MIT's OpenCourseWare - This may be the coolest thing I have ever seen.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

MIT…yeah, that one - Massachusetts Institute of Technology - has been developing an open course system for some time. Basically, they’ve been promising to put all their courses online.

Well, here it is.

500 courses worth of complete readings, complete lecture notes, lab notes, demonstrations, homework assignments, exam materials, and quizzes.

Free.

For the motivated self-learners among us, this is a windfall of unbelievable proportions. For researchers and educators, it’s also fantastic.

True, to get anything out of it, you’re going to have to invest in the textbooks (or find them in the library,) and it will take an enormous amount of self-discipline, but the material is there. All that educational potential…free for the taking, and backed up by one of the most prestigious science schools on earth.

Oh, and though the header says it provides “no contact with MIT staff,” there is functionality on the site to request further information from the professor of the course. He or she may be too bust to respond to you, but your request apparently flags their email. Too damned cool.

I just can’t get over it. This is what the internet was always supposed to be, and a perfect example of the noble use to which it can be put.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve been promising myself for years that someday I would give my knowledge of mathematics, which I slid past in college (got to Diff. Eq. and just eked by,) a total, systematic overhaul.

God, what an opportunity.

2

Busy. May be too busy. Sorry.

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Did I mention that some courses even have video lectures? Amazing.

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Yeah, I think this is a great idea! I’ve been using it since it came out in beta with a few courses a couple years ago. It’s great for me to review some of the concepts I learned back in college that are starting to fade away quickly. (and explore some new topics for free!)

5

I think I will have to show this to one or fifteen folks at the college where I work.

Damn.

6

::swoons:: What an awesome site. It’s like the first time I went to a candy store…what to choose, what to choose? And I KNOW my daughter will be thrilled with some of the courses, too. She’s trying to teach herself Japanese, and they have a few courses in it that she’d be interested in.

This is fantastic.

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So does anyone want to ummm… like…uh…give me a million dollars or so, so I can stop worrying about that whole nasty waste my time with job to pay the rent crap?

Doh’ it’s all PDFs and my computer doesn’t play well with acrobat. Can you make that a million and two thousand dollars so I can get a new computer too?

8

::Reviews course material:: :dubious: :confused: :eek:

It’s official, ex-Mensa or not, I’m a dumbass :smack:

9

Cool, a new link has finally made it to my Favorites. It’s been a while. Most don’t make the cut. :wink:

I don’t see any practice exams. Where are the practice exams? :confused:

10

The MIT stuff is vastly overrated. It’s just regular class handouts and such. Profs have been doing this for years one way or another.

One student in a grad seminar did a really good job collecting all my course stuff, took notes, etc. and typed it in. I then used that for years, making it available online to future students. This was in 1983. That guy turned out to be a book writing genius.

As for the WWW, I was putting my course stuff on my server by 1994. Including interactive lab work. Anyone on the 'Net could access it.

The only thing the least bit different about the MIT stuff is that it contains the letters “M”, “I” and “T”. MIT people are infamous for thinking that those letters make all the difference in the world, the rest of us don’t.

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Man, you’ve just been a pill lately, huh? First stinking up the “Only a southerner knows” thread and now this.

Listen, bub. I’m ever so happy you’re ahead of the curve. Hurrah.

But yeah, “M-I-T” makes a difference. Tell me why I wouldn’t jump at the chance to read the lecture notes from a chemical engineering course whose professor wrote the textbook.

Also, tell me where else I can find interactive course materials for over 700 courses, both graduate and undergraduate, in one place. With the possibility of getting support from the staff. For free.

What MIT has done in this case is nothing less than an act of open-handed generosity. You know they normally charge for this stuff, right?

You don’t happen to run a comic book store, do you? “Worst. Free educational material. Ever.”

12

What Ogre said.

Even if it had been Northwest Oklahoma A&M rather than MIT, having all that material in one place makes it a hell of a lot more accessible.

I already know there are professors’ lecture notes scattered across the Internet; I’ve taken advantage of that fact on a number of occasions. But it’s not always easy to find what you want, even with the miracle of Google.

And yeah, MIT is a pretty good school. I’m glad they did this, rather than Northwest Oklahoma A&M.

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Maybe not Northwest Oklahoma A&M - but Texas A&M out of College Station doing this wouldn’t be a bad thing, either…

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It’s also not always easy to figure out what place is reputable and what place is not. MIT is a name commonly-known enough so that your average person (in this country, at least, and possibly similarly in a few others) will know that if it says something in an intro course, there’s probably something to it. With the name comes the credibility that’s not always present everywhere in academia.