From the NEW YORK TIMES:
While students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pay thousands of dollars for courses, the university will announce a new program on Monday allowing anyone anywhere to take M.I.T. courses online free of charge — and for the first time earn official certificates for demonstrating mastery of the subjects taught.
“There are many people who would love to augment their education by having access to M.I.T. content, people who are very capable to earn a certificate from M.I.T.,” said L. Rafael Reif, the provost, in a conference call with reporters Friday.
M.I.T. led the way to an era of online learning 10 years ago by posting course materials from almost all its classes. Its free OpenCourseWare now includes nearly 2,100 courses and has been used by more than 100 million people…
Click here to read the full article.
EDITOR: This is a positive step towards a time when the bulk of sophomore through senior year college courses will be taken via the Internet, thus slashing study cost at least by half and, in the case of those who cannot afford the time or money to attend a campus but have a passion to learn, by 90%.
This is a positive step towards a time when the bulk of sophomore through senior year college courses will be taken via the Internet, thus slashing study cost at least by half and, in the case of those who cannot afford the time or money to attend a campus but have a passion to learn, by 90%.
WRONG. I’ve taken college courses online, and I paid almost three times as much as a brick and mortar campus per credit hour. My sister and niece are both students at Penn State currently. My niece is at a brick and mortar campus, while her mother is taking classes through PSU’s World Campus, which is their online division. My sister pays more for her classes than she pays for her daughter’s. This is because the campus charges all online students the out of state tuition fee even if they are a resident of Pennsylvania.
Until they can rectify the differences in cost, many students will continue to want to attend a brick and mortar university, even if it’s inconvenient to their work schedules or have to work around two different schedules.
Online courses are great, in practice. They are more of an independent study situation than a true class. You have due dates for items, but you aren’t required to be somewhere at 8am or 2pm, etc. However, some students can’t study this way. They find it more difficult to focus, understanding the material, and frustrated with how unable they are to talk to their professors.
And before someone steps in to say something about the wonderful use of free videoconferencing now with IM programs, or Facetime or Skype- all of the professors I ever had on my online courses didn’t offer this. And their “office” hours were very short and very inconvenient.
Oh they were available to be emailed whenever, but that doesn’t help a student who needs a different type of assistance to understand.
It takes a LOT of personal dedication and focus to make yourself sit down and log into your class each day. Some people need that extra push of actual class attendance to keep themselves focused. Study groups are pretty much nil in online classes, because many of your fellow students could be in another state or even another country. At least with brick and mortar classes, you can meet with your classmates and create study groups.
Their are pros and cons to online courses. For some there are a lot of pros, but in my opinion, way too many cons in order to truly be considered as a mainstream practice for degrees. Especially with how funds are being cut to colleges now.
Many online schools aren’t accredited, therefore they are not eligible for any type of financial aid. That’s going to nix someone’s journey in the bud REALLY fast.
EDITOR: We have no disagreement with what is said above. However, what we are proposing is a first year on campus and then a return to campus a couple of weeks each semester.
We believe this could reduce the cost of a college education by more than half, perhaps two-thirds. Yet the student would get to meet and befriend colleagues, work with professors, and continue the relationships via group gatherings via the Internet.
A prototype of such a program is offered by the Harvard University Business School and perhaps others.