Somewhere amidst all the junk in my attic there are file boxes with what’s left of notes and handouts from my undergraduate years at the University of Washington. I’m sure I’ve still got some typed (I can’t remember the last time I actually had to use a typewriter) papers from a medieval history class I took as a sophomore, and I think I must even still have mimeographed (with the familiar blue font) course outlines from a class I had on Judaism during my senior year. What if, instead of decades-old relics, you had access to current resources and lecture notes? And what if they were just a few clicks away, rather than gathering dust in storage? Amazingly enough, M.I.T. has made all of their courses available to anyone, anywhere, and it’s all absolutely free!
It’s part of what’s called the “open education” movement, and M.I.T. is at the forefront. The following quote is from a book on their site called Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content and Open Knowledge, edited by Toru Iiyoshi and M.S. Vijay Kumar. There’s good news and bad news, according to the introduction:
“Today, a confluence of events is creating the perfect storm for significantly advancing education. With a growing inventory of openly available educational tools and resources, and with an increasingly engaged and connected community, transformative opportunities for education abound. We see a proliferation of new initiatives, many with the potential to radically change the ecology and the economics of education. However, to date, many innovative educational endeavors still remain in isolated and closed domains, rarely shared across classrooms, disciplines, or institutions. Thus, educators find it difficult to advance their pedagogical practice and knowledge as a community.”
This is one storm in the middle of which we can all be glad to get caught! Maybe I ought to start with a refresher course in English grammar…
Time spent browsing through the OpenCourseWare at M.I.T. site is definitely time well spent:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
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