Open Courseware Movement Grows

MIT is putting the course materials for all their courses online and other universities are following suit.

By the end of this year, the contents of all 1,800 courses taught at one of the world's most prestigious universities will be available online to anyone in the world, anywhere in the world. Learners won't have to register for the classes, and everyone is accepted. The cost? It's all free of charge. The OpenCourseWare movement, begun at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2002 and now spread to some 120 other universities worldwide, aims to disperse knowledge far beyond the ivy-clad walls of elite campuses to anyone who has an Internet connection and a desire to learn.

Lectures, diagrams, graphs, and other course material will all be widely and cheaply available - mostly for free.

You too can go through courses from MIT.

The MIT site (ocw.mit.edu), along with companion sites that translate the material into other languages, now average about 1.4 million visits per month from learners "in every single country on the planet," Ms. Margulies says. Those include Iraq, Darfur, "even Antarctica," she says. "We hear from [the online students] all the time with inspirational stories about how they are using these materials to change their lives. They're really, really motivated."

What is lagging? Videos of the lectures.

So far MIT has published 1,550 of its courses for OCW and plans to get the rest online by the end of this year. The materials for each course vary. Full videos of lectures, one of the most popular features, are available for only 26 courses, about 1,000 hours of video in all. "We'd like to do more video because it's really quite popular and our users love it," Marguiles says. "But it's quite expensive." The program relies on "generous support" from foundations, individuals, and MIT itself for funding, she says.

We still need two more essential elements: First, automated online tests. Students need a way to check their level of knowledge. Once they are confident they know to pass tests then they need to be able to go to a school and get tested in person so that they can get credits toward degrees.

How will smart kids use the ability to watch lectures and take tests online and earn credit? They start earning college credits sooner and get through college faster. Rather than impress people with a Harvard or MIT degree they'll impress with college degrees earned at age 19 and younger. They'll also save a hundred thousand dollars a piece and start making big money sooner. Why work for minimum wage while in college at age 20 when you can start earning several times that at 19 by graduating sooner?

The OpenCourseWare Consortium site serves as a good starting point if you want to look for online course material.