MIT Open Courseware with 500 Courses

Comp Bio Guy writes "As promised, MIT has finally released 500 courses worth of lecture notes, syllabi, and exams to provide a 'free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world.' Take a look (and maybe a test or two) at MIT's OCW site."

Comments

Hopefully this will start a trend

[Muerto]

I hope that information will someday be " free as in beer " for everyone. Now if you are born poor you will most likely stay poor... and this is changing. The internet has been a great gift to everyone... it brings people of all income levels to an even playing field.

Re:Hopefully this will start a trend

[kurosawdust]

Now if you are born poor you will most likely stay poor

Whoa. I am a liberal in most cases, but this is just crap. If you have access to the internet and >= 3 or 4 free hours a day and don't have a learning disability, you have (within epsilon of) no excuses. In the case of something like computer science, there is (not even within epsilon of) zero excuse for your aptitude other than your desire and the amount of work you put in. It sounds just as romantic as the quote I am responding to, but it's true; if you plug someone in to the internet, they can learn about almost anything they want and in all probability be great at it - they just have to work.

Re:Hopefully this will start a trend

[phoenix_rizzen]

The problem with public libraries is that nobody uses them anymore. This means they are losing funding ... which leads to fewer new books ... which makes it even less relevant and fewer people will use them. The hours are being cut, making it harder for people to use them.

It'd be nice to see a library that didn't open until after noon, and stayed open into the wee hours. Then it would actually be useful for students, those who work, and so on. Being open from 9 until 5 isn't really convenient for anybody.

Re:Hopefully this will start a trend

[stanmann]

Well if learning is your goal, your local public college is the place. the library is typically open past 1am, and unless you want to take books with you, is free to non-students.

Not particularly useful without a teacher

[Brahmastra]

A lot of the course notes aren't particularly useful without a teacher actually explaining things to you. For example, look at the following link .
While some of the notes may be useful and educational, I don't think it replaces a real, live professor explaning things and available to answer questions.

one problem

[vraddict]

The fact that the information is available, and even the fact that you can gain access to the instructors for clarification still does not put everyone on an even playing field. The one thing that most people seem to care about are degrees and resumes. The poorest yet most intelligent person in the world could study these courses, and gain an equivalent education to those with degrees, and could even possibly surpass their abilities. It won't do them any good in the present state to learn structural engineering, but not have a degree.

I've Been Using It For Awhile...

[the_mad_poster]

...and it's great! I'm stuck in a shitty little comm. coll. here where everything is "learn how to use vendor x's program y" and it stinks. I told several profs to their faces now that I'm not coming to any classes when we're not taking a test because there's nothing that I can learn there that I care about or that matters.

With the Open CourseWare site though, I've started plugging my way through an almost complete cirriculum! I finally got the motivation to learn Java so I could use it in the 6-170 course. The content, organization, and overall structure of the course is incredible (6-170 is by far one of the best classes I've ever had in any subject at any school with any professor ever)! I'm looking forward to following it into the next class I work through on OCW.

There's no way I can afford to go to MIT - as much as I would love to - but with OCW, at least I can benefit from a great deal of their wisdom with some elbow grease, even without the cash.

Re:I've Been Using It For Awhile...

[the_mad_poster]

Yea, MIT and Berkely :)

A lot of schools these days take money from venduhs (Microsoft is the big one here) and, in return, teach their products rather than theory and solid practice with multiple products. The worst part is, they try to make it look like theory to look good. For example, I got duped bad on the "Intermediate Database Management" course - they market it as a class about RDBMS management, but it's "Access For Dummies" through and through and the teacher knows about as much as RDBMSs as I do about brain surgery. I'm a follower of the writings of Fabian Pascal, C.J. Date (I had actually just wrapped up a rather intensive study of "Database Design" before this miserable class started), and, of course, Codd, so you can imagine how painful that class is.... that's pretty much been the standard tech class at this technological dung heap (the gen ed courses are ok though, so it makes a good jump start to a 4 year to save you money - just avoid program-specific courses like the plague if you care to actually learn anything).

Unfortunately, from what I've seen, that's the way it works at a lot of schools these days - they teach a product instead of a theory. There are exceptions, of course, but after looking around, I've resigned myself to the fact that unless I come across baskets of cash (and pull my grades up...) I'm not going to get an overall quality tech education anywhere. I can get "bad" for cheap where I am now (temporarily, albeit) or "average" for "somewhat expensive" where I'm planning to go shortly, but anything approaching "good" costs bundles.

Will this make other schools more competitive?

[clusterix]

I have been through community college and umich and now live in Singapore. I can say that around the world a 4 year degree is not equal. I hope that this will encourage students to beg for better course designs and more advanced knowledge than what 90% of the world currently gets.

I also hope that engineering faculty will seriously discuss and compare their current curriculums and bring them up to par as much as possible (with in their and their students capability).

Re:Poor places (Re:Hopefully this will start a tre

[Forge]

I expected this response. Which is why I made sure to mention where I am. (Jamaica). My information is sourced from actual ambitious immigrants. (You know the kind of people that built your country)

There are over 1 Million Jamaicans living in the USA (2.7 Million in JA). This means that Every Jamaican here (Including me) has family and friends in the states. Those links don't evaporate when the plane takes off. Many of those Jamaicans leave here with very little education and are lucky to make minimum wage. They still manage to save the kinds of money I mentioned.

The lifestyle of this uneducated immigrant starts out at less than most Slashdoters can tolerate. Being able to cook each day instead of eating out, having a taste for "5th quarter" (Ox Tail, Turkey Neck) helps to reduce cost. Important things like education are spending priority. They buy second hand repossessed cars as the financial situation improves.

They live in places like Brucklin and then buy houses in Long Island that are nearly condemned and spend a year fixing it up without professional help then sell it for 2X to 3X the purchase price. a rented Manhattan Apartment is only used if it comes with the job.

Of course there are those that just become American bums and start collecting welfare as soon as they qualify or get into crime. Lucky for you they are a minority. The IRS says Jamaican Americans are on average wealthier (I.e. Paying more taxes) than Most other ethnic groups.