COMMENTARY | There is exciting news on the education front, and MIT is taking steps to change the face of education once again. While the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology's OpenCourseWare project has been available for several years, coming in the spring, free courses will be rolling out with the potential of earning a certificate of completion.
Currently, the school's Open Courseware program provides free access to material from 2,100 of MIT's courses. The saying, "Great minds think alike," is true; MIT has not been the only school offering this opportunity. Both Stanford Center for Professional Development and Carnegie Mellon University offer online distance learning, but this new e-learning program, tentatively called MITx, will be a real game changer.
There is little excuse for not receiving an education when programs like these open their doors. The new program will include interactive learning such as online laboratories, discussion boards, feedback, exams and a chance for those who demonstrate mastery of a subject to earn a certificate. The certificate will not hold the same weight as a diploma of course, but there is something to be said for having the initiative to complete a challenging MIT course.
I love the idea of using these free courses as a springboard. Motivated individuals, who could include students and engineering majors from other colleges, the unemployed and underemployed, all have the potential to possibly land a scholarship or otherwise open doors that may have been previously closed due to lack of funds. I have to wonder if successfully completing these courses would even lead to the ability to test out of subjects in a credit based university.
The first course will be available in the spring of 2012. While they are starting out with one, MIT's goal is to build a wide portfolio of high-demand courses and it is investing millions of dollars in the project according to Rafael Reif, the provost. Since the potential is so enormous, sustaining the free platform will take concentrated effort. They plan on soliciting more donations from donors and foundations along the way and will be charging a modest fee for the certificates once the online learner has mastered the content.
This shift will not cheapen an MIT education, but instead create different levels. This is a healthy move for not only the institution itself, but the face of education in general. MIT is hoping that other educational institutions adopt their method and have plans to release the open-learning software at no charge to help insure this will happen. Kudos to MIT for this smart move.
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