TCS - Free College Education

Free College Education

by Don Singleton
Tulsa Computer Society
From the May 2001 issue of the I/O Port Newsletter

Want a free college education? Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced it plans to make the materials for nearly all its courses freely available on the Internet over the next ten years, including material such as lecture notes, course outlines, reading lists, and assignments for over 2,000 courses.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2001/ocw.html is the announcement for this decision.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2001/ocw-facts.html is the MIT OpenCourseWare - Fact Sheet

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2001/ocw-fac.html contains various views of MIT Faculty related to this new initiative.

A large-scale pilot program, lasting two years, involves 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 and throughout the world. By the end of the two-year period, it is expected that materials for more than 500 courses would be available on the MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) site.

People taking courses using the website will be auditing the course, i.e. they will not earn college credits.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/04/technology/04MIT.html is an article from the New York Times on this subject.



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Tulsa Computer Society 4/06/2001
Don Singleton, President