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MIT OpenCourseWare Now Online
peter303 writes "A sampling of MIT's OpenCourseWare selections appered online today. The courses cover a full range of departments, but only a couple apiece. The material ranges ranges from just syllabi and calendars to extensive on-line course notes and interative demos. To succeed, OpenCourseWare must also be an advantage to MIT faculty and students, as well as the outside world. I think this may be possible, because it gives a uniform appearance and access point for online material, plus tools to build these."
- to promote communication at MIT. They hope that everyone will be able to quickly find out what other people are teaching, what textbooks they're using, what's being covered, and what's not being covered.
- "open source" the resources that go into course production. Obviously, then, to make this same information available to scholars elsewhere, so that teachers at other places can see what MIT is doing and borrow resources, compare notes, make suggested changes.
- Challenge typical lecture classes. I think that they're hoping to challenge MIT faculty to think of what the 'value added' is to classes, so that people realize that learning is about more than 'dumping content' into students' heads, and consider the pedagogical use of classes more carefully.
- Provide resources for self-study. Sure-- there is a hope that someone out there in Alaska or something will take up some resources and teach themselves something.
- Challenging notions of what is university IP or not. As many know, who owns what syllabi that is produced by faculty is hairy; if MIT puts it on the web, they hope that this will deflate the whole debate, and make everyone realize that a syllabus is not synonymous with learning.
- Provide a model for the universities in online spaces. I think they're hoping that this will at least challenge people to think beyond 'how can we make a buck off putting courses online' and realize the role that universities could play in a networked age for contributing to the intellectual commons.
As I understand it, those are the purposes of open coursewear, roughly. They're really not thinking that people will train themselves so much, as they're thinking that it will help change the nature of discourse around universities in online education.http://joystick101.org getting in depth, with games.
Currently at MIT doing CS Grad studies. Both of my professors are excellent lecturers and the different between them and the vast majority of my professors at my previous institution are staggering.
Humorless sig goes here.
When I was there as an undergraduate, I didn't think the curiculum was at a level above the rest, and I attributed most of MIT's reputation to the student selection process. I have come to realize that the background I got as an undergraduate was on a par with what most people get in a Masters program. You can pack more into a four year program if the students are all at a relatively high level.
There is no reason why many institutions can't make it possible for their top students and faculty to keep pace and match these programs. The motivated individual could make this happen on their own. Technical material in particular are not as dependant on social maturity to succeed can be mastered by young geniuses if it is available.
Most universities have been offering online resources for students and professors. But few offer substancial material for non-enrolled students. This makes somewhat sense, because after all if you want Ivy League education you should meet all the prerequisites and pay for it.
Regardless, among the few institutions really puting what they have out there for anyone to benefit, Columbia University so far has the most to offer. Few schools come close to Columbia's Interactive department as far as content beyond an online syllabus. MIT seems to be in the right track, until they start making access to the general public impossible. I don't think it should be free (as it isn't at CI or Harvard), but at least reachable. Some other schools simply block access and give no options to outsiders/non-students.
From a purely business perspective, as some one else already pointed out, making content available to outsiders gives University recruiters a great "businesscard".
But MIT is doing two things that are real steps forward. First, they're settings standards: instructors are expected to post certain kinds of information in a standard format. Existing course web sites are just online alternatives to photocopied class handouts, and it's up the individual instructors exactly what they bother to put online and how they present it.
But what's really staggering is MIT's attitude towards public use of this material. Most course web sites are created specifically for the students taking the course -- public access is an accidental side effect, and probably wouldn't happen at all if University web sites secured their networks properly. They'd probably be taken down or hidden behind a firewall if public access started taxing the servers. Which is completely different from what MIT is doing: investing in servers and bandwidth for no other purpose than to enable public access to their content.