Hatrack River Forum: MIT OpenCourseWare

This is topic MIT OpenCourseWare - Free! in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :

Welcome to MIT's OpenCourseWare

quote:
MIT OCW is a large-scale, Web-based electronic publishing initiative funded jointly by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation , MIT, and generous support of the Ab Initio software company.

MIT OCW's goals are to:

* Provide free, searchable, access to MIT's course materials for educators, students, and self-learners around the world.
* Extend the reach and impact of MIT OCW and the "opencourseware" concept.

MIT OCW would not be possible without the support and generosity of the MIT faculty who choose to share their research, pedagogy, and knowledge to benefit others. We expect MIT OCW to reach a steady - though never static - state by 2008. Between now and then, we will publish the materials from virtually all of MIT's undergraduate and graduate courses.

We will be continually evaluating the Access, Use, and Impact of MIT OCW. With 1,400 courses published as of May 1, 2006, we are still in a learning stage of this MIT initiative and we will benefit enormously from your feedback, as we strive to make MIT OCW as rich and useful as possible for our users.

In case anyone wants to take a few course this semester. [Smile]

Many of the copyrighted readings are listed in the bibliography, so you'd have to track them down yourself. If you study pre 20th century stuff, you can find them online.

Posted by anti_maven (Member # 9789) on :

Dag, this is birthday and Christmas all rolled into one.

Thanks for posting. It's a great resource to sample the latest developments in science and engineering.

You learn a new thing every day. By order.

[Wink]

Posted by Euripides (Member # 9315) on :

My lecturer told my class about this, and said that what you really pay for when you go to MIT is the opportunity to converse with like minds and lecturers. He also talked about the architecture at the university incorporating small 'social condensers', to encourage random run-ins with students specializing in other areas.

Exciting stuff! I was considering spending a small fortune to enrol in my uni's 'summer school' courses to get some history on the side, but I guess I don't have to. [Smile]

Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :

The thing about OCW is you have to have a significant amount of self-discipline. Also, some courses have more resources online than others. Some classes just have notes posted, some have homeworks and solutions, some (like this one) have at least a few full lectures on line.

Personally, while I think it's a great resource, it's not a complete substitute for the classroom experience. The inability to interact with the professors results in a very different experience, IMO.

Oh, and having had an office in the Stata Center (see social condenser) I can honestly say I never had a random run-in with anyone from a different research area. Mostly I think it's just what Gehry told the administration to convince them to drop the cash on a building that looks like a three-year-old's block tower after they got through pretending to be Godzilla.

Posted by Euripides (Member # 9315) on :

[ROFL]

I've always wanted to see the Stata Center. I have a particular interest in Gehry's architectural software and design method. Not exactly my favourite architect though.

Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :

Some of the iTunes U participants have their content open, too: http://www.apple.com/education/products/ipod/itunes_u.html (see the right sidebar for public sites).