Class locations at Tufts used to be limited to Eaton, Braker, Miner, Olin, and other brick-and-mortar buildings.
But now Tufts classes are no longer bound by the physical locations of the Tufts campus. Course materials are moving from solid structures on the Hill into the computers of people around the world.
Tufts is a member of the OpenCourseWare (OCW) Consortium, an international group whose members agree to provide course curriculum and materials from their school to the rest of the world via the Internet.
Material provided on the Tufts OCW Web site at http://ocw.tufts.edu now includes schedules, syllabi, assignments, lectures, slides, and exams. Currently, there are 29 courses available from several different Tufts schools.
Tufts OCW Curricular Content Specialist Robbin Smith has worked on the project since December 2004. Smith said the goal of Tufts OCW is "to provide access to high-quality educational materials to the global community."
Smith also believes that the OCW program is a natural extension of Tufts' educational philosophy. "It's part of Tufts' mission to share knowledge with the world," Smith said.
Smith described a few basic categories of people who might be interested in using Tufts OCW materials.
"There are three types of users: the educators, the student who might want to learn more about the particular course they're taking, and then self-learners," Smith said.
So far, the Tufts OCW Web site has received almost half a million hits, and new courses are being added to the site each quarter.
According to Smith, much of the success of this program is due to the willingness of Tufts professors to contribute their time to adapting their course materials for the website. Although there is a recruitment effort, many professors take the initiative and volunteer materials for OCW.
Smith said she is grateful, but not surprised that professors would choose to take on the extra work. "Their compensation is sharing their knowledge with the global community," Smith said.
Associate Professor Adil Najam of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy is one faculty member who worked with Tufts' OCW program. In an e-mail, Najam described how he chose a course to contribute to the Web site. Najam was unable to speak in person because he was overseas.
"When the Tufts OCW was first being launched, we wanted courses from various schools to be included," Najam said. "From the Fletcher School, we thought one course that had broad appeal and interest was the one on multilateral international negotiation that I teach."
One of the things that made this project appealing for Najam was the prospect of being able to share his expertise with people around the world.
"As someone who not only works on developing countries, but also spends a lot of time there, I was acutely aware that the knowledge barrier is great and the Internet is a great means to break it," Najam said. "I thought, if nothing else, those teaching such courses in other countries will be able to see the approaches we are taking, to maybe build upon them, and maybe also inform us of what they are doing."
Similarly, Associate Professor Colin Orians worked with Tufts OCW to make his Biology 181: "Tropical Ecology and Conservation" curriculum available for general consumption. Orians was particularly interested in disseminating information about the course to other professors who might be interested in using his class setup as a model for their own classes.
Orians said that the ability to see the different approaches taken by their peers is an invaluable resource for educators. "I certainly, as a teacher, have learned a lot from my colleagues at other schools," he said.
In developing an online version of his class, Orians tried to compensate for the differences inherent in the workings of a class that is being provided through the Internet. For example, Orians wanted to be sure that his course would remain relevant without the need to constantly update it. "I tried to design it in a way that isn't time-sensitive," Orians said.
While the materials provided via the Tufts OCW Web site make information from Tufts courses available to anyone who is interested, there are some large differences between taking a course online and taking one in person. Most importantly, one cannot get a Tufts degree simply by following the school's OCW curricula.
Smith also said that while these course materials are useful as an academic resource, individual users would miss the benefits of an in-class environment if they were to rely only on OCW. "It cannot be an exact replica of the course because we can't duplicate the classroom experience," Smith said.
On the other hand, one of the great strengths of Tufts OCW is that it gives users the opportunity to explore many different types of classes, including ones they might never actually be able to take.
"It's just another resource that's available," Smith said. "You might be browsing and find [an area of study] you didn't know about, that you love."
