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More Universities to Publish Courseware Online

Posted by chrisd on from the click-your-way-to-braininess dept.

prostoalex writes "After MIT's decision to put the course materials online free of charge, seven other universities expressed similar goals. With the grant from Hewlett-Packard the universities of Washington, Rochester, Toronto, Cornell, Columbia, Ohio State as well as MIT will provide their courses online at a single location. DSpace was launched with a $1.8 million grant from HP. MIT expects to spend about $250,000 annually to maintain and operate the archive. The page is available here." We also have an update on MITs courseware offerings, so read more if you care about such things. In related news, dchud writes "DSpace, which has been in production use at MIT Libraries since September, is now available under a BSD-style license as version 1.0 at sourceforge. DSpace is a repository for capturing, persisting, and providing access to the digital research output of the MIT community, and will be the long-term archive for OpenCourseWare materials. Now it's available as an institutional repository platform for the rest of the world. See also coverage from the Boston Globe, CNET, and the AP (via NYT, reg req'd)."

5 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. I'm waiting for Barber College by burgburgburg · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    I've always wanted to barb.

    One thing, though: Before I've completed my studies, am I a barbie?

  2. Re:$250,000!!! by SashaM · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Jeez, somebody please moderate it again to something other than "funny". And whoever moderated it as funny should really rethink the whole concept of humor.

  3. Re:This is good, but I do feel a bit cheated. by Hal-9001 · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    When I was in high school, I was busy programming my TI-85 to double check all of my 1 variable integral calculus, but I didn't have any idea what the difference between a deep and shallow copy of data was. If I had access to college level materials, I could have had a substantial head start, all in my spare time, all due to my personal enthusiasm for the material.
    I think you were limited more by the TI-85 than by your access to college-level course material. AFAIK, the programming language used in TI calculators doesn't have local variables, i.e. all variables are global variables, and variables are copied by value, i.e. all copies are shallow copies. After all, since everything is global, if you want to change the original, just change it--no need to introduce deep copies.
    --
    "It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
  4. How to make money by giving stuff away by smagoun · · Score: 1, Offtopic
    What are you talking about? There's an easy way to make money by freely giving away information.

    1. Give away course material
    2. ???
    3. Profit!

  5. Re:This is good, but I do feel a bit cheated. by back_pages · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    Hehe, yes, you are entirely correct. Not only that, but the control statements practically require gotos, the syntax is brain numbing, and the library functions are pretty basic. It's really capable of little more than scripting the lovable black box, which is enough to do most any single variable calculus (ignoring the assembly that can be done via link to a PC).