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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.
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.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
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*.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
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.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
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.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
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.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
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.
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?
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?
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.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
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.
--Be human.
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.
--Be human.
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.
--Be human.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
--
Vidi, Vici, Veni
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
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.
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
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."
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>
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.
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.
Jilles
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.
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.
Keeping the web site up-to-date is the TA's job.
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?
Somehow, I think any student who manages to find the money to go to MIT will find some way to get a computer.
- 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
- 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
- Upkeep may be hellish
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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
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
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.
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
- 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
I whole-heartedly agree.
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...
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
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)
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/
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.
...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!
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.
MIT deserves kudos, not just for making this material available, but for turning their backs on the usual pseudo-scholarly ebranding snake oil.
__
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.
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.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Students may be able to cheat on exams.
As an Intructional Psychology and Technology PhD student, let me lessen some of your fears
Won't teachers have more time from research, then bring more to the classroom? I doubt MIT worries about its teachers not trying.
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).
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.
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.
Ever try to keep up a tradional course? Web courses are a breeze.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
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
All about me
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
All about me
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.
Milo
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.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
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?
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.
---
Know someone who is stealing cable? Report them!
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).
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
Goat sex free since 2001
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.
360 degrees of Karma
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
360 degrees of Karma
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.
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.
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"
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.
Beware The Fox!