MIT Open CourseWare offers education online

January 11, 10:49 PMDallas Public Schools ExaminerHolly Korbey

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I am recently obsessed.

My husband told me how MIT had posted nearly all their undergraduate courses online for download. I blinked. How could this be? Really? Am I getting that old, that I was shocked to learn that I could get an MIT education, essentially, on my laptop?

The answer is, more or less, yes, I am getting old. MIT has developed an Open CourseWare website that contains print, podcast, and video versions of nearly every course offered to MIT’s undergrads. That includes Architecture, Engineering, Humanities, Art, Social Sciences, and much more.

While the OCW site officially began in 2001 with a mere 50 courses available, they have recently added 1800 courses online, and 200 more will be added this year. The site states on its statistics page that they receive “72 million visits by 50 million visitors from virtually every country.”

What does this technology mean for students? Several incredible opportunities. First, teachers have access to all the materials – each online course includes printable assignments, student projects, handouts, and syllabi – so they can get resource material for nearly any subject they’re teaching in our public schools. Next, students can benefit from getting a jump start on college courses: MIT’s latest addition to the Open CourseWare, Highlights for High School, are courses most useful for high school students.

But, there’s more. Courses can also be used as professional development for anyone with a career in nearly anything (Right now on my desktop are the courses Rhetoric, Writing and Reading the Personal Essay, and Expository Writing: Food for Thought: Reading and Writing about Food and Culture – okay, maybe I got a little excited and ambitious), and the forms are tailored to how you live – podcasts for your workouts, videos and printout worksheets to file away for later.

So this is how technology is reaching our students in 2009. I can barely touch on all that is available online from MIT, one of our nation’s greatest institutions. One thing I do want to mention, however, is that all of this remains free because of generous donations, and donation buttons are available all over the site. If you download, please donate.

I encourage you, in the name of education and expanding your mind, to go to MIT Open CourseWare check it out.