Education has long been one of the most talked about subjects. Whether it is about what school to apply for or how to pay for college, it is on the minds of almost all parents and young adults. If I knew that someday I could go to Harvard or Stanford and have my education paid for so that when I graduate I have no student loans, I would feel like the luckiest person in the world! Fortunately for me, I am funded, but I still think about those who are not. I do not have the means to pay for them, but I do know that they can still learn from the best of the best without paying a dime. In comes the Massechusetts Institute of Technology's OpenCourseWare. Online lectures mostly free to anyone who would like to take an MIT course. No need for an application, for funding, or for costly exams (GRE and GMAT ring a bell?). You just take the course in the comfort of your home.
The following is the percentage of users from around the world for MIT's OCW website:
So whether I can afford it or not or whether I can leave my country or not, I can still get the education I so desire. So who watches the courses? MIT's OCW audience is divided into:
Keep in mind that this does not mean you will get any kind of degree or certificate from MIT. OCW just allows you to access these lectures for your own benefit. The Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike allows the users to access and share the site if it is for non-commercial purposes and must credit the author/licensor. For more information, go to: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm.
Another interesting project that I have come across is the Opencourse Opencourseware Prototype System or OOPS as it is commonly referred to. This all-volunteer organization, headquartered in Taiwan, was originally designed to translate open course materials from MIT's OpenCourseWare (OCW) into Chinese. An article appeared in the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Volume 8, Number 3 entitled "OOPS, Turning MIT Opencourseware into Chinese: An analysis of a community of practive of global translators" by Mimi Lee, Meng-Fen Lin, and Curtis Bonk, it outlines the issues "central to the emergence, success, and challenges of the community such as OOPS". These three issues are catagorized as:
1. Leadership
2. Paricipation incentives
3. Storytelling
Is there a strong, stable leader that has "vision and effort... to cultivate peace and mutual understanding? If the participants are mainly volunteers, would that lower the quality standards and productivity? Is storytelling between the members about the process of translating vital to the community? These and many more questions can be found in the article.
The notion of freely available information is interesting and I think it is also essential in many ways. Towards this end, MIT's move to make educational material of several courses open on the web through their OpenCourseWare is indeed promising! Many other institutions have now started similar schemes in which several courses are available for users to learn and understand.
ReplyDeleteThe importance of such opportunity is beyond a degree/diploma. This is more appreciable by those who have to work to make ends meet or even by those who had to make certain career choice due to unavoidable circumstances but are interested in particular subject.
Now with such courses available on Internet 24/7, interested students can learn their favorite topics at their own place and convenience!