The Hindu : MIT `virtually' opens its doors

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Oct 12, 2002

National

National

MIT `virtually' opens its doors

By Anand Parthasarathy

BANGALORE OCT. 11. Less than a year after it shook up the academic world by expressing its intentions of putting all its courses in the open domain of Internet, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has translated words into deeds: A pilot batch of 36 different course modules ranging from astronomy to aeronautics; ocean engineering to urban planning, have been placed at a newly created website for its "Open Course Ware" (OCW) project.

Anyone worldwide, with an Internet connection can access the complete course content as delivered in the MIT classrooms — complete with lecture notes, assignments, examination questions and answers — even video tapes of some of the lectures. The website: http://ocw.mit.edu, contains the full list of the 36 courses that are currently available. The course material is in standard format — either in Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) — the Net's language that all browsers understand — or in the popular Acrobat document format known as PDF. A trial showed that the material downloads quickly and can be stored on one's own computer in a few minutes.

A student taking these courses at MIT would typically pay a fee equivalent of Rs. 13 lakhs per year at the elite technological institution — and by releasing all this material for free, MIT has bucked the trend, where online distance education is increasingly available — but at a very stiff price. However, a spokesperson clarifies that this cannot be deemed to be a substitute for an MIT education programme, which is obtained by classroom interaction with instructors. No degree will be awarded for taking these web courses — but the resource will nevertheless form a rich mother lode, because — in the spirit of Open Software — MIT has made the material available royalty-free and encourages translation and reuse, as long as the course content is not reworked or sold for profit. This may end up proving to be a useful resource in bridging the digital divide in India, where expertise to translate technical work into multiple languages exists.

Interestingly, the website CNET.com quotes some MIT professors saying that many of their fulltime students prefer to `bunk' lectures and catch-up with the video taped versions at their convenience.

According to the timetable published by MIT, the number of courses placed online will increase to a few hundreds between 2003 and 2005, and in many cases, will enable users to complete a full curriculum of their choice. By 2007, all MIT courses — numbering approximately 2000 — will be available online. Efforts are also on to exploit new technologies like XML, which will allow mobile and wireless devices to download the material.

The OCW project has been partly funded by two philanthropic foundations --the William and Flora Hewlett (of Hewlett Packard fame) and the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National