Application: Blog—The Impact of Open Source

I looked at the Open Course (OC) websites of MIT and Yale University. They both had similar formats and course layout; I preferred the presentation of Yale's OC http://oyc.yale.edu/. The one thing that made Yale stand apart was that they had Flash files of the lectures. This was important to me because the courses are set up as a face-to-face class would be, so the visuals from the class lecture are important.

Since these are free learning courses there is not the communication between the student and instructor like you would find in a paid-for distance learning class. Both OC took information from past courses, such as, the course syllabus, lectures with corresponding notes, and assignments and exams with answers. While I feel there was pre-planning that went into the creation of these courses I do not that either university followed the recommendations for online instruction listed in our course textbook.

While the OC where not set up on a CMS, that I could tell, some they contained some of the options that our text set out as components of a CMS. Yale's OC included readings, content presentation, and student assessment but lacked the communication aspects such as group project space and assignment drop-boxes. The fact that those aspects are missing are fine by me though because of the purpose behind these types of courses. "Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. The aim of the project is to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn" (Wikipedia, 2010).

Since there is not communication, due to the nature of these courses, there seems to be little thought to designing for communication to maximize active learning among students. "An OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a free and open digital publication of high quality university‐level educational materials. These materials are organized as courses, and often include course planning materials and evaluation tools as well as thematic content" (ocwconsotium, 2010). The fact that these courses are free-of-charge and are there to give access to students that may not have the opportunity otherwise, or someone like me that may want to learn more about architecture or the environment, makes these courses a great asset. There are multiple universities that have OC available spanning wide variety of courses, or subjects so regardless of where you are educationally, I can almost guarantee there is a course that would interest you and teach something you did not know previously.

References:

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.

Open Yale Courses. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved December 5, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Yale_Courses.


Open Course Ware Consortium. (2010). What is open courseware? Retrieved December 5, 2010, from http://www.ocwconsortium.org/aboutus/whatisocw.