Diteruskan dari salah seorang rekan di MIT. Semoga Indonesia can take some
advantage out of it.
tino
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MIT to make nearly all course materials
available free on the World Wide Web
Unprecedented step challenges 'privatization of knowledge'
APRIL 4, 2001 * Contact information
MIT OpenCourseWare -- Fact sheet
MIT OpenCourseWare -- Faculty views
MIT OpenCourseWare -- World reaction
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- MIT President Charles M. Vest has announced that the
Massachusetts Institute
of Technology will make the materials for nearly all
its courses freely available on the Internet over the next ten years. He
made the announcement
about the new program, known as MIT OpenCourseWare
(MITOCW), at a press conference at MIT on Wednesday, April 4.
President Vest focused on how OpenCourseWare reflected the idealism of the
MIT faculty and the
core educational mission of MIT in his remarks to print and
television reporters.
"As president of MIT, I have come to expect top-level innovative and
intellectually
entrepreneurial ideas from the MIT community. When we established the
Council on Educational Technology at MIT, we charged a sub-group with
coming up with a project
that reached beyond our campus classrooms.
"I have to tell you that we went into this expecting that something
creative, cutting-edge and
challenging would emerge. And, frankly, we also expected that it
would be something based on a revenue-producing model -- a project or
program that took into
account the power of the Internet and its potential for new
applications in education.
"OpenCourseWare is not exactly what I had expected. It is not what many
people may have expected.
But it is typical of our faculty to come up with something
as bold and innovative as this, " President Vest commented.
"OpenCourseWare looks counter-intuitive in a market driven world. It goes
against the grain of
current material values. But it really is consistent with what I
believe is the best about MIT. It is innovative. It expresses our belief in
the way education can
be advanced -- by constantly widening access to information and
by inspiring others to participate," said President Vest.
"Simply put, OpenCourseWare is a natural marriage of American higher
education and the
capabilities of the World Wide Web," he said.
POTENTIAL IMPACTS
President Vest next spoke in anticipation of reporters' questions on topics
ranging from the role
of OpenCourseWare on enrollment and quality of life at MIT as
well as its potential impact on revenue-generating programs and competition
from other
institutions.
"OpenCourseWare combines two things: the traditional openness and outreach
and democratizing
influence of American education and the ability of the Web to
make vast amounts of information instantly available.
"OpenCourseWare is firmly at the heart of MIT's educational mission: MIT
faculty have a deeply
ingrained sense of service and mission -- they like to work on
big problems and frankly, they like to influence the world. There is an
incredible idealism in
this faculty.
On OpenCourseWare's impact on education at MIT, President Vest commented,
"We believe
OpenCourseWare will have a strong impact on a residential
learning at MIT and elsewhere. Let me be clear: We are not providing an MIT
education on the Web.
We are providing our core materials that are the
infrastructure that undergirds an MIT education. Real education requires
interaction, the
interaction that is part of American teaching.
"We think that OpenCourseWare will make it possible for faculty here and
elsewhere to concentrate
even more on the actual process of teaching, on the
interactions between faculty and students that are the real core of learning.
"Am I worried that the OpenCourseWare project will hurt MIT's enrollment?
No. In fact, I am
absolutely confident that providing this worldwide window onto
an MIT education, showing what we teach, may be a very good thing for
attracting prospective
students," President Vest said.
"How will OpenCourseWare relate to revenue-generating educational projects
at MIT? I do believe
that revenue-generating distance education will have a
role in the world and will probably have a role at MIT. It is clear to me
that revenue-generating
opportunities are there, for example, for professionals learning
about new developments in their field.
"There's the possibility of developing courses in the humanities or the
arts, for example, for
retirees or for people who have wanted to go back to school for a long
time. A lot of opportunities are out there to make money. But I want to
emphasize that there is no
commercially available MIT degree," he declared.
As for the likely role of other universities, President Vest emphasized the
idealism behind
OpenCourseWare.
"This is about something bigger than MIT. I hope other universities will
see us as educational
leaders in this arena, and we very much hope that
OpenCourseWare will draw other universities to do the same. We would be
delighted if -- over time
-- we have a world wide web of knowledge that raises the
quality of learning -- and ultimately, the quality of life -- around the
globe," he asserted.
CONTRIBUTORS TO IDEA
Sitting beside President Vest at the press conference were Steven Lerman,
professor of civil
engineering and chair of the MIT faculty; Harold Abelson, Class of
1922 professor of electrical engineering and computer science and MacVicar
Teaching Fellow; and
Dick K. P. Yue, associate dean of the school of engineering
and professor of ocean engineering.
Professor Lerman noted the potential of OpenCourseWare to teach and to
train students and young
faculty in developing countries and said, "We hope our
materials will be translated. Developing countries need information, and
they need to develop
infrastructure and institutions."
Professor Yue based his vision of OpenCourseWare on his own experience as a
boy in Hong Kong who
was inspired by an MIT textbook his father gave him.
"MIT will miss its goal if it reaches just the students within its walls
and not in the larger
world," he said.
"OpenCourseWare stimulates real reflection on what we're doing in the
classroom. If my students
get all their raw materials on the web, what am I doing in
class? This also makes it possible for faculty colleagues to keep up with
one another's work and
research," remarked Professor Abelson.
Professor Abelson also noted that the pioneering new program may set in
motion innovations in
teaching. Once students begin acquiring course content on the
web, faculty will be able to pay more attention to the actual process of
teaching. OpenCourseWare
will enable faculty to concentrate on using classroom or lab
time to enhance learning, he said.
The OpenCourseWare project will begin as a large-scale pilot program over
the next two years. The
first steps include design of the software and services
needed to support such a large endeavor, as well as protocols to monitor
and assess its
utilization by faculty and students at MIT and throughout the world. By
the end of the two-year period, it is expected that materials for more than
500 courses would be
available on the MIT OpenCourseWare site.
MIT sees a variety of benefits coming from the MIT OpenCourseWare project:
Institutions around the world could make direct use of the MIT
OpenCourseWare materials as
references and sources for curriculum development.
These materials might be of particular value in developing countries
that are trying to
expand their higher education systems rapidly.
Individual learners could draw upon the materials for self-study or
supplementary use.
The MIT OpenCourseWare infrastructure could serve as a model for other
institutions that
choose to make similar content open and available.
Over time, if other universities adopt this model, a vast collection
of educational resources
will develop and facilitate widespread exchange of ideas about
innovative ways to use those resources in teaching and learning.
MIT OpenCourseWare will serve as a common repository of information
and channel of
intellectual activity that can stimulate educational innovation and
cross-disciplinary educational ventures.
The program will continue the tradition of MIT's leadership in educational
innovation, as
exemplified by the engineering science revolution in the 1960s. At that
time, MIT engineering faculty radically revised their curricula and
produced new textbooks that
brought the tools of modern science, mathematics, and
computing into the core of the engineering curriculum. As their students
joined the engineering
faculties of universities throughout the country, they took with
them their own course notes from MIT, and spread the new approach to
engineering education.
In similar spirit, but with new technologies, MIT OpenCourseWare will make
it possible to quickly
disseminate new knowledge and educational content in a wide
range of fields. President Vest commented that the idea of OpenCourseWare
is particularly
appropriate for a research university such as MIT, where ideas and
information move quickly from the laboratory into the educational program,
even before they are
published in textbooks.
MIT believes that implementation of OpenCourseWare will complement and
stimulate innovation in
ways that may not even be envisioned at this point. "We
expect that MIT OpenCourseWare will raise the tide of educational
innovation within MIT and
elsewhere," said MIT Provost Robert A. Brown.
"By making up-to-date educational content widely available," he said,
"OpenCourseWare will focus
faculty efforts on teaching and learning on their campuses.
It also will facilitate a new style of national and global collaboration in
education through the
sharing of educational content and the potential of
telecommunications for real-time interactions."
The concept of MIT OpenCourseWare was born from deliberations of a study
group chartered by MIT's
Council on Educational Technology. The Council, a
group of educational leaders from throughout MIT, asked the study group to
consider ways to use
Internet technology to enhance education within MIT as well
as MIT's influence on education on a global scale. The group was composed
of faculty and staff
from MIT, and was assisted by consultants from Booz-Allen &
Hamilton, who are helping with organizational aspects of the project.
The Booz-Allen team was led by BAH Vice President Reginald Van Lee. Mr. Van
Lee, an MIT alumnus,
said "MIT continues its role as the preeminent, global
leader in the development and dissemination of new ideas and knowledge. We
are excited to have
contributed to this innovative and important step in the
advancement of higher education."
