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Technology

More Universities to Publish Courseware Online 119

Posted by chrisd from the click-your-way-to-braininess dept.
prostoalex writes "After MIT's decision to put the course materials online free of charge, seven other universities expressed similar goals. With the grant from Hewlett-Packard the universities of Washington, Rochester, Toronto, Cornell, Columbia, Ohio State as well as MIT will provide their courses online at a single location. DSpace was launched with a $1.8 million grant from HP. MIT expects to spend about $250,000 annually to maintain and operate the archive. The page is available here." We also have an update on MITs courseware offerings, so read more if you care about such things.
In related news, dchud writes "DSpace, which has been in production use at MIT Libraries since September, is now available under a BSD-style license as version 1.0 at sourceforge. DSpace is a repository for capturing, persisting, and providing access to the digital research output of the MIT community, and will be the long-term archive for OpenCourseWare materials. Now it's available as an institutional repository platform for the rest of the world. See also coverage from the Boston Globe, CNET, and the AP (via NYT, reg req'd)."
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More Universities to Publish Courseware Online More

More Universities to Publish Courseware Online

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  • OOh, books online (Score:5, Informative)

    by Snaller ( 147050 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @02:23PM (#4600570) Journal

    Speaking of books online, don't forget about Baen Books, and their free online library [baen.com]: http://www.baen.com/library/ they know that allowing people to sample stuff for free online is good for business. So you can download many of their books, quite legal.The thought is, if you like it you probably want to buy something from the same author (much as it is with music sharing, according to Janis Ian)

  • Great (Score:5, Funny)

    by ibmhack ( 623127 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @02:25PM (#4600581)
    Now professors can be like the students and copy all of their material from the web!
    • Alas, they don't write their own material anyway.

      The people that will be most upset about the move towards open courseware will be the text book publishing industry.

      The reason that college text books are so expensive is not to have fat profit margins, but because the publishing houses spend so much money up front on not only writing, producing and distributing the texts themselves, but also writing, producing and distributing the professor's materials for teaching!

      At top rated schools like MIT, professors don't do this. But think of all the JC's, the Maine A&T, etc where the professors are not well paid, Nobel-caliber social and physical scientists, and you'll get an idea of the size of the market for teaching materials.

      t

  • Add this to my resume (Score:4, Funny)

    by batboy78 ( 255178 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @02:25PM (#4600586) Homepage
    Well does this mean that I can add imaginary degree from Cornell and MIT to my resume?

  • This is good, but I do feel a bit cheated. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @02:28PM (#4600597)
    I think this is a great move. At least for the general public. It may, however, be a bad business decision for the university. I don't care what /.ers think, freely giving away information very often does not lead to profit.

    That being said, I feel a bit cheated because I recently took a bunch of online courses from Columbia University. At about $1000/credit, it kinda bothers me that people can get something similar for free (of course, you can't get a degree this way).

    All in all, science has always been a collaborative thing, and this should only help collaboration. Hopefully this will turn out to be a great archive of knowledge, kinda like Google, but you don't need to sift through the bullshit.

    As for other subjects besides science/math, I don't know or care what this will do for them. They're pretty much a waste of time anyway. Reading is fundamental, but a literary critic is a terrible waste of flesh...
    • I think this is a great move. At least for the general public. It may, however, be a bad business decision for the university. I don't care what /.ers think, freely giving away information very often does not lead to profit.

      Universities are not in the business of making profit. If their economy is hard pressed, they could in theory compensate the missing revenues by higher tuition. Then the average cost per student would be the same, but there would be plenty of additional benefits. For example, students will never have to hesitate on whether to get some material, and they can check out material for other classes if the need arises. Not to mention the benefit to society at large, now anyone can get their hands on first-rate material.

      That being said, I feel a bit cheated because I recently took a bunch of online courses from Columbia University. At about $1000/credit, it kinda bothers me that people can get something similar for free (of course, you can't get a degree this way).

      Please, is this a joke? You were exposed to a system that sucked, and therefore it is unfair if somebody else gets a better deal. Grow up.

      Tor
      • Universities are not in the business of making profit.

        +5 Funny
      • Building institutional repositories isn't exactly going to make a profit for the universities, but they do see IRs as a way of saving money in the long run. According to a recent SPARC white paper (the most comprehensive discussion on the topic so far http://www.arl.org/sparc/home/index.asp?page=0), universities are tired of paying exorbitant subscription rates for leading journals, esp. in the sciences, yet the journals are so important in the system of assessing academic merit, no university can afford to do without them. IRs provide an alternative venue for academic publishing that breaks the monopoly of the journals, and, once the infrastructure is working smoothly, saves on journal subscriptions. It remains to be seen whether or not universities can adequately perform the gatekeeping and review functions of journals, or whether academics would be willing to publish in an IR instead of Nature or The Lancet (although changes in copyright rules may allow them to do both). Also, Mr. Coward's comment about literary critics undermines itself. If "reading is fundamental," then interpreting texts, i.e., literary criticism, must also be fundamental.

    • Re:This is good, but I do feel a bit cheated. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by back_pages ( 600753 ) <back_pagesNO@SPAMcox.net> on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @02:58PM (#4600740) Journal
      Don't forget what this could mean to future students. When I was in high school, I was busy programming my TI-85 to double check all of my 1 variable integral calculus, but I didn't have any idea what the difference between a deep and shallow copy of data was. If I had access to college level materials, I could have had a substantial head start, all in my spare time, all due to my personal enthusiasm for the material.

      And while it certainly wouldn't be an unbreakable rule, if I found Local State U's online material valuable while I was in high school, chances are really good that I would apply there for undergraduate school. That's exactly the type of applicant a CS department wants - self directed, motivated, with a head start, and ready to hit the ground running.

      While none of that is a 1. 2. 3. plan for profit, there are other vital stats that can benefit a school, such as word of mouth and/or internet reputation. Sure, they might lose some revenue by publishing this stuff, but if everyone knows that UofQ has the best online computer science resources, they'll probably draw a better class of undergrad applicants in the process.

      In all, this stuff strikes me as VERY forward thinking. Of course, it might flop, backfire, or crash & burn, but we'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, I think this will be substantially advantageous for the schools that participate. (MIT really doesn't need to boost its glory, methinks, but it is a great project for them to pioneer. The bulk of the advantage will probably go to lesser reknowned schools.)

      • Another possible source of revenue:

        People may use these online materials, get really good, and appeal to the University to take a test to get recognition for this knowledge. Perhaps not a true degree, but still better than, say, an MCSE and definately better than nothing at all.

        University could profit from this - I doubt it would offset the investment in the courseware, but who knows...

        In any case, this type of initiative pleases me to no end. In the current university climate of patents and profit, this is certainly a breath of fresh air.
        • there is something like this in many states. I'm not too keen on the particulars but in Virginia in the case of law one can go before the Bar and do what is called "reading the law". Basically you're an autodidact that has studied the laws of virginia solo with no degree and can now demonstrate that to the Bar Association. This is rare but it is done. Only a few people every now and then actually try it.

    • Its not suppoed to lead to profit (Score:5, Insightful)

      by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <[slashdot] [at] [keirstead.org]> on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @02:59PM (#4600752)

      No matter how much you may feel sometimes that your University is being run like a business (which is pretty much necessary nowadays, with cutbacks to funding), Universitys never have been, nor hopefully will they ever be, out to make a profit. They are publicly funded institutions whose sole purpose is to provide an avenue to educate and teach the public, and hopefully, increase the scientific knowledge of the country as a whole. Any school who cares about nothing but the bottom line is doing a disservice not only to its students but to the community it serves, who in the end, funds its very existance.

      This is the main thing that distinguishes a University from a private school, which is out to make a profit, often at the expensive of a good education.

      • Actually, only public universities are publicly funded. Private universities do get some public money (research grants, etc), but much of their funding comes from elsewhere. Here in Boston, for example, both BU and MIT have huge real estate holdings that earns them a lot of money.

    • Re:This is good, but I do feel a bit cheated. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jgerman ( 106518 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @02:59PM (#4600758)

      That being said, I feel a bit cheated because I recently took a bunch of online courses from Columbia University. At about $1000/credit, it kinda bothers me that people can get something similar for free (of course, you can't get a degree this way).


      Yes, because education should only be available to those with money. I've got news for you, you are paying ONLY for the degree. All of that education is available for free and rightly so. Honestly, would you without something you learned in school from someone who never went, simply because they didn't pay for it? What's more, most universities recieve public funding. So the general public has a right to access that information.

    • ...freely giving away information very often does not lead to profit.

      As for other subjects besides science/math, I don't know or care what this will do for them. They're pretty much a waste of time anyway.

      Hmm, good thing you didn't get any education in those non-technical subjects. We'd hate to have people who've studied history making arguments based on it.

      And yes, I know you're probably trolling.
    • What are you talking about? There's an easy way to make money by freely giving away information.

      1. Give away course material
      2. ???
      3. Profit!

    • It may, however, be a bad business decision for the university. I don't care what /.ers think, freely giving away information very often does not lead to profit.

      People pay universities for a piece of paper saying that they have fulfilled their requirements to be given a degree. Don't confuse that with the education you may or may not happen to get on the way to receiving said piece of paper. I'm able to learn much more efficiently and easily (and am more motivated to do so) on my own, but I need to bend over and do what a University tells me to do for four years in order to get that piece of paper so that people will hire me. Unfortunately in this market, people don't hire on merit, they want proof in the form of a degree (which I argue is no proof at all) that you can handle a job.

      Anyway, as long as Universities have fancy pieces of paper with distinctive fonts (and latin, if you're lucky), their business will continue to do just fine.

    • That being said, I feel a bit cheated because I recently took a bunch of online courses from Columbia University. At about $1000/credit, it kinda bothers me that people can get something similar for free (of course, you can't get a degree this way).

      And you've abdicated any right to complain with your own comment. The only reason that universities may charge exorbitant rates as they see fit is because they are permitted to grant credit towards degrees. You're not paying for the subject matter. You're paying for the piece of paper at the end (oh, yes--the live professor is worth something, but the actual value of his or her pedagogy varies wildly.)

      Saying, "I have a degree from Cornell" carries significantly more weight than, "I have read all of the online materials without attending any classes or earning any credits." The cost of the courses is what you pay for the university's seal of approval--they are willing to attest to your knowing the material that you assert you know.

      Also--quit whining. You now have access to a tremendous free resource that's not polluted with the quantity of misinformed crap that poisons most of the rest of the 'net. Enjoy it. Use it.

    • It may, however, be a bad business decision for the university. I don't care what /.ers think, freely giving away information very often does not lead to profit.

      Universities have already been "freely giving away information". The "publish or perish" mantra is not just a saying. If a professor doesn't publish enough papers, he doesn't get promoted and doesn't advance. If a University doesn't publish enough papers, it doesn't get its accreditation renewed. And if a particularly good University doesn't publish an insanely high number of papers; it starts losing its top academic ranking.

      If you want to go to a University that is good at making money, go to a school with a good football team. Me, I'll stick to school with a good academic reputation.

    • As for other subjects besides science/math, I don't know or care what this will do for them. They're pretty much a waste of time anyway. Reading is fundamental, but a literary critic is a terrible waste of flesh...

      dipshit.

  • And just who... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bi0h4z4rD ( 618737 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @02:28PM (#4600599)

    foots the bill for this $250,000/yr that it's going to cost to maintain the site? Is it going to be added to tuition which is already high enough here in Canada and is outrageous in the U.S.??

    On a sidenote, at least they're reducing the amount of paper used to print those often useless textbooks professors make us buy!!

    • The ever-growing endowment (Score:3, Insightful)

      by adb ( 31105 )
      Tuition isn't really related to the university's costs in any concrete sense. Consider the concept of need-based financial aid: one way to look at it is that schools are nobly helping students who can't afford to pay, but another, more accurate version is that they are simply taking all your money (if you're not rich) or as much as they think they can get away with (if you are). Here, read this [greenspun.com].
    • Bi0h4z4rD asks who foots the bill?

      They do have a Business Plan [dspace.org] to pay for the site and I quote from the introduction below:

      Operations Funding Model MIT Libraries plan to transition DSpace from its reliance on outside funding to a more sustainable funding model. Consistent with the Libraries mission, Core Services will be offered free of charge to all registered members of the MIT community. In keeping with MIT s mission, content will be offered as freely as possible via the Web to the public. This service strategy precludes seeking user or subscription fees for means to support the ongoing operations of DSpace. The proposed funding model will rely upon a number of potential resources including, but not necessarily limited to, support from the Institute, revenue from Premium Services, and support from corporate and federation partners. Support may take the form of financial support or in-kind assistance. Collectively, these contributions will cover the operational costs of DSpace, as well as some future development needs.
    • "And just who... {} foots the bill for this $250,000/yr that it's going to cost to maintain the site? Is it going to be added to tuition which is already high enough here in Canada and is outrageous in the U.S.??"

      Well, for a start, MIT may choose to use a portion of their $1.5 Billion dollar fund raised from alumni, there's a source:

      MIT Fund [mit.edu]

      Another reason why this is a sweet decision on MIT's part is that this (hopefully) opens up a lot of the interesting courses at the school. Part of the inspiration for the Web content caching company Akamai was a course at MIT that I would love to see. Unfortunately, I don't have the money, citizenship, or an admission offer from MIT's Computer Science program to do a degree at the school. But if they put it online, I can at least look at the course curriculum and buy any text or print off the notes and learn the material as best I can.
    • Well, I would imagine the cost would be shared by all the institutions contributing to the site...essentially it will be a service, offered by the universities. Just like online courses are there now - it's growth. Doesn't seem all that outrageous to me...especially as more universities join up.

      DT

  • Biggest problem with these sites... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by edremy ( 36408 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @02:28PM (#4600601) Journal
    Copyright.

    I went to a talk at EDUCAUSE last month by the head of the MIT project. Copyright is one of their toughest problems: how do you make publically available the reams of material that professors want to use in their courses? [1]

    Her example was an architecture course that isn't listed on OpenCourseware. IIRC, it has something like 800 images on the private MIT website for the class. Every single one of those images has to be cleared before putting the site up for the public: she said they've done about 680 so far. Many of the images can't be published: the owner simply won't allow it, so you have to find some other source or simply drop it from the site.

    "The system doesn't scale" was the basic conclusion. They have a small group of people doing nothing else. I can't imagine they are paying them enough.

    [1] Most of this material is, to be blunt, pirated. (I'm speaking as an instructional tech guy here: I have to deal with these issues.) Faculty will happy scan entire books worth of art, digitize huge tracts of books and in one notable case last year, actually *making multiple photocopies of an entire textbook.* We deal with it by sticking our heads in the sand and blocking anyone outside of our school from seeing it, as do most schools, but I pity MIT: they actually have to sort through the mess.

    • Re:Biggest problem with these sites... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by czarneki ( 622927 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @03:02PM (#4600792)
      This is the same problem that coursepacks already went through. When photocopying first became widely available, professors contracted with copyshops to make coursepacks, collections of excerpts from copyrighted books, so that students in their classes would not have to purchase an entire library of books. Neither the professors nor the copyshops thought about paying the publisher royalties for this. When the publishers finally took them to court, one of the arguments made by the copyshops/professors was that it would simply be too complicated/costly to get copyright clearance for every little piece in a typical coursepack. The courts squashed that argument in no time.

      But the professors and students wanted coursepacks and they were willing to pay, and lo and behold, the publishers got their act together and formed associations to make copyright clearance for coursepacks extremely easy and efficient. It's basically all automated now.

      There's no reason that this same system can't be adopted for web publication of coursepacks. Copyright clearance need not be time-consuming or painful. The trouble, of course, is that whereas the students were willing to pay for their coursepacks (even with the added premium of the royalties), no one is going to pay for stuff on the web. Unless we make the current students pay higher tuition to subsidize web publication of their coursepacks or get the government to subsidize the effort, the publishers won't want to adopt the licensing scheme to this new use.

      • There's no reason that this same system can't be adopted for web publication of coursepacks. Copyright clearance need not be time-consuming or painful. The trouble, of course, is that whereas the students were willing to pay for their coursepacks (even with the added premium of the royalties), no one is going to pay for stuff on the web. Unless we make the current students pay higher tuition to subsidize web publication of their coursepacks or get the government to subsidize the effort, the publishers won't want to adopt the licensing scheme to this new use.
        But copyright clearance does become very difficult for publicly-available course materials like OpenCourseWare, since, by virtue of the materials being public, there is no limitation on the number of copies that can be made from a single digital master. Obviously the copyright holders will want to be compensated for each copy, but you can't tell from the access logs whether a single student is accessing the material from different computers or each access is from a different individual. Also, you can't tell how many copies of the material were printed out. Without protection of fair use, projects like OpenCourseWare will be killed by copyright issues.
    • Most of this material is, to be blunt, pirated. (I'm speaking as an instructional tech guy here: I have to deal with these issues.) Faculty will happy scan entire books worth of art, digitize huge tracts of books and in one notable case last year, actually *making multiple photocopies of an entire textbook.*
      The fact that professors will photocopy or digitize entire books rather than require students to purchase them should be a red flag to publishers that some textbooks are too damn expensive. At least in engineering, I've seen textbooks that are less than 200 pages long and cost over $100! One of my textbooks this semester is 600 pages and costs $200 new. Is it any surprise that some people are unwilling to buy or to require others to buy those books?
      • This wasn't such a case. This was a professor that halfway through her course decided she didn't like the text she had selected and was too embarrassed to make the students pay for another one.
      • Over here at Cornell, we have this lovely thing called Course Reserve. In my writing class (all engineers are forced to take 2 writing classes), we have to read long chapters from many different books. However, rather than making us buy all of them, the professor simply told the librarians what pages of what books we're using and said to put them on course reserve. The librarians then scanned those pages, made some nice PDFs, and put it all together on a course website. The site is password protected, so no one but us will ever know about all this copyright infringement. Oh, the irony that they make us do community service for downloading MP3s...

  • What about courses? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Yoda2 ( 522522 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @02:29PM (#4600604)
    Now if MIT would only offer courses online!

    University of Phoenix be afraid...be very, very afraid...

    • Why is the parent modded as "funny"?

      University of Phoenix - for what it attempts to accomplish - is a very good, very profitable, school. Not everyone has the time, money, physical ability, etc. to go to MIT full time. Those people would be able to get a complimentary degree, covering the same subject, through a medium not traditionally possible.

      If MIT did offer courses online it would, of course, be only in select subjects and not result in a degree with the same prestige as a "real world" degree, but those courses that can be tranlated to an online environment could benefit from this move.

      The problems would be ensuring academic honesty and integrity, preserving the MIT name, etc.

      • They only have to require that you pass all of your exams in an accredited center.
        Just like they do for almost all certifications.
      • Because people understood that my comment was of a humorous nature employing a device known as 'sär-"ka-z&m.

        For just $100, you too could have your very own bachelors, masters, or even doctorate degree from one of our fine non-accredited institutions. Because we understand how important your time is, we don't require all of tedious (and expensive) coursework necessary at an accredited university.

    • Re:What about courses? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You can take MIT courses online! They are one of approx 50 member colleges of the online "National Technological University".

      NTU courses are expensive. :

      I would like to see a "cottage industry" of tutoring and testing (with "certifications") that uses the MIT OpenCourseWare, and the open publishing from the other schools mentioned. As we have seen in this thread these materials were expensive to develop or accumulate. They represent an immense value entering the public forum.

      Any thoughts on how the open community can put together its own classes and tests using OpenCourseWare?

  • I love free information (Score:4, Insightful)

    by headwick ( 247433 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @02:30PM (#4600608) Homepage Journal
    I fully understand the need for paid professors in the university system. I must say, however, I love the fact that free information is available to me solely for the betterment of myself and my personal enlightenment.
  • Nice to actually be able to use the internet for something other then pr0n. Okay, granted I use it for many other things too. I did drop out of college, but it wasn't because I didn't want to learn, rather I just couldn't stand the timing. Finally I'll be able to learn what I want, when I want.

  • How about degrees? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bmd3k ( 596468 )
    Is there any way I'll be able to download degrees from these Universities? :) In all seriousness, though, this is a great idea. I think serious prospective students might find it easier to choose one of these Universities since they'll have a better idea of just what they'd learn in their programs.

  • Excellent (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dick Click ( 166230 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @02:31PM (#4600615)
    I am very glad to hear the University of Toronto will be included. Provided the archive is complete, I will be able to review material I was supposed to have learned in the first place!

    Grad 9T3

  • Not that impressive (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @02:41PM (#4600659)
    Once you see the software and mindset involved with these online repositories you will see that these systems are not all that impressive.

    Their goal was and is both grand and admirable, but they have missed the mark and the management software and interface falls short.

    The infrastructure however appears to be superb. I am just deeply bothered that nothing new has been made or even offered. DSpace is like a stripped down SourceForge made to think like a library card catalog.

    10 points for concept
    0 points for show
    • Ouch! But I tend to agree with you. DSpace is the 12 year old fruit of some projects that, when they were cooked up, were rather forward looking and technically demanding. They've kind of drifted along in fits and starts since then simply absorbing any changes in the computing environment. What was once a collection of technical challenges has evolved into an integration of now existing technologies. It's basically been continued primarily as a PR exercise to make it appear that the MIT Libraries are on the cutting edge.

      DSpace and Open Courseware (OCW) are different projects attempting to solve different problems. DSpace is trying to create and durable archive of electronic documents (mostly of a technical nature). The original problem was how to preserve electronic documents in a archival time scale. The issues are file format durability and management.

      OCW is simply creating a uniform way to publish course materials. There isn't much new there, either. The commitment to do all of MIT's courses is new.

      Copyright clearance has always been the biggest problem with both projects. Getting the clearance is amenable to technical solutions but paying for it and regulating access to the copyright stuff is expensive and ugly.

    • Topic misrepresented, and what you don't see (Score:4, Informative)

      by dchud ( 16789 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @04:25PM (#4601559)
      Maybe I should've been a little more wordy in the original post; I'm afraid the focus of these stories has been mostly misrepresented. FYI also, I helped work on the development of DSpace, so I'm biased, but since I no longer work there my remarks in no way should be taken as representing their official viewpoint. :)

      The collaborative effort of the institutions mentioned, and the stories posted, are not primarily focused on courseware (although they are explicitly intended to support long-term storage and access to courseware materials). The goal of these efforts, which in these stories surround the DSpace [dspace.org] project specifically, is to extend the range of services provided by these institutions, more specifically their libraries, to incorporate a scaleable model of digital shelf space. In other words, these are infrastructure efforts (so if you really are impressed by that part, don't bother reading on!).

      At MIT Libraries, for instance, the main focus of their DSpace implementation is to capture the digital products of research conducted within the MIT community. This includes articles, books, technical reports, theses, datasets, audio files, videos, images, maps, and so on. Much like the existing physical library buildings and collections, these are to be organized according to how they can best serve the departments, labs, schools, and research centers at the Institute, which the new exception being that at first DSpace will focus on capturing materials generated locally, rather than selecting and collecting materials produced externally. Or worse, research materials that are generated locally by people at MIT, then given to publishers, and then sold back to the libraries at great cost. So from an infrastructure perspective, what they are trying to achieve is to extend the range of what libraries provide in terms of collections and services to now also include all kinds of digital materials, starting especially with digital materials created at MIT.

      A few examples illustrate this best: first, consider the junior faculty member with her own articles on her department web page. We've all seen such web pages disappear within 1-3 years. What happens to her colleagues at other institutions who lose access to her articles, which maybe never got published in traditional outlets, but are nonetheless vital to their own work, and thereafter are reduced to so many broken bookmarks? At MIT, DSpace will take stewardship of those materials, giving them a persistent url and carefully recording descriptive, technical, and preservation metadata about the files and their formats. So in this case, DSpace takes that 1-3 year period of unreliable access and extends it to a minimum of 3-7 years of predictably reliable access. At this point in the web's history, you can't really get that anywhere else, and there's every reason to hope that number will really reach into the decades; it just can't be promised reasonably today.

      A second example: an interactive, multimedia, experiential web resource administered by some professor on an aging redhat 6.0 machine under their desk. It's rich in data, it demonstrates a breakthrough in the state of the art, or the idea, in some nascent discipline, and it's widely used by scholars of that discipline, and it _can't_ be "just printed out". What happens when that machine blows a partition, or is comprimised because its amateur sysadmin is really a scholar, not a wizard?

      Obviously, as indicated in the story, a good third example is courseware materials. If you look closely at OCW or the other well-known examples thereof, you'll see that in many ways, they are (IMHO) foremost publishing ventures serving the educational process. Getting the materials into standard form, getting them delivered by a deadline, keeping them viable during their relevant terms. Doing this so openly, and freely, is indeed very exciting. But every term that comes up introduces new classes, new upkeep, etc., and you have to have an answer for where the materials from the previous semesters' courses are going to land. There has to be infrastructure support for that, and having a service in the libraries providing long term persistent storage and access to do just that is an awfully good answer, if the tools, policies, and budget are in place to do that.

      These examples were much better articulated by several of the excellent speakers at yesterday's launch event (sorry, couldn't find a link), and are increasingly recognized as very common and very troubling scenarios across academia. Once you think about what the technological requirements of providing that infrastructure are, it quickly comes clear that such initiative require solid, reliable software with lucid, maintainable designs, and no magic. After all, you could do it with just a filesystem, right? :) To get the services delivered properly, and in a way scholars can trust, however, you have to focus on developing policy, procuring budget, and delivering on an mission-driven focus of getting the service right and keeping it running. In other words, what you don't see behind the systems is the amount of non-technical work behind getting these things going, and making them sustainable.

      The focus of the multi-institutional efforts is to expand, replicate, and formalize approaches to doing the same at many other large institutions where the impact can be equally significant. Seeing the level of public and private support of these efforts, and that there's a line in the sand now drawn with a software release marking a reliable starting point to answering the technical question, is quite exciting, and indeed is a breakthrough. If you really still think nothing new is being offered, and that DSpace isn't more than a stripped down sourceforge thinking like a card catalog, send me email and I'll direct your attention to a few folks at MIT and HP who will blow your mind with how well they've thought through and planned for these problems. :)

  • $250,000!!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by SashaM ( 520334 ) <msasha.gmail@com> on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @02:48PM (#4600695) Homepage

    or about 7 students' tuition.

    While I think it's really great that MIT are putting their course materials online, I'd prefer to be able to study at MIT.

  • Cambridge (Score:4, Insightful)

    by delphi125 ( 544730 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @02:52PM (#4600718)
    They include England's Cambridge ...

    Is there a reason the submitter forgot to mention one of the best universities in the world? I had the fortune to go there; one of my lecturers invented the subroutine....

    Then again, we still consider Harvard to be one of our colleges - founded by John H of Emanuel before the US of A was a country!

    • Re:Cambridge (Score:5, Funny)

      by Ubergrendle ( 531719 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @02:59PM (#4600764) Journal
      That's okay -- i'm of Norman decent and I consider Cambridge and Oxford to be 'one of ours' as well.
    • I'd be surprised if anyone can genuinely claim to have invented the subroutine. I bet it was independently invented by many different people, probably even before the invention of modern computers. Turing had subroutine-type ideas when he worked on the ACE. I'd guess Babbage and Lovelace [tergestesoft.com] also had related ideas. This [geocities.com] page claims they were invented by Grace Hopper.
      • A quick google search for "david wheeler subroutine" gives this 1947 reference as first result:

        http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/subroutines.html

        with a technical implementation of a subroutine

        A search for "grace hopper subroutine" gives as first result:

        http://wayne.home.texas.net/~wayne/grace1.html

        At about this time, Grace and her colleagues began keeping a notebook containing segments of code that they knew worked. Each subroutine was written in a generic manner so that whenever a programmer needed to perform a certain function that they knew the code had already been written for, they could simply copy it out of the book, into their program.

        After the war... (i.e. this happened in 1945 at latest)

        So Grace had her idea earlier, but (no disrespect intended), I think this is what we now call copy-paste or to be kinder: templates.

  • Interesting meta-information available as a result (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jpetts ( 208163 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @02:52PM (#4600722)
    As well as providing the bare course information, these schemes also have the advantage of allowing interesting comparisons of haw various educational establishments' syllabi differ.

    For example, as more and more schools publish their information, it should become possible to discover things like:
    • How up-to-date is a given course?
    • Do the professors rely exclusively on their own texts?
    • Is a given course pretty much stagnant?
    • Is there a general consensus about what should be in, say, a quantum mechanics course?
    This is just a small sample of the sort of meta-information implicit in the availability of such information, and as the number of schools placing materials online grows, so too does the value and interest to be found in mining such data.

    I'd rather fall off Ilustrada than ride any other horse

  • We Do this Already (Kinda) (Score:5, Informative)

    by ejunek ( 562968 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @02:55PM (#4600736) Homepage
    Cornell [cornell.edu], although not formally endorsing it, has many of it's online course materials already open to the public. Our course-management system called Courseinfo [cornell.edu] has most course information available to the public.

    For a more "mainstream" approach Cornell has also developed Cybertower [cornell.edu] which is a free service that provides a very multimedia-based (Quicktime based...so get your Crossover plugin for Linux users) glimse into some of the course offerings. (Although Cornell's strong Engineering department is hardly represented, if at all.) I would guess that many schools have resources like this availible...you just have to know where to look. Are there any other good links to course related sites out there?
    • For a more "mainstream" approach Cornell has also developed Cybertower [cornell.edu] which is a free service that provides a very multimedia-based (Quicktime based...so get your Crossover plugin for Linux users) glimse into some of the course offerings.

      How do I get this crossover pluggin??

  • Carleton University [carleton.ca] does this. Some courses have some generic info on the professor's personal webpage, while others have detailed schedules and assignments (including assignments and solutions from years past). The level of this varies from prof to prof as some are not the most computer litterate.

    An example of everything online is my "Problem solving and Computers for Engineers" class. The course site is here [carleton.ca]. A somewhat less helpful site is my mechanics prof's site, here [carleton.ca].

    However, some of my classes use WebCT (should be familiar to at least some students out there) to post course materials, as well as some grades and for some testing. However, the TAs and both professors have made comments that they really don't like the system because it is too hard to upload files and make changes. Has I have known that all this info was availible online when I was applying to university programs, it probably would have helped me out a bit in choosing programs.

  • Sweet! (Score:4, Funny)

    by rmohr02 ( 208447 ) <mohr.42@osu. e d u> on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @03:12PM (#4600898)
    Now I won't have to buy books for next quarter.

  • Blackboard? (Score:2, Informative)

    by giantsfan89 ( 536448 )
    At my university, we [oc.edu] use Blackboard [blackboard.com].
  • Check out the LAMPADAS project @ http://www.lampadas.org/index.html But DSPACE concept pretty cool. I have been trying to design something like that using Cocoon and PHP

  • Is this wise for HP? (Score:2, Informative)

    by NDPTAL85 ( 260093 )
    With the horrible aftermath of the disastrous merger to deal with, does HP have this kind of money to give away?
    • I work here at HP, and no, we do not have this kind of cash to throw around. I'm a DBA of a datawarehouse and we do not have the budget to get a development or testing server for me to test my tuning queries. We have one server, Production, where we do all of our development and production serving. It's totally f*cked up. I left a decent job with a development, testing, and production servers to come here where I have to do my work and compete for processing time.

  • Budget - Huzzah! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Embedded Geek ( 532893 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @03:51PM (#4601224) Homepage
    $250,000/year

    I like that there's an inherent understanding that there's an ongoing cost above and beyond just sticking some prof's powerpoint slides on a server. I guess that's another sign of a top notch institution like MIT - a commitment to the administrative and finacial costs of something like this to back up the investment in factulty and research.

    Makes me that much more wistful that I didn't keep my grades up in high school to make it into the front door. SIGH I guess I should just blame Gary Gygax.


  • OpenCourseWare [mit.edu] is MIT's initiative to share course materials via the web. Dspace [dspace.org] is an attempt to solve the long-term storage problems associated with born-digital research materials.

    It will be possible to put things into a Dspace archive that will not be accessible to certain people; OCW materials are by nature meant to be universally accessible.

  • CLEP? Regents? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by krinsh ( 94283 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @04:35PM (#4601665)
    I have been happy to find whatever I can from Cisco, MS, Informit, and any other site with free information and articles when I need to get a job done. I am certain I do more research online when I'm having trouble studying for a certification than I do reading the books or self-study material - plus I can switch right into computer lab mode and work the solution and see what it is I'm doing. Freely available (and no cost) study information is not only great for the students taking these courses - imagine how much less their credit card bills will be at the end of their college terms! - but for folks like me who can't afford [time OR tuition for] that education and rely on experience and willpower to thrive - especially in today's economy .

    I would like to see this sort of thing help less financially fortunate students - and adults - obtain the knowledge they want or need to apply to a given situation. Like many adult degree programs maybe this could be a great springboard to reduce the number of actual 'live' classes and help folks "CLEP out" of certain areas or apply some of these towards credits in their degree program by testing for them. Rather than reduce the number of students in classrooms and affect the bottom line of a school; I feel that this may encourage more people to get the education they want and thus end up putting more people into that school over the long term.

  • What are they going to add? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I currently attend one of these fine institutions. I am excited that my school will be listing course material to the entire internet. I am just a bit puzzled by what we will be adding. Most of the courses I have taken don't have any material online. I only know of two courses that have material that anyone not in the class would find interesting. Of the classes that have anything online, most just publish the syllabus and assignments (generally from the textbook). I can only think of two classes that have actual material that could be of any use. Futhermore, one of those classes has so much material copyrighted that it could never be publicized. The intent of this is great, but first the content must be available online for the students.

  • compare this to the extortion going on UofO (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jackstack ( 618328 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @04:45PM (#4601747) Journal
    Greedy, Morally-Corrupt, Thoughtless, Wasteful Bastards in the Biology/Life Sciences dept at University of Oregon in Eugene are charging $33 photocopies of crappy hand drawn molecules and chicken scratch notes.

    Has anyone else noticed this tragedy going on at their local colleges and universities? It's f**in' putting a pricetag on knowledge!

    Here's my letter to the Prof. Karen Sprague:

    To whom it may concern,

    I apologize in advance if you are not accountable for the issue which I raise in this e-mail. I don't know who else to send it to... so here goes.

    I am a student in your Bio class. I am writing this e-mail to express my extreme frustration in regards to the lecture notes which are *required* class materials. I was STRUCK tonight when opening the plastic packaging to find nothing more than 113 pages of handwritten drawings and notes.

    My first thought was ... "I paid $32.90 for this?!?!" Then I calculated, at 5 cents a page (which is more than reasonable), 113 copied pages (b/w) should cost no more than $5.65. The disparity in cost between what I (a minimum wage earning undergraduate student) am REQUIRED to PAY vs. what is REASONABLE is nothing less than astounding and arguably morally reprehensible.

    I urge, no - *BEG* you to consider more affordable solutions to reproducing these lecture notes. (university copying service, scan to pdf version and make available for download) Why, on earth, should students have to pay so much money for something that they have received for *FREE* in other situations? After all ... what else are we paying for in our tuition and fees?

    Again - I warmly apologize if you are not responsible for the unfair pricing of the lecture notes. (pricing of *lecture notes* ... this is sad...) If this is the case, please forward my message to those responsible.

    The reality is that I have no choice in this situation. I must pay... But I refuse to pay without shedding some light on what I see to be a real injustice to students. If nothing is ultimately done ... it would not be hard to report this to other parties which may draw due attention to the issue. At the very least, as a temporary measure... give some justification to the students who are probably and quite rightly asking themselves, "why did I pay so much for this?".

    Anonymous

  • Additionally... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jwlidtnet ( 453355 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @04:56PM (#4601831)
    ...the University of Chicago has offered online resources for a few years now, mostly in the form of "electronic reserve" readings. Obviously, they don't provide too *many* (as that would eat into the profits of their own University of Chicago press), but it does seem like the era of $100 course packets is largely over for most classes.

  • food for thought (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    People are really getting hyped up about nothing here.

    In a far-away country known as Finland, the universities are free (as in beer) both on- and off-line. And yes, this also applies to foreign nationals. The education provided is atleast as good as in the US (quality is high because the tests are hard, no multiple choice).

    As a side note, some people might argue that the universities are not truly free since the government pays for it. They would be right, of course, but the cost is not that high, about $2,000 per student per year (educated guess).
  • in light of Corynne McSherry's excellent book, "Who owns academic work?" [amazon.com]

    Ownership of this stuff is still not decided. I doubt that MIT will ever get 100% of their courses online, because people still can't always decide if the university owns something or the professor does.

    I had a look through some of the notes for political science, and there is another problem there. A total lack of attribution for the professor's sources. The problem is that these are actual lecture notes, straight off the professor's computer by the looks of it, and I've never known a teacher to put sources in their notes! Should someone get upset about this, it could get nasty.

    As for the arguments about education being open to all vs only available to those who pay, go and check out the notes. They're pretty useless unless you are studying elsewhere in a similar course. They are so abbreviated as to mean little. Reading lists and assignments however, are very useful to other teachers.
  • Bravo to Washington, Rochester, Toronto, Cornell, Columbia, Ohio State and especially MIT! As I was under the impression that universites were chartered to increase public knowledge or something like that, I am surprised that more universites aren't jumping at this opportunity to fulfill their mandate.

    I hope that anyone thinking about donating to a university takes this into account. Donate to one that will most do the most good for the public (it seems right now these are Washington, Rochester, Toronto, Cornell, Columbia, Ohio State and MIT).
  • Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff
    on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)
    -- Linus Torvalds, about his failing hard drive on linux.cs.helsinki.fi

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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