I am intrigued by the Open Source movement. The idea that programmers would create high quality software and give it away because they feel it is the right thing to do is very interesting. See previous post regarding Open Office.
A similar idea is surfacing regarding course experiences. The idea is that prestigous institutions will give away courses. Exactly what this means and what such resources will look like has yet to fully emerge. Will this effort result in “learning objects” that are “static” information resource (in the sense that lectures are an information source like a book) or will this be more inclusive and involve interactive experiences (scored activities, simulations)? Will the evaluation be built in and whose standards would apply?
You can experiment right now. Explore MIT OpenCourseWare. My strategy for evaluating such resources is to try to use them myself – it is not enough to read what someone else has to say or to glance through the resource. My personal experiment is based on the statistics course from Carnegie Mellon. Statistics is a content area for which my academic training provides enough expertise that I can move quickly and also compare my personal experiences with courses at my institution. I have only a couple of hours invested at this point and it would be inappropriate to generalize in any way – I do encourage others to form their own personal opinions in this way.
Take the time to examine the Carnegie Mellon research agenda which can be accessed using a link on the home page.
