Want to take a course from MIT, one of the most revered technology schools in the world? You don’t have to have near-perfect SAT scores, you don’t have to have a 4.0 GPA, you don’t have to pay the $ 50,000 tuition; in fact, you don’t even have to be enrolled as a student. It sounds too good to be true? MIT has put its entire course catalog online so that anyone who wants to consult the lectures, class notes, assignments and other materials can do so through their computer.
Online education continues to change the way educators and students view higher education, and MIT’s open courses are just one of many ways traditional schools are adapting to advances in technology. Due to the expansion of online education, the OpenCourseWare Consortium, a non-profit organization committed to advancing global education opportunities, was created to provide students from around the world with the opportunity to access higher education courses. and relevant material.
MIT isn’t the only prestigious earth school to get involved. Stanford, Tufts, Yale, the University of Michigan, and Harvard also offer many, if not all, of their courses online for free. So why give away something that many students pay so much for? “My deep conviction is that, as academics, we have a duty to spread our ideas as far and freely as possible,” says Rebecca Henderson, a business professor at MIT and Harvard.
Sharing the world’s knowledge is the goal of the OpenCourseWare Consortium. Obtaining copyrights from more schools and then delivering the material effectively, as well as long-term funding, are issues that are still being addressed. Initial funding came from the private sector through well-off schools and organizations like the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. But, say the directors of the Consortium, “relying on philanthropy is not sustainable.”
To address sustainability, copyright issues, and the effectiveness of Open Education movement courses, activists, educators, and scientists will converge in Barcelona for meetings on education, accessibility, and trends in Open Education. Open Ed 2011 and Drumbeat Learning Freedom and the Web Festival will meet to address the future of education and the Web and the “decisions needed to make open education a reality”, as well as “impact and sustainability.”
Mary Lou Forward, CEO of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is scheduled to attend both meetings. Unequal access to education is one of the biggest reasons OpenCourseWare was developed; Bringing free education to the masses is a concept that is always on Forward’s mind. “What I think about all the time,” he says, “are ways of bringing education to people.”
While open courses do not provide students with actual course credit or an eventual degree, many use them for self-study or to find areas of study that may interest them in their eventual career. Additionally, open courses provide disadvantaged students or students with little traditional access who may be unable to attend university the opportunity to study and learn exactly what their peers from elsewhere are studying.
OpenCourseWare hopes to eventually make national and global higher education courses freely available to students and students around the world.