Would you go to class - or pay tuition upwards of of $30,000 a year - if all college course materials were available online at no cost?
MIT announced a plan last Wednesday to provide the general public with this option. The ten-year program, called MIT Open CourseWare (OCW), will eventually result in a system that offers all of the school's course materials for free on the Internet. The project, initially intended to generate revenue, is expected to cost $7.5 to $10 million in its initial phases. ?
Through OCW, course materials from lecture notes to reading lists and assignments will be obtainable by anyone with Internet access. And while most colleges and universities use course websites to distribute academic materials, few allow access by non-students.
MIT officials expressed excitement over the new teaching resource in a press release last week. "I hope other universities will see us as educational leaders in this area, and we very much hope OCE will draw other universities to do the same," President Charles Vest said.
The information to be available on OCW is similar to that offered by Tufts' CourseInfo website (crs.ase.tufts.edu), which provides space for professors to post class announcements, syllabi, and assignments, and also features a discussion board for students.
While CourseInfo is powered by Blackboard, an online provider of software platforms, OCW - which MIT hopes could include materials for more than 2,000 courses over the the next ten years - will be developed in-house.
"The idea is to do [OCW] in such a way that it is a model for other universities. If other universities followed suit, we would have an incredible repository of knowledge," said Patty Richards, spokesperson for OCW. Richards expressed hope that OCW would be useful not just on the collegiate level, but for people of all ages and around the globe. "If you're in an underdeveloped country and you wanted to start an engineering department, you could conceivably get the information you need from MIT," Richards said.
Guests can access Tufts' CourseInfo, but must first be granted access at the discretion of University professors. Regardless of whether non-students are permitted to use the site, they cannot use some of the interactive features, such as discussion boards and grade books.
While more professors are making use of CourseInfo - there are 235 course sites this semester and 600 in total - the site remains underused according to Neal Hirsig, assistant director of Instructional Services, who attributed some faculty members' hesitancy to use CourseInfo to their teaching styles. "These are new functions that a lot of professors are not used to," Hirsig said. "If a class is successful without it, then you may not need CourseInfo." Online support as well as workshops are available to facilitate easy use of the website.
Many students view the website as a valuable, though not necessarily essential academic tool. "CourseInfo is definitely useful," freshman Melissa Chan said. "But it shouldn't take away from the whole college experience from being in class and being with fellow students."
At MIT, Vest emphasized that OCW should not be used as a substitute for a college education. "We are not providing an MIT education on the Web. We are providing our core materials that are the infrastructure that undergirds an MIT education," he said.
To provide an education, said Tufts sophomore Khizar Diwan, "you would need a testing procedure. Using [OCW], you can know everything a college kid knows, but you still won't have a diplomas.
"But for good students, it's a super resource for them because they have the best study material available."
