MIT's bold vision: offering its course materials free online is just the beginning of MIT's vision for the future of education - Cover Story

Matrix: The Magazine for Leaders in Education, June, 2001 by Tim Goral

There are, of course, many universities and corporations that offer instructional materials for profit, notes Yue. "But no one has done what we plan on the scale and commitment we are talking about."

Worldwide Implications

Because OpenCourseWare will be available to anyone, anywhere, MIT sees many uses for the material. Individuals, for example, may use the materials for self-study, or to supplement a course they take elsewhere. Other universities may borrow from the materials in their own courses.

Lerman, however, sees worldwide implications. "We envision OCW being used to help train the faculty of Third World countries to ramp up their own curricula and, in turn, train their students."

Many of these countries have an age distribution in which more than half the population is 18 to 20 years or younger. "To develop economically, they have to grow their higher-education systems, and to do that they need to bring in lots of faculty who might not have had the benefit of an education in major universities in western countries," Lerman says. "These materials allow them to see what a topflight course in engineering or science looks like. It can really help them jumpstart their own development of courses."

The faculty may adapt the materials to their needs or get ideas from them, says Lerman, or they may even adopt them wholesale and translate them.

"I believe they would do a better job of it than having MIT extend the education to them," says Yue, "because they would know the local language and they could start at a level more befitting their local students' entry level. What we do in one semester, they might do in two."

Educational Community

Closer to home, but no less significant, is the notion that OpenCourseWare will lead to the creation of cooperative educational communities.

"We hope other universities follow this lead and do similar things," says Lerman. "We hope people add to, comment on and modify the things we put up. We can see communities being created around these materials by people who are involved in teaching. We envision links to other sites, too. Let's say University X creates its own version of OCW. We want to link our courses in similar areas to theirs, so if you go to MIT's course on thermodynamics, you'll find links that direct you to see also Stanford's courses, or CalTech or RPI or anyone else's courses."

Another aspect of OCW is one that Yue predicts will usher in a new way of teaching and learning on campus. "It will no longer be a case of the information going from my notebook to the blackboard, and then from the blackboard to your notebook. Suppose that is already done. Then what do you want to do in class? This lets our faculty get back to what teaching is all about," he says. "It will also allow students to audit a course without taking it."

Abelson uses the example of the World Solar Car Race to explain how OCW can help MIT students. The annual event is an engineering design contest where students vie to create the most efficient solar-powered car and then spend six days traversing the Australian continent in it.