After you overslept and missed class last week, did you check your lecture notes online at the Boston University website? Did you expect someone from your hometown to also be able to check your lecture notes and be able to learn the same material as you without ever having to step foot in the classroom?
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced last week plans to offer all of their courses online to the general public for no charge, though no credits or degrees will be offered for these courses.
The OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) is a 10-year project that plans to offer 2,000 courses online to anyone who cares to read about them.
“Basically, the idea is to put all of the core course materials online,” said Patti Richards, MIT spokeswoman for the project. “It’s an extremely ambitious, intellectual idea.”
While working toward making all courses available in the next 10 years, the first courses will be available online within the next two years. Steps will be taken at the same time to enhance appearance and availability of the MIT website.
OCW is different from other school’s programs of distance learning because it is free of charge and doesn’t offer a degree. However, MIT emphasized the importance this program could have all over the world.
“Can you imagine the potential for a developing country without an engineering department?” Richards said, indicating those people could use OCW to learn engineering projects.
“I’ve had hundreds of people thanking me for this,” she added. “We’ve had an incredible response, hugely positive. It should be an incentive for other universities.”
MIT President Charles Vest agreed with Richards, but said he was reluctant at first to look at such a project that didn’t seem to include as much profit as other Internet programs might.
“OpenCourseWare looks counter-intuitive in a market driven world. It goes against the grain of current material values. But it really is consistent with what I believe is the best about MIT. It is innovative. It expresses our belief in the way education can be advance — by constantly widening access to information and by inspiring others to participate,” said Vest in a written statement.
Both Vest and Richards did mention the program is not without faults, including the possibility some students may opt to use it as a substitute for going to class.
“Attending classes on MIT campus is still going to be what MIT is all about,” Richards said. “It’s not really changing the core of courses here at MIT.”
BU College of Arts and Sciences freshman Jared Hawkins agreed with Vest and Richards about positive results the project might have. “It’s just going to be a positive effect,” he said.
“There’s no reason to have the website accessible to only students,” he added about BU’s own website.
“I think it would be good for students who are coming here can see what each course is offering,” said Metropolitan College sophomore Chris Burville.
However, despite some enthusiastic reactions, other students maintained the program has its faults.
“It’s not a bad idea, but you can say you learned all this stuff on the Internet, and they don’t even a degree or anything,” said College of General Studies freshman Mary Dickson. “To use that in place of going to class wouldn’t be good.”
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