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Carnegie Mellon Starts Offering Courses Online
Posted by
michael
on Sat Jul 10, 2004 06:24 PM
from the gotta-start-somewhere dept.
from the gotta-start-somewhere dept.
OckNock writes "Carnegie Mellon is offering free courses through its Open Learning Initiative. Unlike MIT's OpenCourseWare which has 700 courses available, Carnegie Mellon currently only has five courses available. However, Carnegie Mellon is unique in that they offer '...courses [that] include a number of innovative online instructional components such as: cognitive tutors, virtual laboratories, group experiments, simulations,' so rather than just offering course material Carnegie Mellon is pursuing a more interactive, community approach. Carnegie Mellon is also unique in that they offer the courses as an Academic Version which '...is offered through educational institutions for credit awarded by the student's home institution.' Interestingly, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation funds both MIT's OpenCourseWare and Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative ('Funding for the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon has been provided by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.') Sadly, the courses are not supported on any open source platforms or even any open source web browsers. More importantly, I'm curious how other universities will start making their courses available freely online."
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Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's simple, they won't.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
Open Source Courseware (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
You don't rewrite the K&R every five minutes, if a student wants a full lesson, he can look in a book at the library. The problem comes from all those who can't have books for free.
Why no open source nor open source browsers? (Score:4, Informative)
Also, is it just open source browsers? So browsers such as Opera would be fine?
What about OSX and Apple's browser? This should be a given since OSX is on top of Mach...which itself was developed at Carnegie-Mellon.
I just checked their site on system requirements:
Operating System
* PC: Microsoft Windows 98, ME, 2000, or XP
Web Browser
* PC: Internet Explorer 6.0 with Service Pack 1 or newer, or Netscape Navigator 7.02 or newer
Interesting. I tested my system, which is Linux running Firefox. Everything passed except for only it not being on Windows nor IE/Netscape 7.
Oh well...
Parent
Re:Why no open source nor open source browsers? (Score:2)
Reply To E-Mail RE: OS/Browser (Score:4, Interesting)
of the OLI courses has a different set of browser and operating system
requirements. In general, only the Java and Flash, plug-ins are required
for all the courses and Director plug-in is required for The Causal
Reasoning Course. All of the courses have been tested against IE, Netscape,
Mozilla and Firefox. With few exceptions (e.g. a statistic tutor which only
runs from IE) the courses can be accessed from an open source platform
using Mozilla / Firefox.
The 'Test and Configure' pages, at present, do not reflect this fact. The
configuration instructions were designed to aid the majority of users,
greater than 90% of which are accessing the courses from Windows. The
instructions were our attempt to keep technical instructions simple for
many users who are intimidated by too many options in technical
requirements. We are looking at updating the test and configure pages to
better communicate with users who are using a greater variety of browsers
and Operating Systems.
We invite you to become part of our user testing community by using the
courses on your configuration and letting us know what works and what
doesn't and we will post the information and attempt to make the courses as
compatible with as many configurations as possible.
As an aside, the software behind the OLI project (with few exceptions) was
built from and runs using Open Source software. Many of the content authors
also use open source tools (emacs, ant, xalan, xerces, etc.)
Kind Regards,
Candace Thille
Project Director
Open Learning Initiative
Carnegie Mellon University
Parent
Credit? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Credit? (Score:2, Interesting)
I always hated high school, but for some reason, when I got to college, lerning became fun! Holy hell, if my past self heard my present self, I would be kicking my ass, but it's true.
Something like this where I could go online and take a course, lei
From Open Learning Init. From CMU (Score:5, Informative)
Our free Summer workshops are scheduled for June 28-30 and July 7-9. Application deadline is April 29. Fellowships and travel stipend are available. The workshops are intended both to support instructors in using the online courses and to have participants inform the ongoing development of the courses.
Anyone have a time machine handy? Anyone?
On a serious note, this is definitely an interesting thing. I wouldn't mind getting some extra Chemistry credits (student, U of Wisc @ Madison)
Re:From Open Learning Init. From CMU (Score:2)
That's what I would have highlighted!
Penn State is about to do something similar (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Penn State is about to do something similar (Score:2, Funny)
Other universities (Score:5, Informative)
Virginia Tech CS department [vt.edu] has most of the course material availabe for download online. Some courses even have audio streams with them. Best site for CS students everywhere.
More other universities (Score:2)
MIT is so over rated (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MIT is so over rated (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:MIT is so over rated (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think it's particularly useful for the typical student, but I suspect a syllabus that "works" and a set of problems can be very helpful to a teacher preparing a given course for the first time.
As a resource for self-study, it's just an extra source of materials, like Ars Digita or your local library.
I agree that the qualit
Re:MIT is so over rated (Score:2)
many cs majors ditch their classes too..only doing the homework and taking tests/doing projects. it may be closer to the "real college experience" than you think. if you want answers, get a solutions guide..
Pilot Courses (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd rather sip coffee at Borders (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'd rather sip coffee at Borders (Score:2)
How true, when I read books at Borders, I make sure that I masturbate in the washroom and don't wash my hands before I select my title.
A bit of background... (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope this is done more often, not with lecture notes or online material - it's useless. Live lectures however are not. Universities sell degrees, not educations. It would be easy to provide such resources to the general public; it could be a recruiting tool, advertising, etc. Since you're not going to get a degree no matter how many courses you watch online, it doesn't cheapen what the university offers for a *ahem* small fee.
Re:A bit of background... (Score:2)
Re:A bit of background... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:A bit of background... (Score:2)
Re:A bit of background... (Score:2)
Of course you can also see the berkeley webcast archive [berkeley.edu]. be careful because they only show the last two semester's worth of courses. for example the astro 10 I took in 2001 isn't online anymore. also uses real player iirc. astro 10 is taught as a general interest course and is quite interesting even if you don't care about astronomy at all.
Webcasts (Score:4, Informative)
For example: (there are many more)
Berkeley (Webcasts)
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses/i
University of Washington:
http://www.uwtv.org/programs/title.a
Monumental (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure beats the "norm" of High school -> College / University -> Job.
It would be excellent to see this pattern break.
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Re:Monumental (Score:2)
but you have to consider that many many students go university because it's expected of them. because it will get them a better job, etc. education is already widely accessible (see your local community college) but there's still the idea of a college graduation requirement for most good jobs...
This isn't just lecture notes... (Score:4, Interesting)
Unlike all of the projects that have been mentioned in this forum, the purpose of providing online courses here is not just to make the information available but to do research on how people learn.
Windows required for at least one of the courses. (Score:2, Funny)
from the inside... (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy funding both projects from CMU & MIT, was far more impressed with CMU's program. It isn't about just lobbing material on the web; it's about teaching people.
So in this case, look for quality and not quantity.
Browser Compatibility and Open Source (Score:5, Informative)
Each of the OLI courses has a different set of browser and operating system requirements. In general, only the Java, Flash, and Director plug-ins are required. All of the courses have been tested against IE and Mozilla (Netscape, Firefox, etc...). With few exceptions (e.g. a statistic tutor which only runs from IE) the courses can be accessed from an open source platform using Mozilla / Firefox.
The 'Test and Configure' pages, at present, do not reflect this fact. The configuration instructions were designed to aid the majority of users, greater than 90% of which are accessing the courses from Windows.
As an aside, the software behind the OLI project (with few exceptions) was built from and runs using Open Source software. Many of the content authors also use open source tools (emacs, ant, xalan, xerces, etc.)
And then we wonder why CompSci degree is worth... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why Indians and Chinese have caught up with us and have managed to increase the supply of well educated people who will work for next to nothing.
Just great... for large corporations. We'll continue working for less and less... what's the base salary for a programmer now? $40K?
Stop whining (Score:4, Insightful)
What you advocate is the restriction of knowledge where only an elite few is allowed to know how to do something.. Sorta like returning to the days of pre-renaissance society where only elite church members were given the courses in reading and writing. Everyone else was forced through their own igorance to be subserviant to the elite.
People are going to have to cope with the fact that there are plenty of people who are not in our country who can become just as bright as we are and do it asking for much less money. Is this bad for us? Yes. But like every economic crisis that hits our country, we have managed to find some way to innovate and come out ahead.
Have you ever thought of finding some way to bring your self ahead of the pack? Have you considered pursuing knowledge in a different field?
I don't like what is happening to our jobs either, but I would take a lost job over your concept of restricting knowledge any day.
Parent
Re:Stop whining (Score:4, Insightful)
"But like every economic crisis that hits our country, we have managed to find some way to innovate and come out ahead."
We will all stop being programmers... just like offshoring has now decimated the number of jobs in hi-tech, this type of knowledge free-for-all will devalue our jobs even further. Don't be fooled by the maxim "we will innovate". Sure, innovation will continue but it will not continue at the same pace.
"Have you ever thought of finding some way to bring your self ahead of the pack? Have you considered pursuing knowledge in a different field?"
I guess that's what we'll all have to do. Medical doctors will ALWAYS be paid well since they restrict the number of students and make sure you're licensed to practice medicine. We will all be replaced by cheap labor overseas... we're training them now anyway to take our jobs away.
Parent
Re:And then we wonder why CompSci degree is worth. (Score:2, Interesting)
Even with this and the fact that with most of the lecture anyone can walk in as there is almost no control about it.
Re:And then we wonder why CompSci degree is worth. (Score:2)
All the information is in libraries and bookstores. If you want the information, a college bookstore will sell books to non-students, and even the notes for many subjects are available online, even outside stuff like this. But people who really understand the material are few and hard to find, and all the availability in the world isn't go
"free" as in profs out of work (Score:2, Insightful)
At PSU, where I did my Ph.D., professors were being "invited" to develop entire courses to be offered over the Internet. They would receive course development funds, extra graduate teaching assistants, and in some cases research assistants. Sounds great, right?
What wasn't entirely clear (unless you read the fine print), was that o
Re:"free" as in profs out of work (Score:3, Interesting)
The university provides an environment in which smart people have the opportunity to interact with other smart people. A professor's main role is to create new knowledge and, by example, to encourage students to acquire and create knowledge, using as resources their professors, t
Did it break your Firefox like it broke mine? (Score:2, Informative)
Want free course material? Take mine ... (Score:4, Informative)
I teach physics and astronomy courses at RIT. All my lecture notes are freely available to anyone. Look at
http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/ [rit.edu]
Enjoy.
Re:Better? (Score:2)
I love my online classes. Most schools charge you the same as if you physically go, but I hate going to class. It's very hard to work all day and then be expected to show up at 6:30 across town. Also, community colleges get paid by attendance so you are REQUIRED to be there. I get paged in to work enough that I
Re:Better? (Score:2, Insightful)
What is more important, real attendance to school teaches you discipline, something that I believe is difficult to get via Internet. I wonder if the last thing is good or not.
Re:Better? (Score:3, Insightful)
Especially for those who work at traditional jobs and are unable to attend physical classes, as well as those of us whose skill sets and geographical dispersal are familiar with networking in nontraditional ways, a well architected online course can accomplish those non
Re:Better? (Score:2, Informative)
My undergrad degree was with the University of Maryland while my graduate degree was from the University of Phoenix. How do I compare the two?
Well the UOP cost quite a bit more at $1500 per class. However, the degree was a gift to myself and my goals were a little different from my BS, where I was just trying to get my foot in the door for a decent job. The UOP classes were smaller, allowing me to actually interact with the faculty. What's more, I noticed no difference in the quality of instruc
Re:Better? (Score:2)
Re:Carnegie Mellon removing alumni email boxes (Score:2, Interesting)
if you get half as much spam through the old andrew account as i do, its a welcome change.