M.I.T. Offers OpenCourseWare to Everyone

[hausdok]

Have you ever looked back and wished that you could have attended one of the premier schools in the country on a 100% scholarship when you were younger? Maybe you'd wanted to earn an engineering degree as a young'un but it just wasn't in the cards?

Well, what would you say if you could have access to much of the coursework for a host of subjects from a major institution of higher learning, and get those resources free? Well, read on frustrated engineers or whatever, because there might be some hope for you yet, because one of the worlds most respected technical universities, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, yeah, you read that right - M.I.T. - is placing course materials for literally thousands of its courses on the internet.

It's known as MIT OpenCourseWare and the aim is to share lessen plans and content from M.I.T. courses with other schools and self-learners from around the globe. With this new resource, teachers from colleges around the world can use M.I.T.'s new gift to everyone to develop their own curricula. Better yet, self-learners who know how to motivate themselves will be able to work their way through Opencourseware on their own.

Theoretically, a self-learner who really applies himself, could derive enough knowledge from this source to be able to challenge end-of-course exams at local colleges, and thus, by only paying a small exam fee, eliminate thousands of hours of sitting in classrooms listening to lectures, spending a small fortune on tuition costs and room and board and eliminate the constant transportation and scheduling hassles associated with attending schools nights and weekends while making a living.

This is a brave experiment for a major university. One might be tempted to scorn the idea, except for one fact - this is M.I.T. fer cryin' out loud! If anyone knows how to put together top shelf learning materials and help one take advantages of what the internet has to offer those who want to study at home, M.I.T. does.

Will folks who take advantage of this resource obtain a degree from M.I.T.? No, for that they'd have to attend the real McCoy, but folks completing some of these courses might might just find themselves able to obtain some type of degree from a local education of higher learning with a fraction of the cost normally involved and that's nothing to scoff at.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike O'Handley

Editor - TIJ

[a2zhi]

That's great mike,my name's andy,I'm new to the bizz.@a2zHI.Is that something you google like mit.?spent 4 yrs in your state while in the navy[:-party]Hope to be talking to more people as time goes on I'll have a million quest.before to long.

[hausdok]

Yikes,

I just re-read that article. Hope Bonnie doesn't see it or she's going to fail me just on principle.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[a2zhi]

Who's Bonnie?

[hausdok]

https://www.inspectorsjournal.com/forum ... IC_ID=4662

[homnspector]

Dang, we can all become engineers. Maybe a law school will follow. I have sometimes regretted my decision not to pursue engineering. i was afraid of the math. So, instead, I have a degree in wildlife biology which I use every day in my home inspection career.[:-graduat

Do you have a link to the MIT website that offers this?

[Bill Kibbel]

Originally posted by homnspector

I have a degree in wildlife biology which I use every day in my home inspection career.

So you were already aware of the aggressive behavior of that suburban predator freakinbitchitus realtyagentis? I had to find out the hard way.

I was in a crawl this week with a fox family.

Do you have a link to the MIT website that offers this?

Some time ago, I read the lectures for the

Analysis of Historic Structures course. Here's my bookmark: http://www.ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Architecture/4-448Fall-2004/CourseHome/index.htm

[homnspector]

I must have missed that day, but there were lots of days I don't remember. Keep in mind, the genus is always capitalized but not the species, so technically it is Freakinbitchitus realtyagentis. I have run into the subspecies Freakinbitchitus realtyagentis ignoramus, today in fact. This is an unusually aggressive parasitic subspecies, but it is generally theorized that the aggression is a fear response to Dealus mortis homeinspectus. Obviously, more research is needed.

You know, with my past education and current profession, I could probably get a government grant......?

Your bookmark link doesn't work and sounds really interesting.

[Bill Kibbel]

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Architecture/ ... /index.htm

[Bob White]

Originally posted by homnspector

... I have a degree in wildlife biology which I use every day in my home inspection career.[:-graduat

I too studied Wildlife Biology in my university days. I was unable to complete my studies, though. In my fourth year, at a meeting in the Dean of Men's office, I was strongly encouraged to leave and never come back because of a few of my activities outside the classroom.

33 years later, I've not yet gotten around to completing the coursework for that degree.

Don't tell my kids. They think I'm a model of propriety.

[homnspector]

Thats funny.

You didn't miss much, the last semester was less about Biology and more about how to be a game warden.

[Brandon Chew]

OpenCourseWare is a world-wide movement. In the US, the schools currently participating in it are:

Defense Acquisition University

Harvard Law School, Berkman Center for Internet and Society

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Michigan State University

Tufts University

University of California, Irvine

University of Massachusetts Boston

University of Michigan School of Information

University of Notre Dame

Utah State University

Utah Valley State College

Wheelock College

Some of them are up and running, and others haven't gotten their stuff out on the web yet. The list and links can be found here:

http://www.ocwconsortium.org/about/members.shtml

Scroll down the page to get to the links to each site. If you use the nav menu on the left, it takes you to a different page that does not have the links.

This if this catches on, and I think that it will, it will profoundly change the world. During the past two hundred years, we've had the industrial revolution, the agricultural (green) revolution, and we are currently in the midst of the technological revolution. What we could be seeing here is the dawn of a new age of enlightenment -- the knowledge revolution.

[StevenT]

"I was in a crawl this week with a fox family".

I would love to spend a week in a crawlspce with a fox. I'd be satisfied with a week-end. I've been working in Manhattan for the past few months. I love looking at all the foxes.