THE RENOWNED TECH SCHOOL MAKES COURSES AVAILABLE ONLINE FREE, TO ANYONE.
The New Republic reports on MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative, which publishes MIT course materials online in every area from aeronautics and astronautics to writing and humanistic studies—free.
Want to try MIT’s “Introduction to the American Political Process,” including Professor Adam Berinsky’s lecture notes and downloadable assignments? Voilà. Or perhaps brush up on “Welding and Joining Processes” with Professor Thomas Eagar—cold welding, cracking resistance, solidification, that sort of thing? You got it.
MIT’s project is part of the OpenCourseWare Consortium, which has about 15 countries’ schools actively participating. It’s a phenomenally impressive counter to the Wikipedia model; here are authorities teaching from authoritative institutions, for nothing.
It’s also a boost to U.S. public diplomacy: One of the world’s leading technical universities is letting the world’s people harvest large amounts of its knowledge.
MIT doesn’t award degrees or certificates through OpenCourseWare, but if someone wants to be educated rather than degreed, this looks like a great starting point.
(Thanks as always to John Brown's Public Diplomacy Review for the initial item.)
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