Open Courses at MIT

An anonymous submitter was the first to point out this New York Times article - MIT is planning a major project to put most of its coursework up on the Web over the next ten years. The article is a little short on details - probably because there aren't many yet - but there's an MIT factsheet that has some more information.

Comments

It will fall short

[Wansu]

NCSU undertook a pilot project to get 25 courses on the web by 2000. They succeeded but got mixed results.

Someone has to keep up the web pages. Ultimately, the professor is responsible for the content. Many professors didn't want the extra work. One math professor did an excellent job. I thoroughly enjoyed his course. After this pilot, only a few courses are still offered on the internet there, including the ones taught by this professor.

You have to show up for the exam.

There's a trend toward online books with passwords. This trend should be resisted. The online books are inconvenient, password protected and you'll have no reference book when the course is over.

Many colleges trumpet their internet courses but doing the necessary work required for a CSC degree online is usually not an option.

Re:Nothing to lose

[Zachary Kessin]

Well I would disagree, Yes there are many things that you can learn by buying the book and reading it. But in many fields advanced studies require more than just buying a book and reading it. I will tell you that in many fields of endevor (and not just the sciences) that learning under an older and more experienced teacher can not be done without.

If nothing else a Proffesor will be able to guide your reading. A textbook can sound very authentic and correct and yet be totaly *WRONG*.

Re:Distance "Learning"

[Zachary Kessin]

I don't think that is MIT's objective. I think it is in part to work with other universities around the world to develop new course work. When I went to univesity (Brandeis) the Computer Science undergrad courses were very much based on MIT's classes. The Same no, but they did use some of the same text books etc. If someone is trying to develop a class at some university they will be able to look at MIT's stuff online and use it as a place to start. This could be very helpfull to someone.

Re:Nothing to lose

[Zachary Kessin]

Your loss than. There were classes I took in school where the class itself was a total waste of time yes, there were also some in which if I did not go to class I would have not learned nearly as much.

And if the only reason that you are there is to get a piece of paper then you are waisting a good deal of money. There is a lot that you realy do need a good teacher for.

I'm hopeing in the fall to start studing the Talmud with my Rabbi, not something to take on without someone who knows what they are doing.

Re:Nothing to lose

[Zachary Kessin]

And Yours appears to be to assume that just because you did not need to attend lecture that the Profs had nothing to teach you. Now its true I have no idea where you went to school so I don't know. Maybe where you were this is true. When I was in school (Brandies) at least in Physics there is no way I could have done at all well without the profs. Now maybe where I went to school is harder than where you went, or you are smarter than I.

And ofcourse maybe you had a run of bad teachers I've had more than my share of them myself. And to be truthfull a University education should be about more than getting a good job when you get out. Take a lit course or history or something.

Already done.. sort of.

[bjb]

This has already been done by (at least) the university I attended several years ago. During my last year at school, the web was just starting to catch on (1996) with "regular folk", and the professors were putting up all of the course material on the web. Granted there was no "Click here for education" button on the main university web site, but it was all there if you spent the time to click through department->professor->course information and notes.

Now the fact that it is MIT that is doing it (read: making it public knowledge) is cool, but its certainly nothing more than "we're a very prestiegeous university so...".

my two cents...

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Re:this is how

[Peter La Casse]

Regarding "cheating" by studying old exams...

I had a professor (at the University of Wisconsin - Madison) who would give us past exams to study for. He claimed that he always included some questions from past exams on his current exams, so studying these past exams was to our benefit. He also claimed that despite this "early warning," the grades on the exams still followed a typical bell curve, with a few doing very well, most doing ok and a few doing extremely poorly.

The semester that I had this class, the two exams were composed entirely(!) (not partially) of questions from previous exams. Nonetheless, the performance curve still matched the curves from previous semesters. The professor claimed that it indicated that no matter what, a healthy percentage of students were too lazy to study, and those few who did study the past exams, as instructed, deserved their higher scores.

Anyway, my point is that it's not cheating or in any way unethical to study the material being tested, as long as it's with the instructor's ok. Since exams don't really measure much of value anyway, I'm not too concerned that having previous exams available makes it easier for people with at least half a brain to score well. (Those people usually score better anyway.)

Re:Good idea?

[djweis]

I think you may be a bit to cynical about this.

• The exams in a class are related to what you are expected to learn in the class. Seeing what the exams cover should mirror what you are learning in the class anyway.
• I don't think it's an unreasonable amount of effort to keep it up to date. It would actually be less effort and waste than mass photocopying for people that won't use the items anyway.
• You should be able to expect an up to date copy of course materials from professors. They are professionals that are responsible for distributing information and knowledge.
• There are computers available for use by all students, they are called computer labs. Also, this is meant to supplement existing materials, for people that wouldn't have access to it at all.

This is more like advertising or a free preview of what you would receive if you were a student at MIT, not a replacement for a degree.

Re:Who cares?

[jeffry_smith]

You're trolling, obviously. As an MIT grad, I can assure you they have a strong humanities program (8 humanities courses are required to graduate). I graduated with a music major.

In terms of CS students doing CS from day one - only if they choose to. In fact, you don't even choose your major until Sophomore year - freshman are doing the basic courses (physics, calculus, chemistry, etc), and getting a feel for what they want to go into.

In terms of uniformity of students, well, yes, they are uniformly smart enough to get in. Other than that, they come from around the world, all cultures, all income levels, all (you name it).

Most valuable about the MIT education was learning to solve problems, and getting direct info from some of the best folks doing research in the fields (of course, some were good teachers, some weren't). You can't beat getting the latest & greatest info from the person doing the research in the labs there (I took courses from people who literally wrote the textbooks, and they gave more info, because the textbook was out-of-date by the time it was published).

Pros & Cons

[maggard]

It's a great thing that MIT's doing, but a few observations:

• Does this mean that MIT's moving away from Project Athena?

  Athena (which brought us X Window by the way) was to be an academic-version of what became the WWW before there was a WWW.

  Folks could log in from anywhere, use a standard environment and take advantage of flexible tools to interact with their faculty & classmates, perform online coursework, use computer-aided-learning exercises like simulations and of course access do general computerey things like word-process etc. Are the materials & systems developed to support all of this to be dropped or will there be an attempt to migrate all of this material & labor to the WWW?

• What about an Instructor's rights to their syllabus?

  Recently there was much turmoil at schools like UCLA when the university insisted instructors post their materials online and many refused.

  In refusing the instructors pointed out that their syllabuses were their tools-in-trade; individually developed by them & were expected to go with them when they came or left. Indeed much of these materials were written or otherwise developed by the individual instructors over the course of years and should the school attempt to publish them without the consent & remuneration of the faculty they'd simply place them under their personal copyright. How is MIT expecting to handle these situations?

• What technical standards will MIT use in distributing it's materials?

  As noted before much of Athena's material may be problematic to move to today's online environment; how will MIT "future-proof" it's new investment in online materials to ensure they remain useable for the near future?

  HTML has come, gone through many revisions, and is now being depreciated in favor of XML all in the span of a decade. Most XML folks will confirm that they expect some large-number of the DTD's now being developed to fail or quickly become irrelevant. SGML is the preferred format for many commercial & government documents and is readily exported to it's descendants HTML & XML but few institutions produce material in it outside of large-commerce & government.

  Indeed if there are any standards for academia they're TeX, Postscript, WordPerfect 5.2 (common standards in legal & medical) and often some form of MS Word - none of which are easily/usefully portable to the WWW nor for which there are universal native viewers. Compounding the problem is the fact that much of this material will need to be accessible in a format that is translatable or speakable (for blind folks as well as for non-native Anglophones)

  Lastly many MIT courses & their online components include non-textual material: audio, video, interactive applications, etc. What standards will apply to these? Will all material be available in standard formats, will they be in unencumbered formats and if not how will the licensing be handled? For interactive materials will Java and/or other Java-like languages be used & platform independence maintained or will there be portions that require "BigCorp v.2 patch 117" (released 2002, still required in 2020) ?

Again I applaud MIT in it's decision & feel they are doing the world a great service by both opening their own curriculum & leading the way for others to do the same. This program could have profound impact (both positive & negative) across not only academia but also in how governments (particularly 3rd world ones) support & develop their indigenous educational systems, the standards expected by hiring institutions, and what the "standard body of knowledge" is considered to be in any subject.

I would be very interested in /. Arranging some sort of interview with the authors of MIT's plan & get their thought on these and many of the other questions that have been raised by /.'ers.

Re:good idea bad idea

[The Mayor]

Hmm. Interesting, overall. But I do have a few things to say.

As for your bad ideas, I don't think MIT is worried that students will sheat on exams. This is a voluntary action, and any tests that professors intend to reuse will likely not be posted.

Also, I don't see the negative of "students can skip more classes referring to the web and how they already 'learned' [sic] something." I mean, this is a positive for students that are unable to make classes. And I don't know for certain about MIT in specific, but most universities at this level don't require attendance for classes.

The goal of this program isn't to provide an MIT-caliber education for free, either. As such, "learning something with the assistance of a vocal teacher [sic] is not the same as reading it" is not really a negative. It's well understood.

Now, as for governments providing "highly reduced incentives [sic]", I think the author must remember that MIT is a private institution. Now, the government might want to encourage businesses to do nice things to MIT in exchange for this. But this is not the role of the US government, at least not with private universities.

As for "in the U.S. your [sic] supposed to be entitled to a free education", this simply does not apply to university. This, in fact, is patently false. This, of course, is the reason why the US university system has developed strong partnerships with industry, why there are private universities, and why the US university system has significantly larger resources at its disposal than other nations' systems.

But, all said, it's a Good Thing[tm]. MIT isn't going to get extra money for this material by keeping it private (at least, not a significant amount), so opening it up is the Right Thing[tm].

Oh, and I certainly hope all those children of welfare families go out and learn from these texts. Realistically, however, I don't think they will. I will, though.

Re:good idea bad idea

[The Mayor]

You misinterpret my statements. By private, I mean that the university does not received government money for operation. Yes, the government does give these universities money through the form of grants from groups like the NIH and the NSF, but these are for specific research programs, not for general operation.

Private universities (and the public universities in the US) get most of their funding from their endowments. For instance, at my alma matter, Rice University, most (greater than 80%) of the annual budget (last year, $286 million for a campus with 2600 undergraduate and 1400 graduate students) comes from the endowment ($3.37 billion - yes, close to $1 million per student). The situation is similar at other "prestigeous [sic] (technical) private universities", such as Stanford, Cal Tech, MIT, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton.

Now, if you read my statements, I say that our private universy system has a) developed strong partnerships with industry (it has, far more so than in Europe), b) why there are private universities in the first place (Europe doesn't have very many), and c) why the US university system has significantly larger resources at its disposal (annual budgets per student at US universities eclipse those of European universities, despite European governments spending more money per student than US universities). Point c) is not causal from point a); instead, point c) is causal from an eduacation system that is not free, and thus have large endowments given by almumni. Sorry if I did not make that clear before. Points a) through c) were separate points, causal from having a non-free education system.

In fact, even our public universities have large endowments. For instance, University of Texas at Austin had (my data are dated by now--from ~1990) the largest endowment of any university in the world, followed closely by Yale. Now, UT is a public university. Why would they have a large endowment? Because alumni give money to the university to help subsidize the education for future generations. The for-pay university system in the US has led to the US university system (both public and private) having enormous resources at their disposal.

Re:good idea bad idea

[The Mayor]

Hmm...I should have added that tuition from students accounted for something like 1.5% of Rice's annual budget. Again, my figures are a little dated, but the endowment accounts for about 80% of the budget. Most of the remainder comes from private grants (from corporations, non-profit, and not-for-profit organizations), while the rest comes from government research programs, such as NIH and NSF.

The NIH and the NSF account for 73% of government research spending (source: The Economist). The US government spends about $28 billion in research. As a nation with the largest economy (about 25% of the world GDP is from the US), it makes sense that the US government is also the largest research spender. Compare spending per capita, or spending per GDP, and you might get a different picture, however.

Re:A couple quick notes...

[Art Tatum]

Many people noted that this would be great for the people who can't "afford" to go to MIT. Well, at the risk of raising 1000 flames, what about the quality of the students you work with?

True. But if you just want access to the basic information, this is great.

Re:Who cares?

[KyleCordes]

An MIT alum told me that he felt that in addition to a great experience being there, he had found a big advantage of an MIT education is the "ooh wow" factor... people (including hiring managers) assumed must be really smart/capable/etc. because he went to MIT. This "glow" could continue for decades.

What about Open Exams and Qualifications?

[The Dodger]

Putting the coursework online for free is fantastic. The next logical step would be to publish curricula and allow anyone who wants to take exams to obtain MIT-approved qualifications.

Obviously this sort of thing couldn't be free, as there would be costs involved in exam locations, supervision and marking, but I bet it would be popular.

Two problems, however.

Firstly, I bet that MIT's management would fear that something like this would dilute the perceived quality and value of MIT degrees, but at the end of the day, if the Open students are taking the same exams and being marked by the same criteria, as the "real" MIT students, then there's no real difference.

Secondly, tutorials, labs, workshops and ongoing/coursework assessment are being used more and more in educational institutions. However, the UK's Open University holds tutorials in countries other than the UK, so there's no reason why MIT couldn't follow suit.

D.

And I paid big $$$$ for my MIT degree

[peter303]

Its interaction with people that count.
Its pretty much as before when you could go to
the MIT bookstore (Harvard COOP) and buy the
same textbooks as the students. Some people are
able to educate themselves that way. Others
require the prodding of regular lectures,
assignments, and tests.

Re:And I paid big $$$$ for my MIT degree

[dboyles]

An MIT degree will still be worth the same to you, this doesn't cheapen it at all. The difference between actually attending MIT and just reading the stuff online is night and day. Firstly, as a student you're expected to keep up with assignments, study for tests, etc. If you don't do that, you suffer the consequences (low grades). Your diploma and transcript reflect this achievement. If you fail or withdraw from a class, it shows up. Not so with people reading the material online. What proof is there that the individual comprehended the material?

Secondly, and probably equally important, when you went to MIT you interacted with others who are probably at least similar to your coworkers. Working in teams, study groups, and making friendships is a very underrated part of college.

If MIT follows through with this (and given the nature of the university I feel that they will, at least to an extent), it will really benefit the non-MIT student who wants to understand a little bit more about the material. I go to a public university, and it would be a tremendous help to be able to search MIT class materials for extra information.

I think that the people hypothesizing about this move creating a cheating problem haven't been in college for a few years; most (good) professors these days put old tests, notes, etc. online for students to use. When we're talking about MIT, we're not talking about slacker professors who are just going to reuse the same test semester after semester. Concerns about cheating shouldn't prevent this project from being realized.

Re:And I paid big $$$$ for my MIT degree

[parl]

IIRC there was a student org which PUBLISHED the tests for the Freshman set of courses for the last several (3, 4, ?) years. In particular, the Chem tests were quite helpful because there weren't THAT many fundamentally different questions they could ask. The numbers could be slightly different, but the method of solution was the same. Ahh, that big ACCO-Press binder. Ross

Much material is on the web already

[peter303]

If you polk around you can find some MIT courses
with syllabi, homework, and even text.
Some of the departemental seminars are in
streaming video.

Faculty concerns and reluctance

[peter303]

This issue has come up at many universities. Some faculty have resisted. Concerns include:

Extra cost of polishing materials for wider audience, especially in time. (I cant see how better material would help rather than hinder both paying and non-paying students.)

Conflict with textbook publishing. The popular textbooks, several which are written by MIT profs, are big money makers for the publishing houses and the profs themselves. Some pubishing contracts even prohibit open distribution of texts. (Web texts would facilitate more timely upgrades.)

Theft of material. Lazy or less competent teachers elsewhere could appropriate and call it their own. (However, the web makes it easy to identify thieves too. Many insitutions would fire blatant plagairzers.)

Quality control. Would MIT set standards before allowing material on the open web? Or would each prof decide standards him/herself?

Beyond textbooks

[peter303]

Except for some fundamental princples,
by the time its gotten to a textbook,
it is not state-of-the art.

Go to the bookstore of a MIT-class university and
you'll find upper-level undergraduate and graduate
book selections rather thin. The reason is because
much of that information has not yet been
distilled into textbooks and the prof, who is
inventing that information, is filtering it for you.

Re:Good idea?

[jefft]

Let me respond with a little realism here.

• A large percentage of the students at MIT already have access to archives of virtually all materials from a course. They're "known" as bibles and they're especially common at the many fraternities at MIT.
  
  Professors are aware of this and the content of the tests change quite often. And believe me even knowing what will be covered on the test is of limited help.
  
  This would also help put students without access to bibles on a more even footing.
  
  
• Professors will hardly notice having to do this. Pity the the poor TA.
  
  
• MIT students get screwed so hard and so frequently that a class with an out of date web site hardly appears on the radar.
  
  
• 95% of MIT undergraduates live in dormitories or official living groups. Anyone who would be classified as "underpriveleged" lives in a dorm on campus. There are numerous public computer facilites available on campus. This is the result of Project Athena which is quite popular with the student body. Anyone who wants access to the material can get easy access to it. Though, it can be hard to find a free machine near the end of the term.
  

Try and get a few facts before posting stuff like this.

Re:Lectures

[grappler]

I'll second that. I'm a college student and I haven't taken notes in a class since sixth grade (when the teacher made me and I did worse as a result).

I was always the kid where every time we had to copy an overhead, I was the slowest by a full minute. If I just sit and listen though, I'll absorb it. If there are gaps in comprehension (it's amazing how many people aren't even able to tell whether they comprehend something or not) I will read the textbook. It's all there in grammar-checked prose, along with examples and extra detail. Why in the world would I ever want to take notes? It's not like I'd read them anyway.

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Re:Good idea?

[sethg]

Students at MIT arn't required to have a computer?

Nope. There are clusters of workstations all over campus, and students get accounts, email, and disk space on MIT's servers. I brought my computer with me to MIT when I was a freshman, and I can't even remember turning it on while I was a student.

Does MIT provide dial-up accounts to students?

Yes, but I'm not sure if the service is free.

Are the dorms wired?

Yes.
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Re:Such a brilliant quotation!

[sethg]

Abelson rocks! (ps his book with the Sussmans is also great. If only they would put it on the web...!)

They did.
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the humanities at MIT

[sethg]

In addition MIT lacks a strong fundamental general education curriculum. CS students start doing CS from day one. There is no strong arts or humanities program. In addition, the student population is too uniform to be of interest. Students do not learn to effectively communicate with other kinds of people or across cultural boundaries because everyone there is the same, and those that aren't don't speak English anyways.

At the time I attended MIT (about ten years ago), the HASS (humanities, arts, and social sciences) departments at MIT were in a weird political situation. The people in charge of undergraduate education were concerned that (in one dean's words) "too many MIT graduates work for too many Harvard and Princeton graduates", and they saw the HASS requirement as a tool for giving the geeks enough Culture that they could move into management. The heads of the science and engineering schools were annoyed by this, because tightening up the HASS requirement would give students less time for their science and engineering study, and because changing the admissions requirements to admit more "well-rounded" students meant that the average incoming freshman would not do as well as before in basic physics and calculus. Meanwhile, the HASS faculty were kind of peeved to be seen as mere service providers, rather than as professors of academic disciplines that were just as legitimate as math, physics, and computer science.

However, if you go to MIT and you want to have a good knowledge of the humanities, you can get it. I majored in political science and minored in women's studies, and I thought the classes I took in those programs were excellent (and, in case you're wondering, the instructors in the women's studies program were not pushing a militant feminist "party line"). A friend of mine graduated with a double-major in physics and computer science. Heck, one of my freshman-year suitemates graduated with a degree in creative writing.
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Re:Not Everybody Learns Well in the Classroom!

[alienmole]

I agree with most of what you said in this message, but this point is BS. Such students - and I was often one of them, depending on the lecturer - can and do skip lectures and read the books and do well. I know I did that often as an undergrad.

Er... because you did that, that's true of all highly intelligent students? I see... Was Logic one of the lectures that you used to skip? ;)

Saying "the books are there, go read them" is a kind of "let them eat cake" argument. If the entire system is oriented towards delivering information through lectures, students who don't do well in lectures aren't given much guidance or support - they're left to fend for themselves, which you apparently did in some cases. That's what I'm suggesting needs to change.

As much as anything else, offering options to students would help them realize that one size isn't supposed to fit all. Finding that the entire structure in which you're supposed to receive your education doesn't suit you tends to make you question why you're there at all.

Anyway, I'm glad to hear you're being proactive about this kind of thing. Back when I went to university, if /. had existed then, you can bet none of my professors would have heard of it, let alone be reading it.

Re:Not Everybody Learns Well in the Classroom!

[alienmole]

I don't disagree with much of what you've said - my original post was obviously somewhat in vent/rant mode.

But the scenario you described: "thrown into that format, they would drift away or fail miserably", also applies perfectly to those who may be extremely bright but don't adapt well to the lecture format. So what the current system does, in effect, is discriminate against a minority group, for the very reason that they are a minority - since if we were a majority, you can bet the system would be skewed towards us, and the rest would just be remedial education.

The systems in use need to become more flexible - a wider variety of options need to be made available to students. I wasn't really arguing for the complete abandonment of lectures, and I certainly wasn't arguing that the online format should be used to the exclusion of all else - I think that would be a very bad idea. But less blind reliance on the lecture format is needed, along with recognition of and at least some support for the spectrum of requirements of students. I know at this point you're thinking "does this guy know how many graduates we have to churn out every year?" or something along those lines. But are lectures as a primary form of communication really the most efficient use of the lecturer's time? I'm not suggesting changing or improving things will be easy, but it's encouraging to see an institution like MIT trying new things.

I think the lecture format is a kind of crutch - easily repeatable and relatively undemanding for all concerned (no offense intended - I'm not trying to diminish what educators of all kinds do, this is more about systemic issues). It's also an easy model to use for almost any number of students, i.e. it's fairly scalable. It doesn't require any experimentation - it's well tested, and works with an acceptable percentage of students.

But just because we have a system that's good enough for many people, doesn't mean it can't and shouldn't be improved. Unfortunately, it's very entrenched, the institutions using it tend to be rather conservative, and how to change it isn't obvious, so improvements aren't likely to be easy. Plenty of creativity, experimentation, and risk-taking will be required. My hope is that the changes required to accomodate online education will trigger other changes, ultimately creating a new, more inclusive balance in a system that's been relatively static for quite some time.

I suspect the benefit to society as a whole could be quite great - as it is, some of the most valuable human capital is being squandered. The negative effects of being put through an unsuitable education system can be high. Then again, I can't help wondering whether this isn't all just an unconscious (or conscious) social balance mechanism, in which those who have the potential to be most dangerous and disruptive to society and the status quo are neutralized or at least hobbled.

"The nail that sticks up gets hammered down."

Not Everybody Learns Well in the Classroom!

[alienmole]

I, and I'm sure thousands of others, will second that. Finally, there are alternatives to the traditional teaching methods geared towards the lowest common denominator. It's only natural that the sheep will complain, though, since they don't understand and don't know how to take full advantage.

Why is it that the lowest bandwidth communications channel that humans have - the auditory channel - is used as a primary channel for delivering educational information? The whole concept of a "lecture" amazes me - one person stands and effectively reads from notes (no matter how well he's memorized them over the years) while N people sit and write down what he's saying. This has to be some kind of strange sociobiologically-rooted phenomenon related to herding behavior, but do we really need it nowadays? I'm not saying there shouldn't be face-to-face communication and Q&A's, but "lectures"? Maybe once every now and then, when someone like Martin Luther King Jr. or Abraham Lincoln has something to say, but other than that...

The same thing happens in government - I was watching the music copyright hearings on CSPAN, with people like Don Henley and the RIAA testifying. Sen. Hatch starts out warning about how little time they have, after which all those testifying each in turn proceed to read their prepared speech. Sheesh! And people wonder why government is slow and inefficient???

</RANT>

Re:Not Everybody Learns Well in the Classroom!

[Zer0Rage]

It sounds like the lectures you have experienced haven't impressed you, but lectures can be very helpful. While reading from a book or notes verbatim is both a waste of time and money (I have a professor doing this currently) I have also had the priviledge to be in a class where the lecturer discussed the material from the book as it matters today, in everyday life. Another professor used the materials as a starting point and forced you to look at the subject from a different point of view than the book presented. I guess what I am trying to get at is that the documentation students read is supposed to be a tool for the teachers that will give the student a base from which to expand upon. Few can read a book and understand something better than if they experience something, and the lecture - if you lucky - will not just repeat what the written material was, but expand upon it and open avenues of thought.

Re:Not Everybody Learns Well in the Classroom!

[commodoresloat]

I'm a college prof and I use both traditional lecture and the web. I agree that the traditional lecture format leaves something to be desired, but the complete abandonment of it would only help those students who are highly self-motivated and who have excellent reading comprehension skills. I don't teach at MIT or Oxford so I can't count on having more than one or two such students in a class. And contrary to what another poster said, this is not about graduating as many rich students as possible; it is about trying to actually educate those students that you have, whatever the level they are at. My students are neither rich nor exceptionally brilliant, and their high schools and community colleges have done a poor job of teaching them basic reading comprehension skills (much less the ability to read and process significant amounts of material on their own). I have taught a few classes totally online, and that works very well for certain kinds of students (who self-select into the online formats), but if the majority of students were thrown into that format, they would drift away or fail miserably.

Re:Not Everybody Learns Well in the Classroom!

[commodoresloat]

But the scenario you described: "thrown into that format, they would drift away or fail miserably", also applies perfectly to those who may be extremely bright but don't adapt well to the lecture format.

I agree with most of what you said in this message, but this point is BS. Such students - and I was often one of them, depending on the lecturer - can and do skip lectures and read the books and do well. I know I did that often as an undergrad. But I agree with your basic argument:

The systems in use need to become more flexible - a wider variety of options need to be made available to students.

I fully agree with this; that's why I do teach all my classes at least partially online using web sites and hypernews as a discussion forum (yeah I know I should use slashcode or something like that but not today...). I also put most of my course materials, often including lecture notes, on the web so students can access them at their leisure. They are also publicly available to other instructors and so forth that way.

The WWW has truly enriched my students' educational experience, and it's a hell of a lot better way to deliver information. It's one thing to tell students something unusual that they may not have heard before; it is quite another to show them the evidence of it at the click of a button. The problem is often getting them to click the button, but that is another story....

I know at this point you're thinking "does this guy know how many graduates we have to churn out every year?"

Nah. As far as I am concerned, "churning out graduates" is Administration's problem. My problem is educating those students who do wind up in my classroom.

Heh, speaking of which, I should get back to grading papers and quit reading slashdot....

Information Privatization

[leandrod]

Check the headline at http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2001/ocw.html... it's against the "privatization of information". This implies that "information ought to be free", even if it was not necessarily the author's intention!

--
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete Dutra
DBA, SysAdmin

Re:good idea bad idea

[leandrod]

To have big fundings from the private sector is not necessarily a good idea. For one, CS courses are too "practical", that is, oriented to products, not to the fundamentals of the field. There are many courses in Universities that simply do not belong there, but are in the U. because of corporate funding.

I suggest reading Skyscrapers with Shack Foundations, by Fabian Pascal, and Edsger Dijkstra's Convocation Speech at Univ of Texas at Austin.

--
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete Dutra
DBA, SysAdmin

Re:Nothing to lose

[jilles]

Universities are there to train people to do research and invent cool new things. Unfortunately, many institutes claiming to be a university are really technical schools whose only purpose is to learn students some very basic job skills. Indeed this is something that can be done individually by a disciplined, intelligent person. However, many people who claim to have done so are in fact idiots with a stack of VB for newbies books on their desks. They are the people being kicked out by bankrupt .coms (probably there is some correlation with whether these people actually had a degree).

Now, MIT is known for having produced some very bright people. Going there means you are educated by some very bright teachers. Getting a degree there means you are quite something. This is an experience you can't replicate by buying any book. Claiming that you can says more about you (dropped out of college?) than about universities.

I work at a university. I have some colleagues that came back to university after having worked in industry for a couple of years. All state as the reason that working in industry as a programmer did not satisfy their intellectual curiosity. To me working here is worth the lower salary. I pitty wage slaves coding 80 hours a week on stupid ecommerce sites, endlessly reinventing the wheel.

Re:Nothing to lose, but all to win

[jilles]

Maybe it's different in the US, but here in europe there's a difference between universities and technical schools.

Being at a university means that you are surrounded by bright people researching and learning. If you have a good teacher, the book that goes with the course complements the course rather than just summarizes it. Of course just being there is not enough is not enough. You have to participate. Doing so learns you valuable skills that you don't get from a book.

Now my disdain was not directed at all people in industry but rather at those claiming to have reached a certain level of education, generally rewarded with a degree (either from a technical school or a university), when in fact they know close to nothing. Doing so is insulting to people who do have that knowledge and worked hard to get there. Of course you can get there without going to college but I must say that I don't know many people who can claim that (I have great respect for the ones that do BTW).

Of course there are plenty of IT jobs that don't require a lot of education. I have taught a few programming courses and I have become convinced that I can get most intelligent people programming within weeks or months at most. Programming is not rocket science. And you are probably quite right that such individuals could help themselves by reading text books rather than wasting time listening to a guy reading that book in front of a class. System administration is another simple job, it just requires a lot of knowledge of the tools you have to work with. Their god like status in some organizations is worrying to me since I know I can beat them at their own game easily, given enough time to acquire knowledge about the tools they work with. You don't see a great deal of system adminstrators with proper university degrees simply because most people having such a degree would consider their carreers failed if they ended up playing maintenance mechanic.

Re:Good idea?

[p0six]

hey homeboy, it's not like going to MIT is as cheap as going to your local community college. If you can through some means afford to pay that tuition, I'm sure you can find some way to have a computer at home.

They like to teach??

[Merk]

Most teachers are there because they like to teach. If the class is 1/2 full, it may be easier for them, as they're teaching to a dedicated few who want to listen to them.

If you went to a university where your profs liked to teach, I think you're in the minority. Most university profs are there to do their research, and not to teach. Some are good at both, but for a university prof, life is about publishing papers, not about educating students.

One of my best profs (one of the few good ones) quit his job as a professor to teach at a community college. He wanted to teach students but was always pressured to do research and publish papers. He wasn't allowed to be "a teacher" even though all the students loved him and learned a lot from him.

That's one of the big flaws of the educational system as I see it. Enough people want to be high-school teachers that the supply of available teachers stays high so salaries stay low. But that means the truly talented people who want to be teachers have to give up making very good money elsewhere to become teachers. Many don't, so the end result is a lot of mediocre high-school teachers.

Then there's university. While having a PhD doesn't guarantee that someone is intelligent or skilled, it is often the case. To become a prof basically means dedicating yourself to learning, discovering, etc. Unfortunately being a good learner doesn't necessarily make someone a good teacher. Universities tend to make a lot of money off research grants, and not a lot off students' tuitions. Because of that they want their professors to produce -- to publish papers and get grants and stuff. This then breeds an attitude that time spent in the classroom is time spent away from the important research. Obviously this hurts the quality of the teaching, and the result is mediocre quality University "teachers".

Can anything be done to fix the system? I think so, but it could be tough. Basically society needs to put more emphasis on having quality teachers. In the long run the results of this are clear, but the question is who pays in the short term?

All in all though, I think this is great news from MIT. It won't be an easy thing to do, and they'll probably stumble a lot on the way. Think about it though, 20 years from now there'll be a huge amount of GPLed code out there in everything from appliances to satellites (I'm guessing). If you're having trouble understanding what exactly is going on in a kernel module in the ISS control system, just go over to MIT's web site and browse through 20 years of online course notes. For the world at large, this is a great thing.

Re:They like to teach??

[oneiros27]

Ahh....
I had forgotten that many people haven't learned the ways of the professors yet. There are two types of professors -- the tenured ones, and the good ones.

If you can help it, don't take classes from tenured teachers. They've been there too long. Find the associate professors who maybe teach one or two classes a semester, and hold a job in their field the rest of the time, or the ones who only teach classes in the spring, or only in the fall, etc, so they're still current on their topic.

I guess there are some fields for which this doesn't hold true (liberal arts), but one of my best engineering classes was taught by a guy who had retired from the Army Corps of Engineers and was teaching to kill time.

I've heard the stories of folks taking Computer Security classes, and having the teacher showing them slides from 1976 [well, it was 1995 at the time, at least], and being told 'oh, yeah, don't worry, they're old, but things haven't changed that much'

The larger of a school you go to, the better your chances are at managing to avoid certain professors. Of my least liked professor, who wrote the books for 5 of the classes, I only got stuck taking two of them with him. Hell, in one of 'em, the other professor refused to use his book, and actually gave us a book I could understand for Thermodynamics.

Oh...and I definately know all about the grants -- I tried blowing the whistle on a student project that was missing most of its equiptment because the faculty advisor was starting up his own business, and was claiming his students' work as the work of his company. Unfortunately, I didn't know he was responsible for a multimillion dollar grant, and so, he and the dean threatened to have me expelled and fired from my job at the university. [and I'd like to say that it's a bad idea to threaten people with root access to the main mail server on campus, from a computer security point of view]

Re:Nothing to lose

[jocknerd]

There's more to an education than programming. I am glad I took courses in History, English, Liberal Arts, Biology. Can't say the same for Calculus though. I still haven't used Calculus in any of my programs I've written. But I also learned how much beer I could consume on the weekend and still function during the week. Of course back in the late 80's, beer was still sold on campuses.

Re:Good idea?

[scruffy]

Students would be able to view previous examinations, learn exactly what questions professors ask, and learn only those questions. This will lead to focused studying instead of the broad studying necessary for a real education.

How is this different from studying from old exams? Anyway, there are many hidden fallacies in this assertion, in particular, that students study (much less broadly) and that students get a "real" education now.

Professors will have extra work to do in keeping the web page up-to-date.

Keeping the web site up-to-date is the TA's job.

Students would grow mad at professors who do not keep their site up-to-date, leading to lawsuits pertaining to fair education, etc.

Just like students do now to professors who don't keep their courses up-to-date. Didn't I tell you that keeping the web site up-to-date is not the professor's job?

Students with computers at home (i.e., financially stable students) will have access at all times, while others (minorities, etc) will not, leading to an even bigger gap between upper- and middle-class.

Somehow, I think any student who manages to find the money to go to MIT will find some way to get a computer.

excellent...

[johnnie]

heh, maybe now i'll actually go to college...

'course, good bandwidth still ain't cheap..

Re:This is Step #1

[Symbiosis]

the NSA has a scholarship program where they pay all your college expenses, and in return you work for them for 5 years. It may end up being "cooler" than working for the army/navy/air force, and you get your pick of any college. :-)

-------------------------------------------
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.

Come into my web said the spider to the fly...

[Symbiosis]

Well, Mr. Javac, you must be mighty happy right now, because your trolling did just what it was designed to do: get lots of responses. Congratulations!!

Don't get my wrong, as someone who will be attending MIT next year, I find this stuff interesting, but I'm sure there must be a better past time than trying to push people's buttons. Wouldn't you aggree? You could try looking for a Unified Theory, that's always fun, and it'll keep you entertained far longer than posting flamebait. Think about it.... ;-)

-------------------------------------------
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.

Open education model? (was Re:What is this worth?)

[untoward]

QUOTE:: You can't successfully be a cival engineer by just reading and understanding. You have to have your work reviewed by professors and peers in labs and you have to be tested to gauge your understanding.::/QUOTE

I don't find it difficult to believe that a person can teach themselves to do something without the benefit of formal testing. If someone is able to understand the concepts, then they understand the concepts.

An interesting idea is that of open education. Like open source, you go online, and read about what you want to know. You don't pay for the information. There are always people who can help you along, just as you should help along those who are not as far along as you.

I don't think that this sort of thing will ever replace a standard 'pay us for teachers' education anymore than I think Linux will ever replace Commercial OSes with the corporate backing and historical "trustworthiness" that microsoft has.

People will always do what's easiest,

But I think that we are seeing this open education model applied to Computer Science right now. I've got no formal schooling in programming, but I make an ok living at it. I taught myself with online resources, and the help of the Open Source community.

I didn't exactly knock my hands off either. If you are skilled at something, and there is a market, you will be able to find work doing it.

Untoward

Re:Good idea?

[seanw]

according to the article, the materials posted "could include material such as lecture notes, course outlines, reading lists, and assignments for each course."

unless read creatively, this list does not include exams or homework. the (very laudable) goal of the project is to make freely available the content of a first rate education. Posting tests wouldn't contribute to this goal, and would probably compromise the classroom itself.

A few things you missed...

[oneiros27]

There are a few flaws in your bad ideas --

• Students may be able to cheat on exams
  Very doubtful, as the faculty know what's up on the web, also. Very few professors that I know of give the same test every semester. They do reuse concepts from the tests, but that's what you're supposed to be learning, so having old exams is not a bad thing.

• Teachers may slack off on their intensity since students can just go online to learn
  Again, doubtful for a variety of reasons. Most teachers are there because they like to teach. If the class is 1/2 full, it may be easier for them, as they're teaching to a dedicated few who want to listen to them. From someone who's had to take classes from teachers who wrote their own books, I can tell you that the book's normally just as confusing as the teacher. With the teacher, at least you get a chance to ask questions.

• Students can skip more classes
  That's one of the stupidest thing they could do. Not just for the reasons mentioned above, but unless you're taking a standardized test, it's the teacher who's writing the test. Although knowing the material is important, it's even more important to know what the teacher thinks is important. I got through college sleeping in class, because if I heard the teacher mention something twice, chances are, he mentioned it a half dozen times or so, and it was something significant. So I'd study that part. If the teacher never covered it, but the book had a whole chapter on it, I might skim it, but I'm not going to waste my time on it. And the teachers can change what they feel is important from year to year, so it may or may not have been significant before.

• Learning someting with the assistance of a vocal teacher is not the same as reading it As above, I agree, but you have to question what this resource is intended for. It's intended to give people outside MIT the knowledge that MIT already has. MIT students would be foolish to use only these notes. If a student were actively taking a class at another university, they'd be a dumbass to just read the MIT notes, and not go to their own classes. That's not to say, however, that these materials would be bad for someone to use as suplimental material. [Especially when you have a teacher who wrote the book, and reads from the book in classes, so even if you didn't understand what he said in class, you can't just read the book for a different explaination]. It's also useful for people wanting to learn on their own, or high school teachers not knowing what to do with some 15 year old who's too damned smart, and they just need to give him something to keep him tied up so he doesn't interupt the rest of the class who still hasn't learned the materials.

• MIT can lose students since they could go to other universitiyes and still learn at their level
  From this, I'd have to wonder just what you did in college. College has many, many purposes, and only one of them is book learning. First, you have to learn about youself-- are you really sure that what you picked as your major is something that you really want to do for the rest of your life? [I know I've done nothing with my BS in engineering for the last 4 years, but my college job is the computer center paid off]. Sure, this could realistically be done anywhere, so long as the school has enough diverse subjects. Additionally, college slows us down another 4 years before entering the workforce, which helps to keep us from flooding the market with raw labor which is willing to work for less than the people who have been working for Company X for the last 20-30 years. And again, this one can be done anywhere. So, we have to ask ourselves, what does MIT give us that other schools don't?
  First off, the name. An engineering degree from MIT means more than an enginnering degree from Prince George's Community College. Sure, they're both ABET acredited, but the MIT diploma's going to get you that interview more often than not. Second, there's the networking. Faculty members often have side consulting jobs with various companies, and I'm guessing that MIT's career center has massive contacts due to alumni and companies who want their students. Networking is one of the things that people seem to overlook the most about a college.

• Upkeep may be hellish
  That's what databases are for. A well designed site is easy to maintain. A poorly designed site takes almost as long to make changes as it did to make the whole things in the first place.

I know you're saying that your good points outweigh your bad points, but well, I still think your bad points were overinflated to start with. If a student does poorly because of this system, there's a reasonable chance that it's due to the student, and not the system.

Distance "Learning"

[superid]

I've taken (far too) many engineering classes, several of which were "distance learning" classes delivered on video tape, with tests administered by snail mail. I did all the required stuff, asked a few questions by email, and that was it. I would say that this type of format is 50% as effective as traditional classroom format.

Don't get me wrong, I'll browse every online offering from MIT, it will probably be fascinating, and I'll probably learn something. But IMHO this is *not* the way formal education should be delivered.

SuperID

Free Database Hosting

Re:Distance "Learning"

[bellings]

But IMHO this is *not* the way formal education should be delivered.

In MIT's not so humble opinion, its not the way education will be delivered. That's why they won't give credit for web courses. That's also why they feel they can give away the stuff on the web for free, but still charge something like $30,000 a year in tuition to their real students. They understand that the real value lies not in the materials, but in the interaction with the people at the school. But you'd know that if you'd bothered to read the article. Why don't you go do that now?

All MIT students have 24/7 computer access

[goliard]

Students with computers at home (i.e., financially stable students) will have access at all times, while others (minorities, etc) will not

MIT provides all students with round-the-clock computer access on high-quality UNIX workstations. The rest of your post is not worth commenting on.

Re:Good idea?

[theaphila]

Many people attending MIT don't have computers because the 'public' (open to all students) computing facilities are so good. In fact, I do not own a computer because I have access to theirs. Requiring students to own a computer would not be a popular idea.

Re:Who cares?

[Rocky]

It appears we have an ID-10T error here.

You don't go to MIT for a strong humanities program. You can go to the school up Chuck River for that.

You go to MIT to learn HOW to think technically. It's not important what you know, but how you digest and use scientific information. This is difficult to obtain from course materials alone.

Think of it as being a chef and going to France. You are probably a damn good cook before hand, but until you have that something "extra", whether it be French attitudes or the ability to finish a Unified Engineering problem set in one overnight session, you'll never be as good as someone who's been there.

And BTW, I've used Reversible Computing at my job. Then again, I am in research.

Lectures work for a reason

[ProfDumb]

I agree that not everyone learns best in a classroom, but lectures work for a reason (and that is why textbooks haven't displaced them.) There is a social pressure to pay attention in class, so that class time acts as a way to committ yourself to learn (unlike that book you haven't read yet.) Like live theater versus the movies, there is a tension in a classroom that isn't present in a recorded or digital performance. A video recording of a live theater production is usually quite bad, as is a televised lecture by a supposedly good professor or a CSPAN broadcast of a hearing that may seemed tension-filled in person -- look at the glare on that Senator's face! -- but boring as hell on TV.

Also, the combination of listening and looking (at the blackboard, or at slides or at a powerpoint presentation) is effective for a lot of folks (not all.)

Re:Good idea?

[normiep]

Your final point is mote,

I quote www.m-w.com:

Main Entry: mote Pronunciation: 'mOt Function: noun Etymology: Middle English mot, from Old English; akin to Middle Dutch & Frisian mot sand Date: before 12th century : a small particle : SPECK

So basically you're saying that a point is a speck... very insightfuly ;)

Re:good idea bad idea

[jbaratz]

Ok, I'll bite...

Students may be able to cheat on exams.
Upkeep may be hellish

Many of MIT's courses are already online in some form or another. Many of these classes distribute old tests ( http://6004.lcs.mit.edu/ is one example that has quizzes from the last 3 terms - other home pages are linked from the course catalog.

MIT can lose students since they could go to other universities and still learn at their level

MIT is more than just course materials. It is being surrounded by some of the smartest people in a given field. Where else can you take a class on accoustics taught by Bose? Or take a required, introductory biology class taught by one of the principle investigators in the human genome project. Or on a smaller level, email a professor with a question at 2 am, and get a response in a few minutes.

Other Universities Online Classes (Where's Yours?)

[dondelelcaro]

I know that the University that I currently attend (UC Riverside) has a lot of it's courses available online. It's quite usefull to have your course notes available in an easily desiminated and modifiable format like most of the available digital formats allow.

Of course, MIT's plan seems to be much better than ours, as online class information is generally only available to students who are enrolled in the corse for most courses (although this is at the discretion of the professor, who can decided whether or not to allow public acces.)

In it's short tenure here on campus, it has become one of the most usefull resourses available for many classes. (Saves me from getting my information on dead tree format)

I know quite a large number of fellow slashdotters are also university students, or recently graduated, so I'll pose a question (that hopefully will be answered by at least a few of you): What sorts of resources are available on your campus?

Don Armstrong -".naidnE elttiL etah I"

Good idea?

[Wind_Walker]

Let's look at what would happen if every exam, every homework, etc. were to be posted on the Internet.

• Students would be able to view previous examinations, learn exactly what questions professors ask, and learn only those questions. This will lead to focused studying instead of the broad studying necessary for a real education.
• Professors will have extra work to do in keeping the web page up-to-date.
• Students would grow mad at professors who do not keep their site up-to-date, leading to lawsuits pertaining to fair education, etc.
• Students with computers at home (i.e., financially stable students) will have access at all times, while others (minorities, etc) will not, leading to an even bigger gap between upper- and middle-class.

The creed of Geeks everywhere is "Information wants to be free." In this case, though, I think that this information should be confined to the institution where it belongs. Don't destroy glorious MIT just because it's the latest "cool thing".

------
That's just the way it is

Re:Good idea?

[worldwideweber]

Nothing can be done for the student that would sacrifice his education for a grade. So a student's propensity to "focus study" is probably related to his/her own shortcomings as a student, and a course website does not constitute his/her only means of "cheating the system".

For this type of student (and many others in fact), the real purpose of enrolling in a school like MIT is to get the degree, which provides the bearer with a considerable upgrade in the labor market. This is what justifies the financial investment (i.e.future earnings).

For many good students, the purpose of going to school is to learn cool things. And for a few students the learning of cool things will not translate into more income (maybe because they don't want to work for a huge corporation after graduation or because they are already happily employed).

The latter represents the "pure student". The trouble with the pure student is that he can not justify the financial investment required to attend MIT.

So look at this program as a public school financed by a tax on the future earnings of a bunch of MIT students. A student only interested in learning will be able to get access to information without paying the tax on future earnings (since this student will not hold a degree s/he will not compete with the matriculated MIT students in the labor market). Everyone is happy. And perhaps this pure student may gather enough education to do something purely intellectual (that is, not financed by corporations either directly or idirectly -- via colleges).

If the pure student is also poor, then he should make the modest investment in a computer and internet connection more easily than the investment in an MIT education.

I believe that the pure pursuit of knowledge is something that must be supported at some level.

Re:Good idea?

[regen]

Let's look at what would happen if every exam, every homework, etc. were to be posted on the Internet.

• Students would be able to view previous examinations, learn exactly what questions professors ask, and learn only those questions. This will lead to focused studying instead of the broad studying necessary for a real education.

If students are only going to do the bare minimum, and don't want to learn anything, just pass this might be true. But in that case they probably were finding and using alot of this material, i.e. previous exams, before. If professors are so lazy that they can't change examine questions once a year, they needed to change. Don't restrict information because people are lazy.

• Professors will have extra work to do in keeping the web page up-to-date.

I really doubt this will be anymore work for professors. They will have a TA or grad student do it for them.

• Students would grow mad at professors who do not keep their site up-to-date, leading to lawsuits pertaining to fair education, etc.

Oh come on. Are you a Troll or what? Suing because a teacher doesn't keep a website upto date? That would get laughed out of court so fast your head would spin.

• Students with computers at home (i.e., financially stable students) will have access at all times, while others (minorities, etc) will not, leading to an even bigger gap between upper- and middle-class.

Even without course material being on the web. At a university as competive as MIT if you don't have a computer at home, you are already way behind. Does anybody know if MIT requires students to buy a computer? I now where I went to school undergrad we students have been required to by a computer since 1988. A lot of tech school started requiring this in the mid 80s and I would really doubt if anyone attending MIT doesn't have a computer.

Re:Good idea?

[rhodespa]

I went to Cambridge in England and studied Maths as an undergrad. Whilst I was there lecture notes were starting to be distributed by the web, and were a useful source of information (and still are). However they were no subsititute for attending a lecture - by reading a text book you have no idea where a section is difficult and you should take time over it, or where a section is easy and you can skim over it. This is easy to figure out if you go to a lecture. The most valuable seciton of the course though was the supervisions which took students through problems to teach them by experience.

A collection of some of the lecture notes is available at:

notes.htm

and "how to listen to a lecture is at":

Lecture.ps

Re:Good idea?

[tshak]

These are all very predictable responses from someone who fears that their 4-6 years and thousands of dollars could be done more efficiently for those who learn better at their own pace.

Not Everybody Learns Well in the Classroom!

Re:Good idea?

[jmu1]

Well, your first point is one well made, but it does have a flaw... there are profs who _do_ make up a new test everytime.
Your seccond point is correct in every sense. However, there are a whole lot of profs that need a little kick in the pants to get back to educating and not trying to be PC.
Your third point is insanely off the mark. Do you honestly think that any court would listen to some crap like that?
Your final point is mote, as the whole point of this is so that people can access this information from anywhere. Minorities be damned, they can go to the public libraries and print this stuff out. What minorities are there anyway? I sure don't see any.
I am a misanthropist and a pessimist, yet I cannot see the bad in this idea. I am interested in how you came to your conclusions.

Re:Good idea?

[divert]

True.. students would most likely focus more on previous tests.. but.. these are the students that weren't really intrested in a complete education to begin with.

The only Professors that will have extra work will be the ones that volunteer to join this service.

Students will take any excuse to get mad at a professor. A lawsuit for not keeping up to date in a volantary service.. not sure that is possible..

The last point to make isn't exclusive to this course material.. there is already a huge gap between access to the internet by lower and upper class.. I don't see how this will increase that gap..

Overall I think it is a good idea. I'm always happy when I find previos class notes about a class I'm taking..

Re:Good idea?

[CowbertPrime]

If the professor isn't asking questions that make you learn the information, then it's the professor's fault for not testing properly. The hierachy of information flow goes from textbook (most information, all information is considered important) to lecture (less information, focuses on important topics in textbook), to notes (less information, focuses on important topics in lecture), to exam (least specific information, most important concepts).

I think every other point has been beaten to death by the other posters, except for: "I think that this information should be confined to the institution where it belongs". Huh? As long as the materials released on the web is not previously copyrighted, there is no justification to that statement. Your argument is flawed because you apparently agree with "information wants to be free" but then you say it belongs somewhere. Get yourself back to the logic class that you failed, and not at MIT, I'm sure you won't break a C+.

Re:Good idea?

[hardpress]

Is the fact that information on the web isn't accessible to a lot of people really a reason not to post it?

Incidentally, I'm not sure about the word "minorities" here, since the majority of the world's population have far more immediate needs than relative luxuries like access to the Internet.

Re:Good idea?

[Mr. Obvious]

Now, let's take this point-for-point and see if it stands up to careful consideration:

students would be able to view previous examinations, learn exactly what questions professors ask, and learn only those questions. This will lead to focused studying instead of the broad studying necessary for a real education.

You seem to assume that Profs have a right to use the same old exam over and over again, and that students wouldn't catch on to this if the exams weren't on the Internet. In my opinion, your first assumption is wrong, and in my experience, your second assumption is also wrong.

Professors will have extra work to do in keeping the web page up-to-date.

That much more work than keeping their off-line course material up-to-date? I don't see why.

Students would grow mad at professors who do not keep their site up-to-date, leading to lawsuits pertaining to fair education, etc.

Again, there are two things here lumped together: (1) Students will get mad -- about something they have every right to be mad about and (2) this would lead to lawsuits. Now, IANAL, but I can't see how these lawsuits would stand a chance, and I really can't see how putting course material on the web would change the chances those lawsuits might have (apart from making it easier for students to document their claims, but one copy of an obviously out-dated syllabus would already suffice).

Students with computers at home (i.e., financially stable students) will have access at all times, while others (minorities, etc) will not, leading to an even bigger gap between upper- and middle-class.

This almost makes sense, until we consider that this is actually a much, much bigger problem, having to do with acess to the Internet in general, which quite a lot of people are discussing, and which is hardly worsened by MIT's initiative.

In this case, though, I think that this information should be confined to the institution where it belongs. Don't destroy glorious MIT just because it's the latest "cool thing".

How a university, especially a prosperous one like MIT, could be "destroyed" by not "confining" information is compeletely beyond me.

Ron Obvious

Re:Good idea?

[eXtro]

Well, students already have access to all the former examinations. At my particular university the local student branch of the IEEE provided them to their clique and they'd propogate after that. I never used them (and benefited greatly from not using then when the professor would throw a curveball). If anything this will level the playing field, or even better, beat professors with a cluestick and make them realize that relying on the same questions for 15 years is a bad thing.

Keeping the web page up to date will be a burden, but only a heavy burden the first time through the course. Most disciplines, especially at the undergraduate level, don't radically change every year. In fact, in the case of engineering, at least in Canada, accreditation guarantees that this is not the case. After that its mostly a matter of updating material as you better organize the class. The professors I know that would most likely bitch about it are actually the ones who would have the easiest job of it. Blow the dust off their 20 year old course notes and have a graduate slave scan them in. One other note, one professor I know quite well greatly improved his course by preparing it for the computer. It forced him to organize things properly, stick to a few points per page and allowed him to fairly easily integrate feedback from the class (how glazed over are their eyes today?) to reinforce difficult concepts.

Students should get mad at professors who don't keep things up to date, regardless if its web content or other material. Unfortunately students are the only group of consumers who in general are happier when they get shitty service. If material isn't covered they rejoice (in general, there are exceptions) rather than gripe.

There will be a gap between students who have computers and those that don't. This is your only valid argument and is only valid in a minor way. Most universities provide decent access to public computers, so you're inconvenienced by having to leave your dorm room, not crippled. If MIT does their curriculum right then you don't need a gaming PC to access it. Get a used beater PC thats a couple of generations old. It'd be less of an expense than a couple of pricey text books. Stanford seems to do this right, from what I can see, other than streaming via Windows Media Player. Notes are stored in PDF documents which is pretty ubiquitous.

Re:Good idea?

[espo812]

Students would be able to view previous examinations, learn exactly what questions professors ask, and learn only those questions. This will lead to focused studying instead of the broad studying necessary for a real education.

In Tennessee, it was state law that professors have to keep and distribute upon request copies of old tests.

Students with computers at home (i.e., financially stable students) will have access at all times, while others (minorities, etc) will not, leading to an even bigger gap between upper- and middle-class.

Students at MIT arn't required to have a computer? I know they are at other schools. Does MIT provide dial-up accounts to students? Are the dorms wired?
espo
--

Re:Good idea?

[w2gy]

Students would be able to view previous examinations, learn exactly what questions professors ask, and learn only those questions. This will lead to focused studying instead of the broad studying necessary for a real education.

You mean you were never given past papers at University? Wow. You must have some really unimaginiative and lazy professors and lecturers. I studied at UMIST Computation and all past papers for all courses including a large amount of the notes were freely available internally, both in paper and Word .doc format. No problems there because the papers were so different every time.

Professors will have extra work to do in keeping the web page up-to-date.

Ummm... what do you think they write their lecture notes and exam papers on? A typewriter? No, all this means is that Word and Powerpoint files just have to be linked to on a departmental web-site. If they want to convert to (bad) HTML, that's not really a problem in Office is it?

Students would grow mad at professors who do not keep their site up-to-date, leading to lawsuits pertaining to fair education, etc.

Only in America would somebody sue a professor for not keeping his course notes up to date. How brain dead are you people? It's your job to learn and to go and find information - if all you're going to do is read just the notes for the course the night before the exam, you can't really expect to be able to sue when you fail, can you?

Students with computers at home (i.e., financially stable students) will have access at all times, while others (minorities, etc) will not, leading to an even bigger gap between upper- and middle-class.

I think you'll find that the course notes will still be made available to the students on paper. If not, I'm sure there are some computer labs somewhere with printers.

This project is not about under-mining MIT. It's not about replacing notes with HTML. It's not about giving professors extra workload. It is however, about a 15-year old who has above average intelligence getting free access to professional materials that match his ability from anywhere in the world. You're just angry because you put yourself in debt going to college and seem to think that this proposal will replace a degree. It won't, but I suspect you don't have one anyway, huh?

I have to say, I think this is a great idea. I'm sure UMIST would do this at some point themselves, but I understand the main problem is with copyright retention and Universities stealing each other's materials. MIT is showing the rest of the world the way it should be done from now on.

Re:Good idea?

[PhatAlbert]

At my university there are exam banks (hard copy and online) for the VERY PURPOSE of studying. There is nothing wrong with focused studying, especally in a computer or technology based course. Besides if there is enough old exams it becomes hard to focus because so many different old questions are present.

Presently it costs a lot more to get into MIT then buy a computer, and if you spending enough to get into MIT--in a technology course--you really should have a computer. It may not be right that you have to be financially stable to have a computer and go to university, but this action has little effect on that issue

I gather that this is not for the students at MIT as much, (they have real access to the information) but for the internet world as a whole. It still true have to own a computer or have access, but there is a limited to what MIT can do.

A stepping stone

[dantes]

In my mind, the real value of this initiative is to provide energetic individuals with the necessary resources to move into a new area of study or to supplement professional training/experience. For instance, I received a bachelors in Industrial Management, and a Masters of Information Systems at Carnegie Mellon. I took a substantial number of technical courses for both degrees, but I didn't get a fundamental grounding in computer science.

Flash forward 3 years, I'm thinking of pursuing a Masters in Computer Science now, but I don't have the pre-requisites for acceptance into a good program. So, I am taking undergrad courses via the internet at the University of Illinois at a cost of $1800 a pop. The course I am taking now is great (data structures), but I'd much rather take it for free. Granted, I get access to the professor and TAs if I have questions, but as yet, the only resource I have used is the class newsgroup, and there is nothing stopping someone for creating such a newsgroup for individuals studying through the MIT program.

Another issue is that U of I is not offering all of the classes I need when I need them. The MIT plan sounds pretty comprehensive; I am fairly certain that all of the classes I need to prepare for a graduate CS program will be made available. This program is a godsend for me, and I plan to make full use of it as long as it remains available...I'm guessing the next time I'm interested in drastic a career change (or I'm just bored stiff and need some intellectual stimulation), I'll have the resources necessary to prepare me to do so.

Think of it, the next time you are sitting around with a bunch of your friends with nothing to do on a weekend, you can all rally together and learn structural geology, or ship power and propulsion, or cell biology, or .... mmmmmmm... education

An opportunity for the /. community

[maya]

One of the most interesting lines in the NYT article concerned MIT's expectation of how others might hook in to their Open CourseWare initiative: " it will offer course materials as ingredients of learning that can then be combined with teacher-student interaction somewhere else -- or simply explored by, say, professors in Chile or precocious high school students in Bangladesh."

Here's my thought: Slashdot, with the best moderated discussions on the web, would be in a great position to offer a brokering service for that "teacher-student interaction" that the article talks about. It's fine to have MIT course materials on the web, but it would be really neat to be able to sign up as a registered participant in an online discussion, using Slashdot software, moderated by a Slashdot-experienced moderator, and based on a particular MIT course.

Such a scheme would offer people who have developed significant expertise in a particular technology or mastered some complex body of knowledge to contribute to the community in a structured way, either as a course guide, or a discussion moderator, or even as a grader for those participants who chose to take the tests and submit papers.

That sort of extension of an idea is what really gives Open Source its power. It's not just that Linus releases the source for the kernal, but that thousands of people build on that release to create very specifically useful systems.

"Where did you learn all that stuff?"

"I took the MIT courses on Slashdot!"

Maya

Re:This is a great idea!

[colnago]

Related to this post see The ArsDigita University which has been discussed here before.

They have quite a bit of material, albeit CS related, on the web already. Content includes notes, homework, and video of the lectures. It is the equivalent of a CS masters program and the Stanford's of the world.

Re:A couple quick notes...

[ChristianBaekkelund]

I whole-heartedly agree.

A couple quick notes...

[ChristianBaekkelund]

As an MIT student, a couple quick notes:

1) Someone pointed out that a lot of the courses materials are currently already on the web, and this is VERY true! I'm surprised that people are so excited about seeing this happen from the standpoint that it's largely already happened.

2) Many people noted that this would be great for the people who can't "afford" to go to MIT. Well, at the risk of raising 1000 flames, what about the quality of the students you work with? Now I'm not about to judge MIT's admissions policies at all (that could easily start a 1000 message flame...heh), but I will say that personally, I have learned more from working with my fellow students of amazing initiative and intelligence, than from any course materials. IMHO, that would be the key thing missing from an "Open course". Not to say that there aren't capable people who aren't at MIT....again, that's an admissions issue. For example, I feel I've read far more interesting comments in Slashdot discussions than in the rote news article links posted... don't you? Would you be able to have the same levels of cooperative interaction with fellow students via the web of the same caliber of that of MIT students? I think it's doubtful, if due to no other reason than current constraints of the medium.

3) In reply to: "students would be able to view previous examinations, learn exactly what questions professors ask, and learn only those questions." Well, many many already do, as MANY classes have past exams already on the web for review. Guess what? It doesn't work.

4) The amount of work required to make these courses actually potentially credit worthy may be HELLISHLY massive. A couple people mentioned this already, and I just want to re-iterate that a number of the professors I've heard talk about this have mentioned that. Having to suddenly grade 5100 tests instead of 100?...eek! There goes any sort essay tests or anything similar. In any case, I have the feeling that that isn't going to happen any time soon, but it will stick to informative materials only.

5) Javac the great is ridiculously un-informed. "MIT lacks a strong fundamental general education curriculum. CS students start doing CS from day one." What nonsense. First, CS students do not even remotely start doign CS from day one...I don't even know what that means it's so ridiculous. I took one CS class in the second half of my freshman year. ONE of 8 or 9 freshman year classes were CS. Also, MIT has an amazing humanities department. Currently, for example, I'm double majoring in Computer Science AND a humanities (Film & Media Studies), and both departments are top-notch.

Just a couple quick notes...

Re:A couple quick notes...

[haystor]

I'll take you up on point number 2, and both agree and disagree. Yes, the average student at the average school would miss out on your peer group. But where many of us work, we would have already have a tremendous peer group that could help out. Where you say that you have learned more from working with your fellow students, most of us say we have learned more from working with our fellow employees.

This is big news to continuing education more than to other university students in my view.

Re:A couple quick notes...

[alexhmit01]

The point is (as someone who also attends MIT, finishing my degree part-time), my entire MIT experience was the students that I was with. I found that many of my professors were useless, and had a terrible attendance record. I got my "education" from the web, books, and my fellow students. (ironically, the classes with good prof's were at 9AM and I slept through them anyways, oh well)

The material being online will fulfill two needs. It will make life easier on MIT students, knowing that all their information is easily available. It will avoid the stupid mess of courses lacking websites or having subpar ones, and as a side benefit (that they will trumpet for good media attention), they provide a public service.

MIT's school is solid and well rounded. However, outside the CS department (and some of the math department classes), the web sites are horrible, useless and outdated. Providing a real system for education for the students and those outside is great.

I don't want to question the intelligence of your peer group (and as Christian said, open 1000 flames), but it isn't the same. They may be just as bright, but they probably have to do work and stuff. MIT Students are famous for blowing off their work to help others. Having a school of insomniacs that are extremely intelligent and having nothing to do but school work and hang with friends is something you can't compare to working with intelligent people.

Even if your friends have the brain power, they are unlikely to have the time.

Alex

You've obviously never taken a course at MIT

[Broadcatch]

The written coursework provides a basis with which to ground everything you're learning in class. The exams are always different, and in any case require a strong theoretical knowledge and understanding of the areas covered, without which you wouldn't know where to start.

I applaud this initiative. Few students will be able to use it as "distance learning" as the classrooms and TAs won't be there to answer questions that are sure to come. As they say, learning at MIT is like taking a drink from a firehose. And everyone at MIT has access to a computer.

IMO, one of the great advantages of this plan is that it will help other universities and professors in designing their coursework.

OK, so I'm biased.

--

legal issue?

[acecccp]

I asked one of my professors why he doesn't put the Powerpoint slides he uses in lecture on the course web site along with the rest of the crap. He replied that students would get the false notion that they don't need to come to class, but the bigger issue is that legally, once he did this he would lose all rights to his lecture material, and they would become property of the university - the info does not even have to be put on the university's servers. Can someone in the field of law comment on this please? P.S. The guy's name is Randall H. McGuire, he teaches anthropology at Binghamton University. By popular opinion he is a pretty nasty guy, if anyone has any idea of how to deal with him, please do share.

This is a great idea!

[Mordred]

Dissemination of information (and teaching materials) is the real purpose of the web and the ability to conduct real research through a site such as MITs will only serve to make things better.

Personally I'm extremely excited about the prospects of this. Obviously, not everyone can afford an MIT education (and no amount of reading off the web could actually sub for an MIT course I'd assume) but it still gives underpriviledged and even "not so highly priviledged" individuals the chance to learn outside their normal means. Hopefully other Universities will eventually follow suit, because this can only be the beginning.

Thank you MIT.

Mordred

Re:This is a great idea!

[murk1e]

As has been pointed out elsewhere, this can be no substitute for taking a course - but such an initiative is invaluable for people who are studying from home, researching a topic or whatever.

One issue though: Funding. The page says that they're seeking partners for the funding.... How would this work exactly? This engineering course was brought to you today by..?

It'd be interesting if this was extended into an 'Open University' model, which would allow distance learning. Especially if other Universities jumped on the bandwagon (as Mordred indicated), Harvard, Yale, Oxbridge - or even my old Uni, Birmingham, UK.
--
Murky

Re:Nothing to lose

[jgerman]

Yes and a professor can sound very authentic and correct and yet be totally wrong. What's your point? I disagree that any idiot can learn from a text. But there are people who can. There are people who are bored in a classroom situation, and learn more from books. This is not to say that it's not nice to have someone to ask questions of, but that doesn't have to be a professor. The entire education system is bogus, the only reason I'm there is to get that piece of paper.

Re:Who cares?

[jgerman]

There is no strong humanities program

Good it's rediculous that I was forced to take crap classes to make me a well rounded college student. I was well rounded before I got there. I went to university to learn Computer Science. Of course it turns out that I learned nothing from that program either, but at least I don't feel like I'm being suckered from my money.

Re:Nothing to lose

[jgerman]

I'm not saying that teachers are useless, but they are not necessary for everyone. I never needed college except for that piece of paper. It's not so much wasting money, when I have to have it. I don't go to class, except to turn things in and take tests, and yet my grades are good, better than good in Computer Science. I'm not going to sit in a class and listen to information that I already know because a professor has to appeal to the avergage level of knowledge of a group. I can learn more on my own. Now if I was going to a class where it was just a professor and me, that would be a different story. If I were allowed to go at my pace instead of the dullards that sit in COSC classes because they think they'll make a lot of money, I would have been much happier in school. But the simple fact is I never needed a professor. I could converse with them on their level, I could converse with them on their level as a senior, and I can converse with them on their level now. Your mistake, and many others, is assuming that all professors are omniscient in their discipline. This is not nearly the case and I've proven it time and time again.

Re:Nothing to lose

[jgerman]

No that was not my mistake. Read first and then respond. I said maybe it would have been different had I not been held back by other students. I could do graduate level work when I entered college. Of course professors may have something to teach anyone, then again they may not. It's professors who write the books. The information is out there. As far as who is smarter, who knows, all I know is that I breezed through every class without paying any attention.

If you want a job when you get out of school go to a trade school. A University should be training course preparing you for study. It is not a technical school. I don't need literature courses, I have a firm background in that area, as well as history. And yet I was forced to sit through boring classes as if I'd never read and was unaware of the culture of this country, or for that matter the world. You can know more make the blanket statement that school is needed for everyone thatn I can say that it isn't.

Re:Nothing to lose

[jgerman]

If you wasted your time, that doesn't mean that you failed in the education system. You could have done everything on your own like many others.

This is Step #1

[awhoward]

Bravo MIT! This is a great step forward.

But you can do more.

What if MIT (and possibly other schools) were free? Once you're in, you don't pay anything. Could this possibly be done? How much money would it take? Less than you might think:

In round numbers, MIT collects $25,000 (a good share of which is already covered by financial aid) from 4000 undergraduates every year. That's $100 million per year. How large of an self-sustaining endowment is necessary to generate this kind of cash each year? For a 5% return, 2 billion dollars is required. For a 2% return, the figure is 5 billion.

That's a lot of money, but it is the same order of magnitude that Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and other schools are raising in just a few years time (Harvard raised 2.somthing billion in it's recent capital campaign). There are quite a lot of very rich entrepre-nerds who got their start at MIT (and many other schools). I'd bet that many of them would be willing to give generously if they knew that enrollment at their university would be free of charge.

This could kick off a revolution: free (and therefore universal) college education. The fact that a top university would be free would force other universities to do the same. The result would be many more minorites, poor kids, and kids from rural areas going to college. Now that is a realization of the American Dream. It would be to the benefit of MIT, as well; their annual crops of bright, young freshmen would be even more diverse and talented.

If you think that this idea is crazy, I'll remind you that most of Europe has free post-secondary education.

-Andrew Howard (class of '98 @ MIT -- physics)

Re:This is Step #1

[StandardDeviant]

Minor sidenote, as you may or may not know, the national service academies (west point, et al.) are $0/year institutions. Of course the students that go there are going to "pay back" the government by providing (what was it, 4 or 6 minimum?) years of dedicated service as officers in the armed forces. But then it could be argued that increasing our countries' stock of bright young engineers and scientists is of similar national benefit (heh, "work for American companies for 6 years and your tuition is free!" or something).

--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org

Re:This is Step #1

[milo_Gwalthny]

Cooper Union is an example of this. It's an excellent engineering and architecture school in New York City with zero tuition.

Of course, it's next to impossible to get into.

Re:This is Step #1

[oooga]

And additionally, it would put an extra 2-5 billion bucks into the economy per university, thus perhaps pulling us out of our economic slump.

Re:This is Step #1

[valrama]

You freakin communists... stay away from the american educational system...

Online course content vs. real distance learning

[mfeldstein]

FWIW, this white paper specifically addresses why MIT's gesture is a wonderful one and why this isn't the same as effective distance learning. (Believe it or not, there is such a thing. In fact, that's the point of the white paper.)

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I work for the OTTER Group.

If you find the white paper interesting, (and you hopefully will if you are interested in teaching and learning online), then come back in a week or two, when we'll have the site set up to take public comments on the paper.

Nothing to lose

[ajuda]

Universities are only useful because they give people a degree. It if were only about education, they would all be bankrupt; any idiot can buy a textbook and read it on his own.


This message was encrypted with rot-26 cryptography.

Re:Nothing to lose

[Jagasian]

Not just that. I good Prof is sometimes not enough. You also need a good student body. With an apathetic class, a good Prof can do next to nothing.

I am not sure why the strong anti-academia mentality has grown in the tech industry. An industry born out of research within the academic sector. People like Church, Turing, Kleene... the grandfathers of computer science... guess what? They came from University - along with their break-through research.

So anyway - the main problem that I see at modern University is not that of bad Professors... I see the problem of an apathetic close-minded student body. Remember your roots, and you will realize the value of University.

Re:Nothing to lose

[pyite]

Uhm, you try to read the Art of Computer Programmind understand all of it. I think it would be incredibly easier if you had Knuth in front of you.

Re:Nothing to lose

[Monkey-Man]

"You are likely to benefit from the university atmosphere, because it's a non-profit organization, thereby relieving your research of any major commercial motives."

Although universities are non-profit organizations, you should remember that there still is a strong incentive to make money. That is, the researchers would have more money to continue research and assure themselves of at least a meager income even during hard times.

Re:Nothing to lose

[TheOutlawTorn]

I used to believe this, but while pursuing my degree I discovered that a good prof was the single greatest factor (beyond my direct control) in the amount of knowledge I gained from a course. Universities are at least good for that.

Re:Nothing to lose

[shyster]

Now, MIT is known for having produced some very bright people. Going there means you are educated by some very bright teachers. Getting a degree there means you are quite something.

MIT is known for accepting some very bright people who flourish in the unique environment there, and go on to do wonderful things.

MIT is an anomaly in higher education, IMHO. Most universities offer no more of an educational experience than a week at the library could give you. Of course, there are a few rewarding professors that you'll come in contact with, and perhaps learn from, but they are few and far between.

Of course, if you're involved in research, then the rules change. You are likely to benefit from the university atmosphere, because it's a non-profit organization, thereby relieving your research of any major commercial motives. Also, you will get to work with other professors and students who are passionate about research. And, of course, let's not forget the amazing amount of funding directed to "research" institutions (funded in part, incidentally, by those same people who you seem to disdain because they are looking for technical training).

Re:Nothing to lose

[booser108]

Extremely true. The only reason I'm still in college is because I have nothing better to do and I want to put that B.S. on my resume. I learned more about the C language then I was actually taught.
-----

Re:Nothing to lose

[ardpic]

Proffesor can be wrong too. And when you take a book, you probably read it because you want to learn and use the knowledge. In school there are many not so useful subject which don't interest you.

Re:Nothing to lose, but all to win

[vu2lid]

As someone who has worked in a University/Institute environment,in regular industry and IT/software jobs I can agree fith most of this comment. It is impossible/difficult to replace the insight and experience one gains working in an open intellectually stimulating environment with someone to guide you. At least at the initial stages this cannot be replaced by just reading some book. How many Institutes/Universities provide such environment is a debatable question ... The kind of work that is done 99.9% of the time in IT/software jobs will be considered as trivial and routine in most of the universities with such an open environment ... It is a pity that regular university/research jobs are much less attractive in terms of money ...

This is a GREAT idea

[�nubis]

Personally I think that this is a great idea. In fact, I've already sent an email to Charles Vest (the MIT president) letting him know that I support the OpenCourseWare initiative.

Perhaps the community could help to contribute to this effort by establishing a means of communication (message boards, etc.) for people working through the online courses.

On a side note, I attend the University of Texas at Austin. While there I've begun to work with some professors on some web based interactive supplements for our Introduction to Electrical Engineering class. You can see what we have so far at http://www.ece.utexas.edu/~ee302sup/

Re:Who cares?

[pallex]

"MIT is seriously overrated"

Hey, where else are you going to learn about wearable computers?

It's not the distribution that's the problem...

[AnarchoFreak_00]

It's not so much about how to distribute the video. It's the setting up, planning, tapping, editing, formating, and orginizing of it all.

All of that takes alot of time/money, and all but the formatting (converting blah to real/quicktime/etc..) takes human time and effort.

Even if they could serve it to people at 100MBs, fullscreen PAL/NSTC/HDTV, all totaly for free, there would still be alot of work involved.

Re:It's not the distribution that's the problem...

[sleeper0]

yep, but there's a lot of work involved in putting course materials online as well

Hardly destroying MIT but spreading its culture

[alian]

Having attended MIT only 3 years ago let me say:

• Students already view old exams and problem sets. In fact professors hand them out in classes. Likewise students help each other out by giving (what we call) bibles of previously taken courses to students currently taken the course. (Note: professors sometime ask us not to do so because they re-use material, others don't)
• Professors do not have extra work because they are already doing web pages or they have TAs do the web pages.
• Students are already annoyed at profs that don't do some sort of online updating. As for lawsuits...that's just silly. Students won't be graded on this.
• All students at MIT have access to computers in the public clusters at MIT. As for this scenario, you're right...those with computers have the advantage. MIT can't do anything about that. However, those with the desire can go use public computers in libraries, etc.

As for this idea, it's great. I for one was sad to leave MIT with so many interesting classes un-taken. I thought when I retired, I would return to my alma mater to audit classes for the joy of education. Now they're just making it easier and sooner for me to do. If anything, what MIT teaches you is not in the courses. It's time management, work ethic and the desire to learn and understand. You don't get that from auditing classes, and thus MIT will always be a great institution to attend.

Speaking as a professor, this makes sense

[YIAAL]

As a professor myself, I think this is a great idea. It's no big threat to MIT -- you go to a university for the interaction more than the course content. And the faculty is willing to go along because it's being given away: that's in keeping with their mission as educators. If MIT were in a partnership with Microsoft or somebody, the faculty would feel (rightly) like they were being taken advantage of. This way they're not. The gift economy is very prevalent in academia, so this fits right in. I love it.

The best have already been doing this...

[Jagasian]

...the best professors that is. There is nothing more valuable than a good teacher. Frank Pfenning , in my opinion, is one of those great teachers. I am not a student of the university that he teaches at, but I can still follow along his courses, read his class notes and do his homework. I highly recommend his courses to any computer scientist who is interested in the foundations of computer science (constructive logic and the lot).

After following through Prof Pfenning's material, I have given allot of thought to going to CMU... I just need more money ;-)
Anyways, thanks CMU and thanks Prof Pfenning!

Upping the Meatspace Stakes

[superdan2k]

Seems to me that this is going to require professors to work harder to engage their students and to pass on personally-acquired knowledge in the classroom.

When Joe Average can get all the information, free-of-charge off the Net, people are going to want to get more for their money from universities and colleges. Thus, college is going to have to pump more knowledge into its students -- be that through work experience, more social functions, group homework, or showing them their drinking capacity.

----------------------------------------
Yo soy El Fontosaurus Grande!

GREAT!!

[HerrGlock]

There are quite a few things I've researched on-line only to find the only documents are from College classes and they are not available. This will change quite a bit of that.

It may also cause some people to see more clearly what they are looking for in a coursework (thinking adult education mostly) and be able to define what courses they want to take BEFORE they sign and pay the money only to find out it's either too advanced or too basic for what they require for their own personal knowledge.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Cost

[jon_adair]

The NYTimes article states "... a cost of up to $100 million." My question is, how in the world can this cost $100 million? Even as a 10-year plan, that's $10 mil a year. This (online lecture notes) seems very similar to what most professors at most universities and colleges already do. Granted, the cost of video lectures might bump this up, but I'm sure VoyeurDorm and other porn sites spend a lot less than this and (despite the "dorm" in their name) don't have the benefit of student labor.

Re:Cost

[daemonenwind]

I'd like to bring this question together with the statements of a poster below:

peter303
Conflict with textbook publishing. The popular textbooks, several which are written by MIT profs, are big money makers for the publishing houses

Hmm, I'm sure that those of us who have gone to college remember seeing the "MIT press" logo on at least a few of our college textbooks. If would-be students and lazy professors all use the suggessted texts, then some publishing houses would be in for some massive sales...maybe that's how online course posting will be funded? MIT should make money through their own press, and if you imagine the possible kickbacks, this could be an incredible moneymaker for MIT, not to mention a few favored publishers.

'tain't open source

[cretog8]

8. What intellectual property policies will govern OCW materials?

The policies toward the intellectual property created for MIT OCW will be clear and consistent with other policies for scholarly material used in education. Faculty will retain ownership of most materials prepared for MIT OCW, following the MIT policy on textbook authorship

So, this course material isn't open-source, regardless of saying, "Faculty at colleges and universities around the world can use the OCW materials to develop new curricula and specific courses." I'm not sure how traditional copyright interacts with the ability to develop new curricula.

I've been thinking lately that elementary through high-school textbooks are long overdue for an open-source upgrade. Books remain a big expense at schools. More than at university level, it should be possible to determine what are the essential things which every high-school student should know about chemistry, or every 6th-grader should know about history.

I haven't noticed any such project. I have seen that there's folks aiming at open source Economics textbooks.

Can't wait to see tech resumes in the future

[Lizard_King]

MIT OpenCourseWare will provide the content of, but is not a substitute for, an MIT education. The most fundamental cornerstone of the learning process at MIT is the interaction between faculty and students in the classroom, and amongst students themselves on campus.

How many people are going to put on their resumes that they 'took' classes at MIT?

Education
Browning Community College, BA
Computers101: Programming with Pascal

MIT
Math 365: Discrete Structures
CSC 232: OS Design

What it is and what it isn't

[fm6]

Still, is the institute worried that M.I.T. students will balk at paying about $26,000 a year in tuition when they can get all their materials online?

"Absolutely not," Dr. Vest said. "Our central value is people and the human experience of faculty working with students in classrooms and laboratories, and students learning from each other, and the kind of intensive environment we create in our residential university."

This is a refreshing change in attitude! Too many educators assume that it all just boils down to class time. Hence "distance learning" that's just recyled Educational TV, and extension classes that attempt to cram an entire semester into a few weekends.

MIT deserves kudos, not just for making this material available, but for turning their backs on the usual pseudo-scholarly ebranding snake oil.

__

Amazing /. Idiots

[Ars-Fartsica]

Someone decides to give away their intellectual material to the entire world, to no real benefit to themselves, and what do you hear from the /. peanut gallery? A bunch of posts pissing all over the idea, all trying to look insightful doing it.

online courses arent actual experience...

[agent oranje]

as i have some experience with mit's classes on the web, i can assure you that having classes available on the web doesn't necessarily mean youll be receiving the same education... much of the material presented at mit isn't exactly intuitive, and the work doesn't do you any good unless you actually do it, and do it well.

i learned scheme via an online course at mit, and although i learned it fairly well, i think that the human touch adds a bit to the learning process. someone to answer questions in realtime is a very important part of the learning process...

-agent oranje

Re:Free Knowledge and the University Model

[tshak]

Some areas of Knowledge can only be learned by experience with physical objects.

I would like to rephrase this: "Some areas of Knowledge can only be learned by experience with the Real World physical objects."

eg. Higher ed can't throw you into a real software development cycle with real up-to-date programming methodologies.

Not cheap

[duvel]

Excerpt from MIT's FAQ on OpenCourseWare:

We are currently seeking outside funding partners to help cover the start-up and annual costs of the project for the first decade of operation. We anticipate that development costs during the initial phase of the project will be between $7.5 million and $10 million per year.

The plan is to make some 2,000 courses available in the next 10 years. This means that they're expecting to spend $75 million to $100 million on 2,000 courses, or up to $50,000 per course.

It seems to me that, at these prices, we shouldn't hold our breaths expecting a rapid roll out of these courses. They're gona be needing a lot of funding to get this going (not to mention to maintain the courses up to date), and I doubt if the current stock market situation will be helpful in raising this sort of cash.

Re:good idea bad idea

[cvd6262]

Students may be able to cheat on exams.

As an Intructional Psychology and Technology PhD student, let me lessen some of your fears

• Teachers may slack off on their intensity since students can just go online to learn.

• Won't teachers have more time from research, then bring more to the classroom? I doubt MIT worries about its teachers not trying.
  
  

• Students can skip more classes referring to the web and how they already "learned" something.

• This won't help them on the exam. Hey, in a well-constructed course you shouldn't have to take roll. (Unless the class is based on dialog, like philosophy, but most web courses are not).
  
  

• Learning something with the assistance of a vocal teacher is not the same as reading it.

• True, but on a web course, you can watch video demonstrations over and over, and read sections again and again. You don't have to worry about missing something in your notes during a lecture. You get to move at your own pace.

  I helped program the online course for basic physics during my undergrad. When we were teaching the laws of motions, we went to the ice rink and shot some video of hockey players. The student could watch that clip, and listen to the narration until they understood it. We got positive feedback about that.
  
  

• MIT can lose students since they could go to other universities and still learn at their level.

• Schools do compete for the best and brightest, and web courses will not change that. Nor with someone who scores perfect on their SAT will not choose to attend Jr. College instead of going to MIT.
  
  

• Upkeep may be hellish

• Ever try to keep up a tradional course? Web courses are a breeze.

Woo-hoo

[jmu1]

I have been teaching myself computer science for a while now, using the internet as my source for material. I have usually stuck to different universities' courseware that just happened to be found by a quick google search. And now this! Hurrah for me!

What is this worth?

[shokk]

Putting the course material up on the site is only meant to get people to start knocking at their door to do something with the material once they have it in their head. You can't successfully be a cival engineer by just reading and understanding. You have to have your work reviewed by professors and peers in labs and you have to be tested to gauge your understanding. Finally, without the degree, you're hands will fall off from knocking on doors looking for work.

Re:Open education model? (was Re:What is this wort

[shokk]

Certainly people can make something of themselves by self teaching. Without the degree, which is basically a recommendation by the school that you should be hired, there is a question mark hanging over you. If you are lucky to strike a break right away, then a few years working somewhere puts a number of good things on your resume that make up for not having a degree. If you're not that lucky, then you may have to knock your hands off to get somewhere.

I myself went to school for electrical engineering (VLSI), but almost right away (in the recession years past) I traded it for systems administration in which I'm self taught. I learned it all through the first set of HOW-TOs that were hitting the net around 1991. But without any formal training there were question marks about what my skills were, which always had to be proven instead of being accepted on my word. Now, with close to 10 years experience with Linux and friends, and lots of stuff on the resume, it's no big deal.

I tend to think that in the case where the product is a little more solid, such as human hearts and bridges, that sort of open education is not so easily accepted. In the end, I have to agree that everyone has a right to be educated to however far they want to get, and that their desire to apply what they've been given will determine how far they go. The limits then will be those who don't accept them as learned, who should get out of their way so they can go so far and make this society even more powerful.

Free Knowledge and the University Model

[ChaoticCoyote]

For several centuries, the University has been the predominant model of advanced education -- an institution of higher learning, bringing together experts who impart knowledge through formalized classes, culminating in the granting of diplomas to verify success.

Now enters the concept of Open Knowledge, of which Open Source is a subset.

Assume, for a moment, that "Knowledge wants to be free". In a real sense, people do not invent Knowledge -- instead, we discover Knowledge. Protein folding and stellar dynamics, like all matters of science, follow rules independent of human understanding; in the most fundamental sense, people are observers of Knowledge, not its creators.

Universities came into existence as central locations for the sharing and imparting of Knowledge. People travelled to the University for education, because the University had no way to broadcast its information. That, of course, has changed, with the advent of mass communications. Via the Internet, many (but not all, or even most) types of knowledge can be transmitted almost anywhere, at any time, regardless of physical barriers.

For computer software engineering, the University is rapidly becoming obsolete. Technical Knowledge, by nature, is easily transmitable via the Internet. We don't learn Python or Apache by going to a University; we learn such topics in their native environment, online via computers.

For other areas of Knowledge, however, the University cannot be so easily replaced. I might be able to learn Python online, and I might be able to order robot parts from web stores, but, from my house, I can't use a 10-meter telescope or experiment with a particle accelerator.

Some areas of Knowledge can only be learned by experience with physical objects. While the Knowledge may be free, obtaining that Knowledge may incur costs or require physical presence. I can see a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton on the web, but to do useful science, I need to touch the bones and perhaps dig them from the ground to gain a context for the skeleton.

What MIT is doing is good -- but the University provides facilities that will remain useful for the foreseeable future, in most fields of Knowledge. But for those areas of Knowledge that can be distributed, we need a new "University" model to recognize learning and skill -- a new "sheepskin", so to speak.

--
Scott Robert Ladd
Master of Complexity
Destroyer of Order and Chaos

Good point...

[ChaoticCoyote]

You've expressed one of my problems with hiring people whose experience is limited to a college education. Of course, a lack of practical experience with software development extends beyond those who've just finished a degree -- I've seen a lot of "script kiddies" recently, who think they are "developers" because they learned how to write Perl scripts from web tutorials. They have little or no clue about working with people on design, analysis, and development.

(Note this is not a slam at Perl, or college grads, or anyone in particular. One of the best programmer's I've ever hired was a straight-from-college guy who was eager to learn. And I've been known to dabble in Perl and Javascript myself...)

--
Scott Robert Ladd
Master of Complexity
Destroyer of Order and Chaos

An opensource education!

[yoink!]

All joking aside, its nice to see one of the better technology schools out there seriously consider sharing, at no cost, what it has to offer. MIT has always been in the forefront of many information-sharing developments, like their Classics archives, which has been around for quite some time, providing easy access to ancient texts at no cost.

There also seems to be something different about the MIT attitude with respect to education. The process seems more communal than at other higher education service providers (just a little joke.) Regardless, I think we're comming to a time where sharing will be the key. The open source software movement has been instrumental with widening the public's perspective on sharing and the advantages it has to development concerning both production considerations as well as knowledge aquisition, and distribution.


yoink

Just like Linucs

[alephnull42]

Like a certain OpenSourceOperatingSystsem (OSOS): If they're giving it away for free, it can't be worth anything.

Good for MIT

[milo_Gwalthny]

I think this is the sort of selflessness I used to expect from Universities before I went to one and found out what they are really like. A flaw in the capitalist system is the difficulty in price discrimination: charging people what they can afford for goods that have very low marginal cost but require a large investment. MIT is doing this by providing both the high-priced option (degree, professor support, community) and the no-price option (just the bare content - figure it out yourself). Maybe next is the low-price option (online community, email professor support, etc.)

Personally, I got a degree from an accredited university, but found that I taught myself everything (I learn better visually rather than audibly and was shy, so didn't find lectures or professor access very valuable.) Of course, having the degree lets me convince others that I actually learned something, which allows me to hold a better job, so it was worth the price.

A comprehensive computer science education is already out there on the web for anyone with a compelling interest to find. I taught myself Linux and C using only free resources on the web. The real benefit here might be if other universities started putting non-CS, non-engineering coursework up: economics, history, political science, business. These are pretty poorly represented right now. I think there are two audiences: people in less-developed countries that still have web access and older people who still have the desire to learn but don't have the time to go back to school. Falling into the second camp, I am eagerly looking forward to this and to other university efforts.

The Voice of Experience

[OutOfMind]

I went to MIT (a while ago now, but still...)

1. Many living groups (dorms, fraternities & sororities) have shelves of "bibles" -- that is, compendiums of quizzes, problems sets, etc. -- often going back years. Having the info on the web will more likely have an equalizing effect that a further polarizing one.

2. MIT practices "needblind" admissions -- although (of course) their idea and your idea of what one "needs" may differ.

Interesting tie in to ArsDigita

[abe ferlman]

Philip Greenspun has been arguing for something like this for a while now. Ars Digita University may not have a physical presence next year, but it's good to see MIT setting an example for other schools, even if it is done in such baby steps.

There has been quite a flap lately over teachers wanting to restrict the information disseminated in their courses, to make everything proprietary and closed, but there's a fundamental tie between educational ideals and the free flow of information that can and should be exploited to improve the world's access to knowledge. To the extent that MIT's curriculum is distinctive and may want to influence the curriculums of other schools, the best way to make the world see how good your ideas are is a very old idea- make them public and subject them to peer review. If your ideas are effective, they'll be widely adopted. I think MIT is doing something very smart- they want people to see why they have a reputation for technical excellence.

Viral! (Virtual Alexandria)

[TooTallFourThinking]

Hello,

Great minds think alike. For the last couple of years my friend Chris and I have talked about putting the classes we took during college online. We would present the courses using visual tools like Flash to enhance the understanding of a subject. For example, in electronic circuits being able to see the direction current was flowing could aide in understanding the circuit better. It can be applied to many subjects, electronics is just near and dear to my heart so I had to mention it. ;)

The idea goes more indepth, being a place where people can do research, post research, post little projects they did in their garage, expand on those projects, explain concepts, theorize, get help on a project, help people. Consider it similar to a knowledge base but this one would grow as more people exchanged thoughts, ideas and concepts. All free for everyone's use. At the very least I know I would have use of a place like that. And use it often!

I haven't talked about this in a while as I haven't seen my friend Chris in ages =(, but if anyone is interested in talking about the idea or even *shock* *gasp* helping me to start creating it, let me know. I would love to have a nice chat about the subject. Or actually start laying down the ground work to build it.

E-mail me at normalforcekills@hotmail.com

Re:Why not record videos of classes as well?

[Starbreeze]

Plus with a video stream of the professor, a video stream of the whiteboard, and the course materials, well it'd be pretty close to being there. Helpful for students in the class, but key for actually teaching folks around the world.

Because this video streaming costs money. Many Universities do something similar already, but charge to actually take the class remotely.

~kimmie

MIT Web Curriculum Free Online (NOW)

[incognit]

As the news release says, some stuff is already online -- MIT Web Curriculum Free Online.

MIT courses under the GPL?

[tenzig_112]

Does that mean I can alter and freely distribute the course as long as I include the source code?

Of course, other universities will have to follow suit. Otherwise, you'll see Harvard School of Business courses traded on Gnutella.

Is Canadian search engine Aboot.com going under?

Re:Who cares?

[Aix]

As an MIT student, I can very accurately say that you are very wrong on several points. First, in terms of general education, as a CS major freshman, you don't start taking CS classes until second term, and even then you only take a single one: 6.001 in the typical schedule. After that, the focus isn't even on CS exlusively - you are required to take several analog circuit design EE classes before being able to specialize. This doesn't even mention the extensive programs available in the humanities. For example, the graduate program in comparative political science is one of the best in the world.

Your stereotype of socially-inept and non-English-speaking students, while true for some percentage of the student body, is a wildly-inaccurate media-driven generalization. What I found at MIT is that in most cases, smart and academically successful people are also good at a lot of other things: successful actors and musicians to All-American athletes. In fact, one of my friends at MIT was recently recruited to play professional baseball for the Cincinnatti Reds!

What truly makes MIT unique is the interaction with these other outstanding and successful people. They force you to think outside of the box and give you an opportunity to have normal conversations every day about things that my public high school peers would not even have an inkling of interest in.

With regards to course materials on the web, this has been mentioned before, but most of it is already on there - particularly in CS. Check out this list and tell me if things are changing much. Also, you can't even fathom how much work it is for most of these classes and how much most students get out of question/answer sessions in recitation. These are things that cannot be replicated on the web, for better or worse, and no amount of openly available course material can change that. For the MIT CS majors who are reading this - ever take 6.111? I got more out of that class than anything else I've taken and a lot of it had to do with spending 60 hours a week in lab for four months.

How useful will this be?

[MCZapf]

I hope the stuff MIT puts on the web isn't like the course materials I've run accross at other Universities. Most often, I find slide shows from professors' lectures, or cryptic lecture notes. These really have little value in the absence of hearing the professor's actual lecture. Or, I find class-specific items, such as homework assignments, notes on how to use such-and-such compiler on the University lab machines, etc. Again, not very useful outside of the actual course.

I luv MiT.....

[canning]

becus that's were i got mine edukasion. the peepol r vary nise and hellpt me git a job.

Re:Who cares?

[decouto]

dude

you are a crack smoker! i have been at mit for 8 years; most of my courses have offered immense practical value. no i never took a class called ``windows for workgroups 2000'', but then if i wanted to be technician and not a computer scientist i wouldn't be at mit.

there is at least an 8 class humanities requirement at mit, which is getting stronger with additional communications and writing requirements just being added. i myself minored in philosophy -- mit has one of the best depts around.

also, the population at mit is more diverse than at many other schools, with a wide range of ethnic and socioeconomic backrounds. i find your comment about most different people not speaking english highly offensive.

next time find out your facts before talking nonsense.

Re:good idea bad idea

[lars_stefan_axelsson]

As for "in the U.S. your [sic] supposed to be entitled to a free education", this simply does not apply to university. This, in fact, is patently false. This, of course, is the reason why the US university system has developed strong partnerships with industry, why there are private universities, and why the US university system has significantly larger resources at its disposal than other nations' systems.

Well, coming from a country (or indeed a part of the world) where free university education is the norm, I'd like to see a few references for the above statements.

I'll take exception to the last one right off the bat. If you're referring to the research funding of some of your more prestigeous private universities, then the US govt has everything to do with it, since they are by far the largest sponsor of fundamental research in the world.

The fact that the students pay tuition has nothing whatsoever to do with the research funding situation. And I haven't witnessed that many "strong partnerships with industry", but quite a few "strong partnerships with government funding organisations" especially in the most prestigeous (technical) private universities.

Who cares?

[JAVAC THE GREAT]

MIT is seriously overrated. Quite a bit of their courses offer any practical educational value; most are science-fiction. How many of you have used Surreal Numbers or Reversible Computing in your job or research. Or ever.

In addition MIT lacks a strong fundamental general education curriculum. CS students start doing CS from day one. There is no strong arts or humanities program. In addition, the student population is too uniform to be of interest. Students do not learn to effectively communicate with other kinds of people or across cultural boundaries because everyone there is the same, and those that aren't don't speak English anyways.

And finally, most valuable about an MIT education would the contacts made. Which obviously you're not going to get browsing a web-page about Molecular XOR gates.
---

Re:Who cares?

[adienne]

No one likes to be stereotyped, and I am no exception.

I'm currently at the end of my second year at MIT, and I feel that we learn a lot of incredibly cutting-edge, relevant material. Even the introductory classes are taught by world-renowned faculty. One example is the required introductory biology course I took last fall, which was taught by Eric Lander, the head of the Human Genome Project at MIT. He presented the premliminary findings of the HGP to us months before the paper hit the scientific journals. Can't beat that for interesting and relevant, if you ask me!

The students here are indeed diverse, from all 50 states and more other countries than you could name off the top of your head. I have yet to meet an MIT student who does not speak English.

And one more thing - the students here are not all rich kids who went to private school. I went to an average public school and have loans up to my ears to pay for this. If it were not for the generousity of the Alumni Association, I would never have been able to come up with the money to attend MIT.

Javac, sounds like you should do a little more research before you go off and insult the 10,000 students in the MIT community. I'm sorry you're jealous that you can't be here, but you should let reality set in a little bit and try hard not to be so durn stereotypical.

Does this really amount to anything?

[Mr. Obvious]

If this were not from MIT, an institution I rather respect, I would be inclined to think it was much ado about nothing.

Consider: They've never prevented their Prof's from putting content on the net, and now they're not requiring them to do so either. So perhaps they'll be more social pressure to do so, but there's also a lot of pressure to do research ("publish or perish") and your average prof only has so much time (and so many assistants) he can use for putting OpenCourseWare on the net, so... Why should we believe they'll be that much more than there is now, or at least than there would have been anyway? And all the hype on the fact sheet about this being something really amazing doesn't particularly convince me...

That said, if this establishes a wide-spread belief that Universities should put course ware on the net, and do it for free, then it could lead to a very interesting effect, since prof's would be free to borrow from each other, look over each other's shoulders, take stuff and improve it, etc. Now that could eventually lead to something like real progress, but it'll take time.

Probably the most immediate effect will simply be to smash the hopes of other Univ.'s who were planning on doing the same thing, but charging money for it (what will the market value be now that MIT(!) is doing it for free?).

Ron Obvious

Re:good idea bad idea

[Mr. Obvious]

I agree with everything except your "bad ideas", which hardly make sense.

My complaint with almost all of these is that I don't see a difference between on-line course material and off-line course material. For example, since exams will not be on-line, at least not unitl they're old, cheating is not more probable with on-line "OpenCourseWare". Similarly, the comment that "Teachers may slack off on their intensity since students can just go online to learn" doesn't make sense, because currently professors can and do assume that students can "just go to the library and learn". Continuing this comparison, learning on-line is not inherently easier or harder or better or worse than learning out of an (off-line) book. Further, MIT currently often makes course-material available by publishing it (you've heard of the MIT Press?), so I can't see how MIT would lose students (and they probably still have many more applicants than they accept anyway --- students are not exactly in short supply if you're MIT).

Chomsky

[perdida]

Noam Chomsky was the head of linguistics there I thought. He still is if he hasn't retired.

Besided being a groundbreaker in his time in linguistics, he is one of the aharpest writers on the corporate media as it relates to U.S. foreign policy that I've ever seen.

-perdida

' To vapor!' he crieth, and Chaucer did weep...

[noz]

Notice how most administrators almost always lead the cry of 'vaporware' to which most /.'ers follow, but when a respected educational institution says they'll "put most of its coursework up on the Web over the next ten years" with "little... details" they applaud. Lets see if you can remember any of this in a decade!

Go MIT!

[jamesmartinluther]

Hopefully this will keep the "extension course" and its cousin the "seminar" cash machines as bay. If anything, it will put pressure on other universisites to open up.

If this project works, it could be a big countermeasure to the widespread commercialization of learning that we've seen. Maybe we really don't have to pay $100,000 to get a good education (or $1,000 for a crappy seminar)!

From the MediaLab to the sponsorship of the W3C, MIT has taken the lead in education. Public universities should learn from them and have a more open attitude about sharing coueseware and other resources with the public who help fund them.

this is how

[deran9ed]

For example, since exams will not be on-line, at least not unitl they're old.

Way I understand is, is... Even if exams are old, say from a semester or two ago, there can be instances where the same exams will be given, giving anyone with a keen sense of "where to look" the ability to memorize information.

Similarly, the comment that "Teachers may slack off on their intensity since students can just go online to learn" doesn't make sense, because currently professors can and do assume that students can "just go to the library and learn".

Agreed, but take a slacking professor, or a professor who maybe is at wits end, or has a fallout with the university, or whatever is going through his mind, but he just does not feel he has to give it all he should be giving it. His excuse in his mind may be "well they can get it from the net" it happens.

Continuing this comparison, learning on-line is not inherently easier or harder or better or worse than learning out of an (off-line) book.

Sure learning without an instructor is more difficult, you have no one to interact with, no one to point you in the right directions should you not understand something, no one to correct you from misconstruing something. Aside from that, you try telling a future employer "Hey I didn't go to MIT but yes I do know this" and we'll see how far you get.

Further, MIT currently often makes course-material available by publishing it (you've heard of the MIT Press?)

Sure you can find out what MIT teaches, shit look uo all the books you can on the site, but you won't find in which particular order to start, where to reference from while someone is teaching you, etc.

so I can't see how MIT would lose students (and they probably still have many more applicants than they accept anyway --- students are not exactly in short supply if you're MIT).

I can see how, while a student say still in high school may not be academically adept to going to MIT just yet, he can pick up what they're learning at MIT, and if he did learn it, and picked up his knowledge to another level, he may just option to go to a more prestigious university, why should he go to MIT when at this point he has a good enough knowledge to go to something like Harvard or Yale or some other catchy college, or even a foreign school... I can think of many reasons.

good idea bad idea

[deran9ed]

Sounds like an interesting plan, and hopefully I'll be able to delve deep into some of their studies, as well as others who aren't as fortunate to attend such a kick as school. So here are my thoughts...

Good ideas:

• Those who cannot afford to go to MIT can still learn their courses.
• Current students of MIT can get an example of what to study, intensifying their skills leading to higher learning.
• Other universities can adapt to the higher levels (not saying other uni's are substandard) of teaching.

Bad ideas:

• Students may be able to cheat on exams.
• Teachers may slack off on their intensity since students can just go online to learn.
• Students can skip more classes referring to the web and how they already "learned" something.
• Learning something with the assistance of a vocal teacher is not the same as reading it.
• MIT can lose students since they could go to other universities and still learn at their level.
• Upkeep may be hellish

As with anything though there are pros and cons, but for the most part I think its a good idea for those who are willing to go the extra mile and learn something new, or for others to keep refreshed. Governments should give look into giving universities with plans like this free or highly reduced incentives, such as working with companies to provide free bandwidth to provide these services (which is what they are) for its citizens, after all in the U.S. your supposed to be entitled to a free education, so why not make it feasible for universities to follow MIT's move by providing added incentives.

In the end the best case scenario would be, more people learn at a higher level, earn more, become more productive citizens, as opposed to being restricted because of things like race, levels of income, etc., thereby there'd be less welfare and dependancy on government to solve problems. While the worst would be.... (keep holding while I think of this)

Ghost in the Shell hiding your data

Lectures

[markmoss]

The historical origin of the lecture was in pre-printing press universities. When all books were handwritten, if you wanted a copy of the text book, you'd write while the professor read it aloud. (Of course, next year a few rich students would buy the book from the previous class.) In some cases, the students would even band together and hire someone to read a text they needed to copy. :(

Why this same format is still in use at American universities may indeed be a case of herd behavior. Note that Oxford U in England uses a different format -- you study the books on your own, do some homework, then see a "tutor" to review it and get the next assignment.

Another issue is that, while the auditory channel is indeed low bandwidth, a large part of the population never does learn to assimilate facts from written materials. Oxford and MIT don't have to worry about that because they start with the best students. American diploma mills do need to take it into account -- since they seem to take it as their most important mission to give college degrees to the children of the rich whether they are educable or not. But the big problem may be that the public schools start out teaching by lecture in Kindergarten, and never require significant self-study no matter how advanced the students are. They ask them to do a little reading and homework, but everything is also covered aloud repeatedly, so anyone with a 3-digit IQ can blow off the reading assignments. My 7 year old grandson can read well enough to study on his own. (He's also such a behavior problem that home-schooling is probably the only way to handle him...) If the schools required third graders to do a little self-study or go to the remedial class, then increased the amount every year, I think most kids would learn to read better and ultimately learn more.

Re:Nothing to lose, but all to win

[markmoss]

The US does have pure technical schools, which teach a narrow specialty and don't give a college degree. It has a few schools (MIT, Stanford, Prnceton, and maybe a dozen others) which are full of "bright people researching and learning", at least in the schools' best departments. But most US colleges mix the "researching and learning" with technical specialties. Worse, most cater to a large group of students that are neither interested in research nor in technical specialties, but just want to get a degree as a sort of "management union card."

What I see as the best result of MIT's OpenCourseWare is that they will go beyond setting a standard of a real education, to posting examples of it for all to see. Maybe some diploma mills will use it to give themselves a real curriculum for those students that actually want it.

you never went to college did you?

[crudmonky]

first of all, all but 1 of my classes has had their course material on the web. secondly, professors dont need to update a damned thing, that's what lowly masters students and TAs have to do. students won't grow mad at websites that arent up to date, and mentioning lawsuits makes you sound even more ridiculous. and lastly, website crap is no substitute for class. and there are PLENTY of computers on campus for minorities to access the web. and anyway, computers arent even expensive anymore, so this shouldnt even be an issue, you could scrounge up a computer capable of using the web for like $50.

Re:Great..

[booser108]

Have you ever hear of double negatives?
-----

TOP NEWS: MIT uses the web for education!!!!

[seater]

It wasn't but a few weeks ago that there was an article about Georgia Tech having a wireless web network set up around its campus and there were tons of posts saying how it has already been done in multiple other universities. MIT is not the only school to be using the web like the article outlines. I know for a fact that Georgia Tech and many other schools already do this. Many professors post their lecture notes, old exams, and useful links on their classroom webpages. There are also many discussion boards for different classes where a student can post a question about a homework assignment and have either fellow students or TA's reply. Tech also has video classes were you can watch labs or recitations online with streaming video. All in all, I can't believe that everyone rants and raves about MIT finally using the internet for education while many other fine schools have been implementing it for years.

MIT sez "Knowledge is Free..., like beer"

[bigwig10001]

This is my favorite quote from the article,

Prof. Abelson: "In the Middle Ages people built cathedrals, where the whole town would get together and make a thing that's greater than any individual person could do and the society would kind of revel in that. We don't do that as much anymore, but in a sense this is kind of like building a cathedral."

Why not record videos of classes as well?

[sleeper0]

10 years ago (1000 years in internet time) I worked on a project for the University of Maryland called the AT&T teaching theater. It was a high tech classroom that could link up with other classrooms and allow the students to use their built in pc's to record the lecture, screen capture the white-board, and use collaborative software. The project also worked over the internet linking the classrooms with TCP for applications and using satellites for video.

While the groupware aspects never really took off, i always thought the video streaming was a pretty useful aspect of the room. Students could screen cap on a camera pointed at the white board, the shots automatically getting saved in their portable university account.

Since MIT seems to be genuinely interested in giving open access, maybe they should look into installing a few cameras in the class rooms. Scheduling automatic recordings based on class schedules and automatically posting the resulting recordings should be a snap, and net video standards have come a long way... using some MPEG4 implementations they could get many hours per gigabyte. It's probably an easier (and complimentary) task to record the video than organizing and publishing everyone's changing course materials.

Plus with a video stream of the professor, a video stream of the whiteboard, and the course materials, well it'd be pretty close to being there. Helpful for students in the class, but key for actually teaching folks around the world.

I think it's easy to be a cynical about almost anything you hear these days re: the internet. But this is much closer to the spirit with which the Internet was built, and it's easily a net positive for the world (no pun intended).

Look at it this way, at least it isn't a year ago and MIT didn't just announce: "iMIT a pre-IPO startup spin-off of MIT to leverage offline content sources to profit from an advertising and subscription content model"

Re:Why not record videos of classes as well?

[sleeper0]

Because this video streaming costs money

That's true, but in the time-scale of this project it shouldn't be a big problem. I just recently signed up for network service with cogent who is proving 100 megabits of internat based transit for $1000/mo. If you figure 256kbit mpeg4 streams (very watchable even now) that's 400 people watching video at the same time for only $12,000 a year. Dirt cheap. Cogent is part of a new breed of ISP that will be coming to market in the next few years that aggresively use DWDM to provide much more bandwidth per dollar than traditional service providers can. Bill Joy said in a recent interview that he thinks the biggest thing coming that people don't expect is an explosion of optical bandwidth. So I wouldn't be too worried about 1990's economics of video streaming.

"You're not going to repeal the speed of light in the near future. You're going to have a latency issue, but you won't have any real bandwidth constraints. This has enormous implications: It helps things to become a service, and it makes it possible to cobble together machines to do certain problems and to replicate things real easily. It affects the whole economics of peer to peer. It's a strong wind at the back of this kind of distributed architecture."

MIT ain't the only one...

[The Fox]

I though some people might be interestesd that MIT isn't the only university thinking of doing this. All the way in Australia, Sydney University is thinking along the same lines.

Sydney University's Computer Science Department has been discussing putting a lot of its coursework on the net using WebCT, in line with the tend of the other departments. This comes as a plan by the NSW Labor government's policy of developing online degrees for half the price of normal ones. However this has met a lot of opposition, including from Sydney University's own Labor Club.

The reasons why a general online degree is a bad one are many, and have been discussed by other commenters on this subject. However, the Computer Science department's plan means students would still have to come into university to actually access a lot of the course, as it will be stored locally, which also means there will still be some FTF interaction. Whether this plan will be successful or beneficial, remains to be seen, but I think it will be an interesting debate nonetheless.

I have had my say.

Disagree.

[ixl4u]

There is no such fine print.

Slashdot hosting discussion groups for MIT courses

[ixl4u]

This is an excellent idea. Of course Slashdot could already be doing this since many MIT courses are posted on the web already. Try appending the ~course number (e.g. 6.170 for the lab course on object oriented programming using Java: http://www.mit.edu/~6.170)

just information & docs

[bmpc]

Well.. lot has been said about 'e-learning', about people 'taking' courses on 'your-favorite-subject-here' and the likes..
still I think that this will not be usefull (just) for that.
it will be usefull to everyone who would like to achieve some knowleadge, in some area (tech related in MIT's case), and that hasn't got or the time, or the economic possibilities to achieve it trough a 'normal' way, like going to the university or taking some classes in a subject.
It's the way of the 'self taught'. How many of us learned howto interact, program, admin, (..) a computer by ourselvs ? Or by reading a book ? Or by reading some document on the web ? I would bet to say A LOT.

and that's what I think will be the best usage of this documents: give ppl who normally wouldn't have access to such information the opportunity to consult them, read them, and learn from them. Not to substitute or replace the university. Yet, to inform.
It's quite a good thing that MIT is going to do. If others follow, maybe information gets as free as it should be.

- bmpc