The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced yesterday that it would post almost all of the material for over 2000 courses on newly created public websites.
The website for the project, which is called MIT OpenCourse Ware, would include such materials as lecture notes, problem sets, reading lists, course outlines, assignments, tests, exams, resource links and lecture videos, and would be available to any user anywhere in the world.
The 10-year program will cost an estimated $100 million and would span most MIT academic disciplines, including architecture, engineering, humanities, arts, sciences, social sciences and management.
The university, however, will not give course credit to website visitors who are not enrolled students.
"MIT OpenCourse Ware is a bold move that will change the way the web is used in higher education," MIT President Charles M. Vest said of the program. "It will provide an extraordinary resource."
The project will begin as a large scale pilot program over the next two years, starting with the design of the software and services needed to support such a large endeavor, as well as protocols to monitor and assess its utilization by faculty and students at MIT.
Universities have been enamored with the idea of "distance learning" -- offering courses online to off-campus paying students -- and commercial ventures have been investing millions of dollars in the idea. But MIT's venture is the first to offer access to anyone completely free of charge.
Most of the 940 faculty members support the plan, though some faculty members questioned whether it would be a good use of professors' time to labor over websites.
"The initiative is particularly valuable for courses covering emerging new areas of knowledge, as well as intersecting disciplines," Jonathan King, professor of molecular biology said in a press released by MIT early yesterday morning.
Sharing information and ideas is one of the underlying motivations for the new MIT online initiative.
"In the Middle Ages, people built cathedrals, where the whole town would get together and make a thing that's greater than any individual person could do," Hal Abelson, a professor of computer sciences and engineering, explained. "We don't do that much anymore, but in a sense this is kind of like building a cathedral."
While no such initiative is even under consideration at Dartmouth, professors are quick to acknowledge Dartmouth's already extensive use of Internet resources.
"We actually use the web quite a bit in many of our courses," Tom Cormen, a professor in the computer science department, told The Dartmouth, "but I don't have much enthusiasm for video lectures."
Discussions emerged at MIT about whether or not students would develop important relationships with professors if video lectures were available over the Internet.
"I would hesitate to increase the importance of the web and decrease the value of the student-teacher relationship," Cormen said. "There is also the aspect of mentoring that the teacher does ... and I just would not be able to do any kind of mentoring over the web.
MIT would begin a pilot program in the fall of 2001, aiming to make 500 courses available over the next two-and-a-half years.
