MIT's OpenCourseWare Program 167
Kent Simon writes "Many people may not know that MIT has initiated OpenCourseWare, an initiative to share all of their educational resources with the public. This generous act is intended (in classical MIT style) to make knowledge free, open, and available. It's a great resource for people looking to improve their knowledge of our world. OpenCourseWare should prove exceptionally beneficial to those who may not be able to afford the quality of education offered at a school like MIT. Here's a link to all currently available courses. It is expected that by the end of the year every course offered at MIT will be available on the OpenCourseWare site, including lecture notes, homework assignments, and exams. OpenCourseWare is not offered to replace collegiate education, but rather to spread knowledge freely."
Don't miss the best part: remixing (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong: Having the material available for free is great, even though a large part of the courses are incomplete in that they refer you to the standard literature for reference like most regular university courses will. But this is basically a logistic solution, a lot of knowledge is available today to anybody who can get hold of a library card at the local university and a lot of basic knowledge is no further away than the wikipedia.
But you will find that the number of people studying advanced calculus or Sino-Tibetian languages outside of university courses is small, even though a lot of material is available for free. Learning complex subjects is a process, not just a question of getting the information, and the process (with tutorials and working with other students and asking questions and assignments and so on) is what MIT is still selling, the content of OCW is only a small part of that.
Fortunately OCW is not simply free, but (at least partly) licensed under a Creative Commons license allowing non commercial sharing and remixing (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 [creativecommons.org]). While you may not be able to replicate the experience of studying at MIT, someone may take the content and add e.g. a technical communications layer.
You are into advanced web 3.0 elearning platform development, but have no way to create the content? Take OCW, reuse what they have and give the world a new learning experience? You always wanted to write a shoot-'em up game based on and explaining the principles on quantum physics? You solve the DirectX/OpenGL/game engine magic and compensate your lack of talent as a physics tutor by using parts of 8.04 Quantum Physics I, Spring 2006 [mit.edu].
These are primitive ideas, but I think about OCW more as a basis on which people can experiment than a library. Libraries have been around for a long time, unfortunately the majority of people don't use them. To reach the masses, you have to somehow turn the content of OCW into something compatible to a game console. Give it a shot!
And now... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't miss the best part: remixing (Score:5, Insightful)
Somewhat simplified, but basically: yes.
Great idea, why did I never think of that? Or why didn't billions of other people not simply get some self discipline? Not only would it solve all the problems of our educational systems, it would also rid us of smokers and obese people in no time. I'm actually in the educational business and the big problem is motivation, not access to information. Ever bought a language course on books and CDs? They are flying of the shelves, yet almost nobody (besides the people that already have hardcore self discipline) learns a language with these.
Should you actually have a solution how (or even where) someone can "Get some self discipline", patent it and get rich within seconds. A large part of human kind has been looking for a working solution for centuries. And as a hint: Just do it, Stop whining, Turn on your brain or You only have to really want to are no the solution.
Knowledge (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Coursework isnt the point of college (Score:2, Insightful)
Doesn't meet the hype (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Open Source Testing ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:HP != MIT (Score:4, Insightful)
If the lecture notes distributed in OCW are any good, they may be able to make up for the obscene text prices. If not, two words will help: "Previous Edition."
Re:HP != MIT (Score:3, Insightful)