC11-mono-monsanto.pdf
and here
http://www.daff.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/539443/gm-canola-info-package.pdf

Basically, what a conglomeration of studies cited by the first link shows is that yields are actually lower. I've also heard of studies indicating lower yields for GM soybeans due to less drought tolerance (see second and 3rd) and salt.

So we are gambling on contaminating wild strains with weaker GM strains. Esp. when you factor in global warming.

You spoke? In fact, I'll let you search.

I don't know where you have worked, but The Open University is very highly regarded everywhere I have worked (large companies, household names), and by extension its graduates enjoy the same reputation. The fact that its graduates have shown the enthusiasm and work ethic required to complete full-strength degrees in their spare time reflects well upon these people when assessing their worth to a company.

Surpsingly complicated, couldn't find any simple practical answers. Sorry. I did find some nifty pictures though.

http://www2.orange.co.uk/servlet/Satellite?c=OUKService&pagename=OUKPersonal&cid=1096023564458 [orange.co.uk]

"Orange has the largest integrated 2.5/3G network in the UK. This means that our 3G network covers 85% of the population, so if you happen to go out of our 3G range, you'll be seamlessy transferred to our 2.5G network" ... which is of very little use to me when I am working in the Highlands of Scotland supporting geology students. I can assure Orange that about half the locations we work in still have *no* phone connectivity whatsoever. Not 1G let alone 3G.

In the UK the phone companies still advertise coverage by population rather than by geographical area because that makes them look a lot better. There's some very low populated but large geographical areas once you head away from the south east and big cities... :-)

We've written a tool which guides them through their environmental enquiries. It's still under development but you can read the general information about our project here (Personal Inquiry website). Drupal on top of LAMP, running on the default Xandros OS. Battery life was something that concerned us for the full day trips across two towns, but we solved that by checking out tips on www.eeeuser.com

- switching off wireless in the BIOS (though used in the one hour school playground trials)
- lowering screen brightness a little
- setting the laptops to sleep on lid closing, and asking the students to close lids between locations (we walked across town stopping at a dozen places in each to collect data)
- hiding games so the students didn't run the batteries down playing these between working
- carrying spare batteries and swapping over some (not all required) at lunchtime.

Also used them on the ERA Project supporting disabled access to geology fieldwork in the Scottish Highlands - found that a field geologist could stream video and send photos from one Asus to another across a thrown up wifi network all day, needed one battery change generally, occasionally two for long field days.

I was studying for a BSc at a 1800s red brick UK university, but at my final year I found out Open University (OU), so I dropped out of the red brick university and transferred my credits to OU. I decided to graduate with a BSc Open Degree there, since the open degree allowed me to study whatever I enjoyed most, and then I proceeded to do an MSc, which I am about to complete soon. All these years I haven't been at a traditional classroom, except a few residential OU courses and tutorials. I find OU's open learning system more advanced to classroom teaching, so I am really surprised that the other universities haven't followed suit yet.

This was a recent series on BBC TV. Also a level 1 course at the OU which would be good for your brighter high school students. See: http://www.open2.net/storyofmaths/ http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/bin/p12.dll?C01TM190 http://www.amazon.com/Story-Mathematics-Anne-Rooney/dp/1841939404

Maybe a few residential courses from OU would be interesting.

Let her try some university-level online short courses from the Open University (OU). This will also speed up her university admission.

Here in the UK, there is the "Open University", which before the advent of the VCR, CD-ROM and DVD, would broadcast all their programming on TV. Now, they have the internet which allows them to put the course syllabuses online.

You're right, they don't...
Overview - [1] [2]
Chicxulub - [1] [2]
Shiva - [1] [2]
Boltysh - [1] [2]
And probably more, such as the Silverpit crater, although that's a bit more debated.

Shame about the 256mb memory limit but otherwise is perfect.
For linux that will be enough but would need 512mb to work well with XP (I think-- will read their forums).

... from 1968 (Apollo 8)!
http://history.nasa.gov/ap08fj/photos/b/as08-14-2383.jpg

... from 1976 (Viking)!
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/mars_surface_vik2_big.jpg

... from 1979 (Voyager)!
http://oursun.open.ac.uk/images/jupiterp_cassini_full.jpg

What makes this new "first HD camera in space" so special (yes, I know the Apollo images are shot on film, but Viking and Voyager had video cameras)?

Do you love and enjoy maths? If not, and you need to know maths, then I suggest enrolling to Open University or other course. Another way is to hire a personal tutor to come at your home every weekend or so and teach you.

If you enjoy maths then you can try with a book. You can also go to Wikiversity.

If you know some computer programming, then you can try writing software using maths. Try developing a small graphical application showing a circle and then attempt to create coloured slices in it by using trigonometry, eg like this. Actually programming is full of mathematics and logic, if you know how to look at it.

I wouldn't recommend self study through books, as you have nothing pushing you to do the work, such as assignements. The Open University does a very good maths course (MU120 I think). Your only problem will be doing the exams if you're not in the UK, but the course teaches you up to University level.

Course details are: http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/bin/p12.dll?C01MU120

It will cost you around $600 if you can afford that, but is far more effective in my view. You get a tutor and set texts all online, plus messageboards for the other students and tutorials if you are in the right country.

There's also the UK's Open University http://www.open.ac.uk/ which I believe accepts students from all over the world. I just started MU120 which is a level 1 maths course. The quality is very high and I'm amazed at how much of the maths I learnt at school 35+ years ago is coming back. The OU's degrees are proper validated awards, not some bogus qualification.

http://www.open.ac.uk/

They've been going for years, starting with TV programmes and courses done through the post, to today where they do a lot of internet based stuff.

Does your country not have an equivalent of the Open University? It's been around here since 1969, so learning without a physical university is hardly a new concept. There are a few problems with the approach:

• There is no assessment along the way.
• There is (or was) no good way of asking questions and getting an answer.
• You miss out on a lot of the social components of the university experience.

The first point really boils down to self-discipline. If you are the kind of person who can motivate themselves enough to study without any feedback on your progress then it isn't a problem, but very few people of university age are.

The second is a much bigger problem. I skipped a lot of lectures when I was at university, because I didn't feel I got anything more from being lectured to than I got from reading the notes. The one exception was when I didn't understand something in the notes. If a lecturer explains something badly, you can ask him for a clarification. If a video (or a book) explains something badly, you have a problem. My course (Computer Science) also had programming labs, which helped the weaker students a lot since they could ask questions while completing assignments. Arts subjects tend to have seminars, which are a lot more interactive and couldn't be replaced by something passive easily. You could maybe replace them with videoconferencing, but I don't see that this would gain you anything.

The final point is perhaps the most important. There is a lot more to university than just getting a degree (my mother, by the way, got an OU degree, but it was her second degree and I would definitely recommend them for people who have already been through a university once). Part of the experience is being surrounded by intelligent people from very different backgrounds, which you don't really get to anything like the same degree elsewhere (in my first year I was living with three Americans, a Nepalese guy and two Germans). Student organisations are also a large part of the experience; in my second year I was on the executive committees of the computer society, the choral society, the dark ages reenactment society and the drinking wine society. I was also a member of the student union's finance committee. In addition to these, I took up badminton, squash, yoga, and salsa dancing in my time at university. I can't imagine getting anything like the same depth of experience from a distance learning course.

Have you not heard of the Open University that is run by the BBC? . You an cregister for the course, get the course materials sent to you by post, and the lectures would be broadcast on TV at the odd hours that no-one else would be watching. In those days, the main channels only started at 9.00am for school programming, and closed down at 12.00pm . Between those hours , Open University lectures would be broadcast, and repeated on the weekends. That allowed people to work their day jobs and study part-time, even more so if they had VCR.

But now, the matierals are easier to distribute. From their website:

The course materials

We use a variety of media to help you learn. Your course may use any of the following different media that you will use from home (or wherever you choose to study):

        * printed course materials,
        * set books,
        * audio cassettes,
        * video cassettes,
        * TV programmes,
        * cd-rom/software,
        * web site,
        * home experiment kit.


When Saturday morning kid's TV was boring, you could just change channels and watch presentation on mobius strips, fitting cubes into spheres, coastal erosion, the dangers of matching the harmonics of airplane engines/wings, bridges and wind speed, lasers and travel at relativistic light speeds.

Do you have some free time in your hands? If so, search for management training. I have a Bachelor's in Computer Science and I'm now completing my Master's in Management. It's useful, but in order to benefit fully you have to read research papers from business academic journals and not just learn from the university book or lectures. I suggest exploring the distance learning programmes offered by Open University. A programme of study will help your mind get used to the vocabulary and basic ideas and conceptions of management, so you will be prepared to seek more knowledge yourself during and after the formal study.

You can also register to a professional association focusing on management. I am a member of the IEEE Engineering Management Society and I read their and other journals, and I am also associated with the Chartered Management Institute, in addition to many engineering and computing societies (ACM, BCS, IET...). I actually combine business consulting and computer consulting in my work as an independent contractor, and I have also found that management and business consulting in general is way more profitable than technology consulting, so I would surely recommend every techie geek to get familiar with basic business jargon and concepts. There are endless opportunities for IT people who have a good grasp of business out there.

To be a good manager you have to focus on both your business processes and your people. Design good processes for your orgranisation. But merely focusing on processes isn't enough, as you need capable and motivated people in order to implement them. That's why you have to be a people manager as well. You must make people believe in you and trust you. You need to actively help your people succeed in their roles, not just demand from them to do something. If you have firing powers, make sure everyone is aware of them, but use them sparingly and with great care. If you are involved in hiring, make sure you have a good grasp of human psychology and always ask potential hires to write some code. If you communicate with clients, keep in mind that the client has a problem and needs a solution to it, not a technology or a product. Even if you use the best programming language, you will fail if you didn't understand what the client wanted in the first place. Actually the ability to correctly figure out what a client wants is what distinguishes a programmer who can work independently (self-employed) from one who can't (and therefore needs to be the employee of a company or cooperate with others in a firm). It's difficult because it's like having to work two brains at the same time (a techie brain and a business brain with lots of psychological empathy and listening skills), bit it's possible and those who can do it see great rewards. Keep in mind that since you work for an organisation you will have to understand your boss's vision as well, since you are being asked to implement it.

The problem for businesses is that a large percentage of programmers who are capable of interacting with clients and thinking about business leave to work alone when they realise their true abilities, so companies, especially SMEs, are always short of good middle managers. If you can code and handle human issues at the same time, it's good to realise it early in your career. If you are only one-sided (only code or only business) then you can work on it and improve.

Improving your management capabilities can happen in two stages: Since you are a developer I assume you are well-versed in analytical thinking, so you can start by learning about business processes. After your brain starts thinking in business terms, begin stressing it with people management issues and some psychology. Enroll to some training programmes, read independently recent management research (most research papers that weren't written just to grab a grant have something u

If I was hiring right now I would focus on your open-source experience. The fact that you have been involved in open source is by itself of higher importance than a full-time job or a university degree, according to my own criteria. The reason is that a person who gets into open source has showed initiative and a certain level of intelligence that cannot be assured by a day job or a programme of study. When you are a student, you are confined within the walls of an educational system, which often makes learning more difficult than it needs to be, so university is not the right environment to let your talent shine. When you become an employee, you are again working within the limitations of an environment which often distrusts any hint of creativity, and you are also likely to be granted limited responsibility. There are only two ways in which an intelligent recruiter can assess your real talent: Either from your hobbies (including open source) or from the way you manage your own business (if you have any self-employment or freelance experience, but I usually exclude most consulting occupations from my test). The way I would choose from a pile of applicants actually places A-graders at a disadvantage. I actually would prefer to hire a person with bad marks and many professional and personal interests rather than a graduate with high marks and little or no interests. After all, your grades measure only the time and effort you actually invested on your university education, and not your intelligence or ability. For me, grades fail to predict future performance, even academic. However, be warned that not everyone thinks like me in hiring decisions. Most HR recruiters at companies will probably focus on your work experience, while technical recruiters may also wish to hear about your open source involvement. Postgraduate university departments are less predictable: Many universities place too much emphasis on grades, while others are keen to accept students with work experience, open source involvement, and involvement in professional organisations (eg ACM, IEEE, BCS, IET, ACS). The problem with recruitment is that only an intelligent recruiter with freedom of action can choose the right staff, but in the real world many recruiters are either stupid, restricted by bureaucracy, or both. You have to choose what kind of recruiters to target. I think the best course of action is to take a hybrid integrative approach, attempting to keep your options as open as possible, therefore not excluding recruiters seeking high grades from your target list, especially if you wish to become a university professor someday. Even if you have bad marks now, you can try to get higher marks in a another programme, like these offered by the Open University (UK) or even complement your low-grade degree with a postgraduate qualification (perhaps a PgCert or PgDip if you can't wait for a full Master's) in another academic field (eg business management). The most important thing to remember is, however, the opportunity costs associated with day jobs and education. If you give all your time to an employer and/or a bunch of professors you may have not enough time to do somethign worthwile in your life, such as participating in open source. After you somehow get in the position of being able to pass most recruiters's tests (through grades or experience), I suggest that you invest your time as much as possible on a project that excites you, and this can be an open source project, self-employment, a charity, or anything else you believe you could excel at. Jobs and schools do have some value and should not be easily denounced, but you should always aim higher (if you do have the inate ability to climb higher, that is).

We're currently testing the Ricoh 500SE for geology students' field trips, wandering around sand quarries, mountain areas, with wireless networks to connect them back to base or over the internet to a field studies centre. Last year's project here. So would be of interest to us. Right now we're looking at ruggedised kit for tough environments but we're working towards coming up with a generic solution that could help schools and universities build their own off-the-shelf field trip kit. So a card that could be fitted into the school's own more standard digital cameras would be great. The last thing you want to be doing in 'the field' is popping open cameras and fiddling around with tiny cards, all sorts of comedy potential for the cards to get lost in the mud/sand to get into the camera etc. Wireless beaming the data back to a laptop in the school bus parked down the road or straight back to the field studies centre, a much nicer solution indeed.

Go to university. If you can't, take some distance learning courses from such universities like OU. You could also try to become self-employed by fixing your neighbours's PCs, etc.

If you have tried to investigate the copyrighted AP story you've rewritten at Slashdot you would discover many more interesting facts on the subject. First of all beside proclaiming it's intention to switch to FOSS (since MS and other proprietry sw vendors are blocking their access to security patches based on IP addresses they use) Cuban government sites are mostly optimized for IE6 and 800x600 resolution and government agencies and ministries are still using MS as their OS of preference. In 2002. Castro himself founded "la Universidad de las Ciencias Informáticas" (University of Information Sciences) or UCI - a very secretive facility that still doesn't have a properly functioning website (sic!). It is UCI, with it's "claimed" 10,000 students and 5,000 teaching staff, which stands behind Cuban efforts to build their own Linux distro (Novalinx) based on Gentoo as well as behind Castro's vision of Cuba as free software player on a global scale. Furthermore, Stallman's lecture, titled "El movimiento del Software Libre y el sistema operativo GNU/Linux", was part of an 3rd International Workshop on Open Source Software held as part of an Havana expo called "Informatica 2007." as well as 14 other International conferences. First hand experience from Marc Eisenstadt's who was present at the lecture. As you can see there is much more behind "Stallman's win" than just extracting parts of the original AP story, in light of the fact that even FOSS oriented UCI students are mostly using pirated copies of MS Windows his win in Cuba is even more questionable. Not to mention that for ordinary Cuban's owning a computer is illegal as well as any form of internet usage outside "official" channels.

A degree is good for everyone, no matter whether you are 30, 50, 70, or 90, and no matter whether you can actually use it for a career. The purpose of a degree is to broad your mind and make you think better and become a better human. Degrees are not designed to help you feed your stomach; this is what a job is for. While a degree that can be useful for jobs is of course better, I think you should pay attention to your mind and your education first (especially considering that you have successfully penetrated the job market), and not surrender your education to your employer's needs. Of course, if you can find a degree that is good both for your education and your career, it's better (as all win-win situations).

In choosing a degree you have to take into account:

• Your primary concern must be your personal interest in the degree's subject. You can't learn something if it feels boring.
• Your second concern must be the degree's educational worth and the university's reputation. Is it a real degree from a real university? Does it involve academic theories, abstract concepts, and preferably some research component? Remember that degrees are given by universities, not companies. If you want vocational training take the certification route.
• Your third concern must be the value of the degree in the real world: Can the degree open up new opportunities in the academic or professional job markets? Could you become a professor or an engineer with that degree?
• Your fourth concern must be how easily you can combine the degree with your life. Is it an online programme that lets you work while studying? Is the university near your home? Does the lectures weekly programme suit you? Is it offered in a language you know? (if not you may have to learn the language first), and are you able to pay for it? (if not you might prefer to work and earn money first, then enrol to university).

I recommend Oxford's Software Engineering programme and the Open University (UK). If you decide to take the certification route I would suggest to take university certificates in addition to professional certificates (like Cisco's CCNP). For example I have found this company and O'Reilly Learning offer vocational training programmes with non-academic continuing education certificates issued by real universities.

Career-wise, I think you should get into management or other supervisory positions as quickly as you can. Enrol to a management programme in college, or do anything possible to get entitled to add "management skills" on your CV (resume).

Another possibility would be to become a teacher. Get any advanced computer science and education qualifications you can find, and go teach.

Note that education may be too pricey in USA, but it may be much cheaper for you to enrol to a UK distant education programme, like the ones offered by Open University.

Just a note for information. The Open University has now joined in the Open Courseware Consortium using the name OpenLearn and started to make some of its course material available for free unde Creative Commons. It is not quite on the same model as MIT as the OU is releasing fairly short self-study units rather than whole course at a time. Anyway to see more of the learning materials go to:
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/
There are also some interesting tools available for people who want to remix or work around the material. These are in a companion site at:
http://labspace.open.ac.uk/
(Admission - I do work for the OU.)

Just a note for information. The Open University has now joined in the Open Courseware Consortium using the name OpenLearn and started to make some of its course material available for free unde Creative Commons. It is not quite on the same model as MIT as the OU is releasing fairly short self-study units rather than whole course at a time. Anyway to see more of the learning materials go to:
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/
There are also some interesting tools available for people who want to remix or work around the material. These are in a companion site at:
http://labspace.open.ac.uk/
(Admission - I do work for the OU.)

Absolutely agree the OU is worth doing. You don't need to be UK resident though (or a UK citizen). You do lose the subsidy - for a typical post-grad IT course this bumps the price from around 900 pounds to 1210 (though prices are going up). See for example http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/bin/p12.dll?C01wM88 7#souk