Open CourseWare
Posted on November 7, 2008 by MatthewMarini
Filed Under Resources, Students, Teaching, Uncategorized, websites
In conjunction with initiatives like open source textbooks, many higher education institutions are now participating in open ‘courseware’. As with open source text books, the purpose of open courseware is to provide universally accessible course material, for free.
Two institutions leading the charge are MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Yale. The methods used by these two universities use are very different, but both share the same goal, to share the best they have to offer with the world.
MIT has perhaps the most robust open courseware program, with 1800 individual courses represented. The collection of content for each course does vary however. For the majority of courses, all resources are available, from lecture notes, slide presentation, reading materials, to exams, answer sheets, and exemplars of student work. Some course may have more or less, but every course has valuable material, which is sure to be appreciated by those interested in the content area.
While the program offered by Yale, “Open Yale Courses“, is more modest in scope, (currently only 15 courses are offered across a variety of departments, but Yale has impressive expansion plans) I believe that Yale holds the superior model. For every course they offer, a complete video archive of all lectures is available (which can be streamed in a variety of formats very similar to Carleton’s CUTV VOD service). Also, mp3 audio files of all lectures, text transcripts as well as a list of readings and exams are available.
I feel I must reiterate what will become very quickly apparent when looking at either the MIT or Yale open courseware material, that is that there no credit is available through the issuing institution of the content. While this may seem obvious to some, it is an important point, and the most frequently asked question about open courseware.
Open courseware is a great opportunity not just for education enrichment at one’s own pace, but also a great way to see what some of the top professors in two of the best universities are doing: how and what they teach their students. Myself, I am currently enjoying Yale’s Philosophy 176 – Death as taught by Shelly Kagan, a fantastic professor and author of Normative Ethics, a text book for a number of my past courses.
Check it out!
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