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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."
Damnit, this is not just a good idea. This level of self-description should be mandatory for all universities. It's the first serious proof I've ever seen that the institution is actually doing something with all that tuition and grant money. Plus it provides a more solid basis for choosing a school than campus tours and the quality of the football team.
I think the point that they are trying to make is that you won't do well in that course if you can't write well. Which is true for many courses in University.
At least they are offering some resources which might help those who have trouble communicating well in their written work.
I guess one might argue that writing well is something that you learn by writing often. You can buy books that will help you, but this is one of those courses that you won't master through acquiring new facts from your text.
It's actually quite the eye opener to be able to go through their mathematics courses and see how the material differs from the stuff they teach at my school. Most of it is pretty similar, and this certainly takes away the mystique that MIT had before I took a look at it all. I guess if your admissions standards and tuition fees are astronomically high that's enough too keep a stellar reputation.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
The Copyright Law (partly) gets in the way of putting all the course materials online. The other problem is sheer volume. It's going to take awhile before they figure out how to get all the stuff up there. Some subjects will work better than others. Math will probably do well, history will probably be not so good because of percentage of copyrighted stuff used in history courses versus math courses.
It will get better and richer as they figure it out. It'll definitely be a good resource but it'll never be an MIT (TM) education.
The role of a college education isn't force you to memorize facts, but to learn how to solve problems. That's why a good number of engineering classes these days are open-book or open-notes. The only time I have found this to not be the case is when the professor has had a hard time finding meaningful questions that wouldn't require a couple hours to complete. In those cases closed-book was necessary to allow some "show me what you remember" type questions to creep in. Simply memorizing facts gets you nowhere, although you MAY be able to dazzle an easily intimidated interviewer by spewing out some facts.
doesn't happen over night. The simple fact that they are moving in this direction is wonderful in my opinion.
Now when do I receive my diploma in the mail for as little as $39.95 as the email stated?
I think there may be too much of a tendency by professors to reuse educational materials. This may lead to a degree of standardization and uniformity of the educational experience that could harm progress. A diversity of approaches to problems results from a diversity of different experiences. That oddball approach some professor is teaching at a small university may just be the basis for the next important breakthrough, or at least make the school's graduates fill some important niche in science and engineering not as well filled by others.
It's like languages, cultures, genetics, and ecology: we really do lose something important when global communications carry a few dominant paradigms (or organisms) everywhere. Monocultures of the mind may be more risky and costly than monocultures of plants.
It's delightful to know that people still want to make sure that knowledge will remain free.
You are right. But remember that taking all those math classes really had little to do with math. What you really learned to do is solve problems and organize your thoughts. That is the goal of most classes, it's not always obvious what they are teaching you until it's too late and you learned something else - a more important lesson. Those sneaking teachers.
Memorizing the Constitution is fine, but it aint going to get you a job. Knowing how to think logically and knowing when you don't know something is the key to being successful in most careers.
LoRider
Almost every computing science course I've taken, with a few exceptions, has been open-book. So reading off a book isn't cheating at all.
The idea behind applied sciences is that it's real-world preparation, and in the real world, you're allowed to look at books if you don't know how to do something.
Karma: Non-Heinous
Some people don't work well under extreme pressure, some do. Those that do tend to be percieved as 'smarter' during the normal interviewing process. While a much smarter person that gets flustered in a position like that may be percieved as being less capable, even if under normal working conditions they can perform much better.
I would hire the guy who holds up to pressure 99 times out of 100. The last thing I need is somebody who craps out when a deadline is approaching and a last minute bug is discovered.
I knew a guy in college who did great in his classes but just seemed to be dumb as a lump. After taking a few exams with him I realized what it is. He is just extremely fastidious. He takes every minute that the professor will give him to go over the exam. The problem is that in real life you don't have the time to go over things 10 times. You have to get it right the first time or as damn close as you can.
Education has always been overrated.
Horseshit.
Everybody learns at different speeds and learn faster with different methods
True. And if I want to hire someone who can assimilate information and use it fast enough to do the work I need to do, then I will probably want to hire someone who could learn and do fast enough to get through a degree program.
The key words are "so far". Folks, this is just the beginning of OCWare. At least it's not vapour-ware anymore :-)