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Open Courses at MIT

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the Mom!-I-got-an-A-in-web-browsing! dept.

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.

4 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. the humanities at MIT by sethg · · Score: 5
    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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  2. Not Everybody Learns Well in the Classroom! by alienmole · · Score: 5
    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>

  3. A couple quick notes... by ChristianBaekkelund · · Score: 4

    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...

  4. This is Step #1 by awhoward · · Score: 4
    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)