Open CourseWare
Have you ever got stuck on a topic of your course and wished there were someone to explain it like your teacher? Have you wanted to have information about any subject or any topic at your fingertips? Have you realized that owning a library filled with that information is far too expensive for your budget? If you want to learn more about these topics, then head back to your comfort zone — the online medium. Here you can gain access to university and college-level materials that can put you ahead of the class. The internet is giving birth to a revolution in learning that is changing the way we educate ourselves in and beyond the classroom. E-learning initiatives such as Open CourseWare (OCW) projects are aimed at making university-level course materials available online at no charge whatsoever. The driving philosophy behind this project is parallel to that of open-source software; by making education accessible and open to everyone, we can ultimately increase innovation and share the global benefits.
Open CourseWare is class material such as syllabi, reading lists, lecture notes, and other documents that were once used in an actual classroom and are now available to the public for free. Several universities make this material available on their websites as a service to the public.
Open courseware is a fantastic idea. It will only spread further and further, because it wrings significant extra value — value perfectly aligned with most educational institutions’ mission — at relatively little extra cost. And while simply recording a class without paying attention to the needs of those watching afterwards is suboptimal, we’re getting better at it. In any case, I don’t mean to carp. Less-than-perfect open courseware is a zillion times better than no open courseware. And we’re just beginning this. Open courseware will change, and it will also change how courses are taught in the real world.
MIT Open CourseWare:
Like almost every organization in the US, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spent the late 1990s struggling with the question of how to take advantage of the internet. Many other colleges launched online degree courses aimed at anyone with a modem and a big wallet. But MIT has taken a completely different direction with a project called Open CourseWare (OCW) that could stop the trend of commercializing online education dead in its tracks. The concept for MIT Open CourseWare grew out of the MIT Council on Education Technology, which was charged by MIT provost Robert Brown in 1999 with determining how MIT should position itself in the distance-learning environment. The MIT Open CourseWare was then initiated to provide a new model for the dissemination of knowledge and collaboration among scholars around the world, and contributes to the “shared intellectual commons” in academia, which fosters collaboration across MIT and among other scholars. The project was spearheaded by Hal Abelson and other MIT Faculty.
Education Revolution:
The main challenge in implementing the OCW initiative had not been faculty resistance, but rather, the logistical challenges presented by determining ownership and obtaining publication permission for the massive amount of intellectual property items that are embedded in the course materials of MIT's faculty, in addition to the time and technical effort required to convert the educational materials to an online format. Copyright in MIT Open CourseWare material remains with MIT, members of its faculty, or its students.
In September 2002, the MIT Open CourseWare proof-of-concept pilot site opened to the public, offering 32 courses. In September 2003, MIT Open CourseWare published its 500th course, including some courses with complete streaming video lectures. By September 2004, 900 MIT courses were available online.
MIT's former president Charles Vest stated that the open course material could improve teaching methods, regardless. As stated on the website, OCW does not grant degrees or certificates, does not provide access to MIT faculty or materials, and may not reflect the entire content of a course.
Over the next few years, MIT will move all its existing coursework on to the internet. There will be no online degrees for sale, however. Instead, it will offer thousands of pages of information, available to anyone around the globe at no cost, as well as hours and hours of streaming video lectures, seminars and experiments.
Free for all:
Most websites had abandoned the idea of offering totally free content. But there is no revenue objective for OCW, ever. It will always be free. MIT staff point out that if this initiative is successful, and other institutions follow, it will put the net back on track towards its original goal of sharing information and knowledge around the world, rather than selling CDs and t-shirts.
Self-educators, autodidacts, homeschoolers, unschoolers, and anyone else who is interested in learning on their own can take advantage of Open CourseWare. If you're interested in learning online, but feel anxious about investing money and time into a program, you can use Open CourseWare to experiment. Some people choose to study the material in groups, meeting in person or through the internet.
OCW in INDIA:
Want to know what the Indian technology professionals are taught in India that makes them sought-after talents the world over? It's just a click away now as the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), the country's elite engineering institute, has started putting finishing touches to the first phase of a mammoth project called the National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL). This aims to put all the courses of this Institute online in the next three years.
The Human Resources Development Ministry has designed (NPTEL), a positive intervention on the lines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Open Courseware (MIT-OCW).
NPTEL is a joint initiative by seven Indian Institutes of Technology (Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras and Roorkee) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) for creation of content for 100 engineering and science subjects as web-based supplements and 100 complete video courses at forty hours of duration per course. This will be on the model curriculum suggested by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the syllabi of major affiliating universities.
While the web content can be accessed free of charge, the video contents available in hard disks can be purchased by government funded/aided institutions for Rs. 15,000 and private institutions for Rs.1 lakhs through a demand draft drawn in favor of ‘The Registrar, IIT Madras’. However, any individual having broadband connectivity can download the lectures
Some of the links related to the online courses are as follows:
· MIT OCW: The forerunner of Open CourseWare, this college provides dozens of detailed courses, as well as audio and video lectures.
· NPTEL: This will provide access to classesand faculty of the IIT to not only the students in the country, but also to the students, teachers, academicians
· Fulbright Economics Teaching Program – Offers economics and marketing Open CourseWare.
· Tufts University – Provides users with access to material from a number of disciplines including medicine, nutrition, arts, and sciences.
· Utah State University – Provides Open CourseWare for multiple undergraduate disciplines.
· http://www.onlinebestcolleges.com/blog/2009/100 weirdest Open CourseWare classes that anybody can take/
· http://www.distancelearningnet.com/blog/2009/50 free open CourseWare for web designers perfecting their craft/
Have you ever got stuck on a topic of your course and wished there were someone to explain it like your teacher? Have you wanted to have information about any subject or any topic at your fingertips? Have you realized that owning a library filled with that information is far too expensive for your budget? If you want to learn more about these topics, then head back to your comfort zone — the online medium. Here you can gain access to university and college-level materials that can put you ahead of the class. The internet is giving birth to a revolution in learning that is changing the way we educate ourselves in and beyond the classroom. E-learning initiatives such as Open CourseWare (OCW) projects are aimed at making university-level course materials available online at no charge whatsoever. The driving philosophy behind this project is parallel to that of open-source software; by making education accessible and open to everyone, we can ultimately increase innovation and share the global benefits.
Open CourseWare is class material such as syllabi, reading lists, lecture notes, and other documents that were once used in an actual classroom and are now available to the public for free. Several universities make this material available on their websites as a service to the public.
Open courseware is a fantastic idea. It will only spread further and further, because it wrings significant extra value — value perfectly aligned with most educational institutions’ mission — at relatively little extra cost. And while simply recording a class without paying attention to the needs of those watching afterwards is suboptimal, we’re getting better at it. In any case, I don’t mean to carp. Less-than-perfect open courseware is a zillion times better than no open courseware. And we’re just beginning this. Open courseware will change, and it will also change how courses are taught in the real world.
MIT Open CourseWare:
Like almost every organization in the US, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spent the late 1990s struggling with the question of how to take advantage of the internet. Many other colleges launched online degree courses aimed at anyone with a modem and a big wallet. But MIT has taken a completely different direction with a project called Open CourseWare (OCW) that could stop the trend of commercializing online education dead in its tracks. The concept for MIT Open CourseWare grew out of the MIT Council on Education Technology, which was charged by MIT provost Robert Brown in 1999 with determining how MIT should position itself in the distance-learning environment. The MIT Open CourseWare was then initiated to provide a new model for the dissemination of knowledge and collaboration among scholars around the world, and contributes to the “shared intellectual commons” in academia, which fosters collaboration across MIT and among other scholars. The project was spearheaded by Hal Abelson and other MIT Faculty.
Education Revolution:
The main challenge in implementing the OCW initiative had not been faculty resistance, but rather, the logistical challenges presented by determining ownership and obtaining publication permission for the massive amount of intellectual property items that are embedded in the course materials of MIT's faculty, in addition to the time and technical effort required to convert the educational materials to an online format. Copyright in MIT Open CourseWare material remains with MIT, members of its faculty, or its students.
In September 2002, the MIT Open CourseWare proof-of-concept pilot site opened to the public, offering 32 courses. In September 2003, MIT Open CourseWare published its 500th course, including some courses with complete streaming video lectures. By September 2004, 900 MIT courses were available online.
MIT's former president Charles Vest stated that the open course material could improve teaching methods, regardless. As stated on the website, OCW does not grant degrees or certificates, does not provide access to MIT faculty or materials, and may not reflect the entire content of a course.
Over the next few years, MIT will move all its existing coursework on to the internet. There will be no online degrees for sale, however. Instead, it will offer thousands of pages of information, available to anyone around the globe at no cost, as well as hours and hours of streaming video lectures, seminars and experiments.
Free for all:
Most websites had abandoned the idea of offering totally free content. But there is no revenue objective for OCW, ever. It will always be free. MIT staff point out that if this initiative is successful, and other institutions follow, it will put the net back on track towards its original goal of sharing information and knowledge around the world, rather than selling CDs and t-shirts.
Self-educators, autodidacts, homeschoolers, unschoolers, and anyone else who is interested in learning on their own can take advantage of Open CourseWare. If you're interested in learning online, but feel anxious about investing money and time into a program, you can use Open CourseWare to experiment. Some people choose to study the material in groups, meeting in person or through the internet.
OCW in INDIA:
Want to know what the Indian technology professionals are taught in India that makes them sought-after talents the world over? It's just a click away now as the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), the country's elite engineering institute, has started putting finishing touches to the first phase of a mammoth project called the National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL). This aims to put all the courses of this Institute online in the next three years.
The Human Resources Development Ministry has designed (NPTEL), a positive intervention on the lines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Open Courseware (MIT-OCW).
NPTEL is a joint initiative by seven Indian Institutes of Technology (Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras and Roorkee) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) for creation of content for 100 engineering and science subjects as web-based supplements and 100 complete video courses at forty hours of duration per course. This will be on the model curriculum suggested by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the syllabi of major affiliating universities.
While the web content can be accessed free of charge, the video contents available in hard disks can be purchased by government funded/aided institutions for Rs. 15,000 and private institutions for Rs.1 lakhs through a demand draft drawn in favor of ‘The Registrar, IIT Madras’. However, any individual having broadband connectivity can download the lectures
Some of the links related to the online courses are as follows:
· MIT OCW: The forerunner of Open CourseWare, this college provides dozens of detailed courses, as well as audio and video lectures.
· NPTEL: This will provide access to classesand faculty of the IIT to not only the students in the country, but also to the students, teachers, academicians
· Fulbright Economics Teaching Program – Offers economics and marketing Open CourseWare.
· Tufts University – Provides users with access to material from a number of disciplines including medicine, nutrition, arts, and sciences.
· Utah State University – Provides Open CourseWare for multiple undergraduate disciplines.
· http://www.onlinebestcolleges.com/blog/2009/100 weirdest Open CourseWare classes that anybody can take/
· http://www.distancelearningnet.com/blog/2009/50 free open CourseWare for web designers perfecting their craft/
