Whoever said education is not free told an egregious lie to you and to me!! Did you know that you can indeed study college courses for free and on your own time in the comfort of your home or anywhere as long as you have internet access? So let’s look at MITs OpenCourseWare (OCW) http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm.
There are open courses at MIT offer that are free of charge and are for students who have backgrounds in science and math. According to Abelson the purpose for OpenCourseWare (OCW), “Lifelong Learning,”
MIT will be a valued source of education for members of its community throughout their lives. This includes knowledge update course designed for MIT alumni and others with a solid technical education, as well as more extended offerings, such as mid-career admission to postgraduate degree programs. Programs will involve both on-campus and on-line, but there could be on-campus elements as well p.167.
The OCW site is nicely done in terms of navigation. On the right side of the menu there is a link called getting started where the policies and what a visitor to this site would need to know about taking courses for free. For the courses that are offered on the left side of the screen there are links for the syllabus, calendar readings, Labs. This site did offer a very nice syllabus that did layout what had to be done for each open course.
The site was not designed for the distance learner because what MIT did was to take a course that the professor taught and then just recorded it in their video archives. Simonson et al. 2012 wrote the following processes for online education versus traditional face-to-face education:
- Keep in mind that courses previously taught in traditional classrooms may need to be retooled. The focus of the instruction shifts to visual presentations, engaged learners, and careful timing of presentations. Please take a look at this video to get an idea of how MIT just uploaded a video from a regular course and then made it OCW http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/chemistry/5-111-principles-of-chemical-science-fall-2008/video-lectures/lecture-1/.
- Be prepared in the event that technical problems occur. This is a free course site so it is basically just uploaded materials. I tried to access a test in the chemistry course but I think because of copyright laws and possible reuse of test at universities there was no test offered.
Did the course designer implement course activities that maximize active learning for the students? In looking at the chemistry 5.111 lecture there were no activities for the distance learner. I clicked on the resources link but only another explanation of the course was offered and why students should embrace chemistry. I personally liked the videos of the course but if I were looking for activities to perform alongside the lecture then this section fail short. The syllabus does provide class notes that can be downloaded by the distance learner. There are problems with the media selection in that there was no media outside of the lecture videos in chemistry.
The theory I think best fits MITs OCW is the theory of andragogy is defined as “the art and science of helping adults learn. Merriam (2001) list 5 assumptions underlying andragogy to describe the adult learner p 5:
- Has an independent self-concept and who can direct his or her own learning
- Has accumulated a reservoir of life experiences that is a rich resource for learning
- Has learning needs closely related to changing social roles
- Is problem-centered and interested in immediate application of knowledge,
- Is motivated to learn by internal rather than external factors
The other theory that would apply is the self-regulated learning refers to “learning that occurs largely from the influence of students ‘self-generated thoughts feelings strategies and behaviors which are oriented toward the attainment of goals (Artino 2008 p. 38).
OpenCourseWare offered by MIT offers courses for the adult learner who has a strong math and science background. OCW was developed by MIT for its alumni and for technological people. It does have archived video lessons, a well laid out syllabus, notes that can be downloaded and if you love is math or science and you just want to review what you have learned then MIT OCW is a great distance learning site for you to visit and learn from.
References
Abelson, H. (2008). The creation of opencourseware at MIT. Journal of Science
Education and Technology 17(2).
Artino, A. R. (2008). Promoting academic motivation and self-regulation: Practical
Guidelines for online instructors. TechTrends 52(3).
Merriam, S. B. (2001). Andragogy and self-directed learning: Pillars of adult learning
theory. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education 89, p 3-13.
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and Learning at
a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education. Boston, MA, Pearson.