Capturing lectures in video format and making them available online is useful, primarily for its time-shifted convenience. Is it pedagogically more sound, however, than the "traditional" video professor brought to us via television or even interactive two-way video? Yale and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation apparently think so -- see the article excerpted below. Although quality and convenience can be improved simultaneously, this may be one case where only convenience is improved.
The Next Level of Open Source
Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, September 20, 2006
In 2001, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology started placing materials for its courses online — and making them available for anyone to use, at no cost. OpenCourseWare, which currently contains materials for 1,400 courses, has been a huge success, and thousands of people use the MIT materials each day. The MIT project and others like it — such as Connexions, at Rice University — are based on the model of putting curricular materials online, but not the actual courses (although a few professors at MIT, Rice and elsewhere have put videos of their lectures online). On Tuesday, Yale University announced that it would be starting a version of an open access online tool for those seeking to gain from its courses. But the basis of the Yale effort will be video of actual courses — every lecture of the course, to be combined with selected class materials. The money behind the Yale effort is coming from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which was an early backer of MIT’s project, and which sees the Yale project as a way to take the open course idea to the next level. “We want to add another dimension to open courseware,” said Catherine Casserly, a program officer at Hewlett. She said that video components used at MIT and elsewhere have been very popular with people all over the world. “We’re trying to make that bridge” to the audience for high quality American education, she said. Casserly said that Yale’s initiative — starting with seven courses this year, with plans to grow quickly — was the first open courseware effort based on lecture videos. “We hope to see this spread to other universities,” she said. Read more ...
Bill,
Can you comment on what extent colleges that Sungard is currenttly engaged with are utilizing 'Open Source' solutions within the academic environment. Where do you believe the most growth will be for the Open Source movement?
Posted by: Jim Kreilich | November 16, 2006 at 02:33 PM