The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is embarked on a project to publish all that institution's course materials on the web, under Creative Commons license, by the end of this year. A large number of courses are already available. Look.
These aren't "online classes." They don't include access to MIT staff, earn credits or grades. But as study guides they should prove invaluable to a whole lot of people and the generous Creative Commons license (Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike) allows using the materials as building blocks in other projects.
An American History course I downloaded consisted of a syllabus and reading list, assignments (write two papers), and list of collateral materials. Other courses include lecture notes and video lectures; some may require special software. Graduate as well as undergraduate courses are in the mix.
It's an important new resource - with more on the way - and an all-too-rare exception to the current trend toward making information property.
Good on you, MIT.
1 comment:
yeah, my ex-U put a grad student in prison for profiting on their intellectual property: his own thesis. But then, they're not MIT. After all, MIT, it can't have much to profit on, right?
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