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Open Courses Open Wider
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/12/12/openyale
7.12.12

For those inclined to dig through university Web sites, it's long
been possible to browse scattered lecture notes and PowerPoint
slides intended for enrolled students. A handful of colleges
intentionally make course materials available to anyone with an
Internet connection, and now a major name may redefine expectations
for online learning. Following its announcement last year, Yale
University on Tuesday launched its free, online archive of popular
undergraduate courses -- including not only syllabi, problem sets
and course materials, but videos and audio files of the lectures
themselves.

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Dubbed Open Yale Courses, the Web site's creators hope the
archive will serve as a resource for students abroad or even as
support for lecturers at other institutions who need to
supplement their own material. In the spirit of keeping
information freely available, the lectures are protected under
a Creative Commons legal license that allows users to download,
share and remix the material in any way they see fit, as long
as their purposes aren't commercial and they credit Yale.
Supported by a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett
Foundation, the site currently features seven courses, with
plans to add at least 30 more over the next few years.
"Information technology allows the knowledge and passion of
leading Yale faculty to reach everyone who wishes to explore
these subjects," said President Richard C. Levin in a
statement. "We hope students, teachers and anyone with an
interest in these topics, no matter where they live or what
they do, will take full advantage of these free and easily
accessed courses."
Yale isn't the first university to offer course material
online. The Hewlett Foundation has also backed efforts from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as a broader
archive, the OER Commons, which serves as an open-source course
repository for instructors at all levels. MIT's OpenCourseWare
site, launched in 2001, currently offers some 1,800 courses,
and while a growing fraction of its offerings also feature some
video content, a majority are mainly text, slides and
assignments. Rice University, too, operates a similar site
called Connexions that opens the back door to content creators
and allows resources to be consumed in small chunks.
While it isn't the first such effort out of the gate, Open Yale
Courses is unique in its focus on video as a main draw. The
lecturers chosen for the initial batch of courses agreed to
have their classes videotaped, and one noticeable difference
from a normal in-person session is the conspicuous microphone
clipped to each professor's shirt.
"I think after a couple of days, we sort of forgot about [the
videographers]," said Ramamurti Shankar, the John Randolph
Huffman Professor of Physics.
For his Fundamentals of Physics course, the site offers an
index to each session as well as a syllabus. Lecture 1, on
Newtonian mechanics, includes an mp3 file of the audio,
streaming video in several formats, a transcript, a problem set
(with solutions) and even a course survey. The entire course
can also be downloaded at once, with individual audio and video
files available for playback on iPods or other devices.
Unlike the static cameras and uneven quality of lectures on the
University of California at Berkeley's YouTube portal, for
example, Yale's appear professionally produced. Shankar, for
one, says he can't imagine his course being useful on the Web
without the accompanying video. "In physics, you write all the
equations on the blackboard ... you talk a bit and you write a
bit.... You need the camera to show the board all the time," he
said.
The six other courses being offered so far are Frontiers and
Controversies in Astrophysics, Modern Poetry, Death (Philosophy
176), Introduction to Political Philosophy, Introduction to
Psychology and Introduction to the Old Testament. Besides their
popularity and general introductory nature, Shankar suggested
that Yale initially chose courses taught by experienced or
award-winning lecturers -- those who would best represent the
university off campus and online.
The idea behind posting the courses is for users to experience
a lecture as it would be without a camera present, so videos
appear unedited and transcripts contain any number of starts
and mistakes. Or, to put it another way: "You don't have a film
of someone producing a lecture for a film," said Langdon
Hammer, the chairman of Yale's Department of English, who
teaches the Modern Poetry course taped for the site last
spring.
So while professors didn't fundamentally alter course material
for the cameras, they were in some cases required to make
additional preparations to avoid any legal issues. Some texts
and quotes given in lectures may, after all, be someone else's
copyrighted work not authorized for digital distribution. For
the poetry course, Hammer said the university "painstakingly"
obtained permission from publishers of works not in the public
domain -- including poems read aloud during class. In several
instances, photographs or paintings he passed out couldn't be
reproduced for the video because of copyright complications.
For Fundamentals of Physics last fall, Shankar couldn't use
problems from most standard textbooks for copyright reasons, so
he found himself creating new ones specifically for the
course's exams and lectures. In return for their participation
-- and in some cases, perhaps, the extra trouble -- the
professors receive a small honorarium.
Some have questioned whether the easy availability of course
lectures might lead to lower attendance back at Yale, but
Shankar and Hammer seem to have found a novel solution. "I will
never teach this course again," said Shankar, who is on
sabbatical, adding that someone else would have to teach the
course in future semesters. "I don't know another way to do
it."
For similar reasons, Hammer said he will take a break from
teaching the modern poetry course. If he returns to the course,
Hammer said, he'll find a way to approach it differently. One
possibility he's considering is to incorporate the recorded
lectures into the curriculum by, for example, having students
read or watch the lectures beforehand and using class time for
more detailed discussions.
But Yale has big ideas for students far from campus. It plans
to transmit the courses by satellite to universities in India
and to broadcast lectures on China Education Television.
Individual faculty members at institutions in other countries
-- including Bahrain, Argentina and Japan -- have also agreed
to include some of the lectures in their own classes.
The university also plans on making its course resources
available in libraries abroad through the State Department's
American Corners program, and to advise college counselors in
the Middle East to use the materials when encouraging students
to apply to American universities.
Shankar says he hopes students in countries that don't
necessarily encourage dissent in the classroom will use the
videos to learn to challenge their professors if necessary. He
also suggested that talented high school students could boost
their own learning, especially in environments with substandard
class offerings in physics.
Hammer said he and his colleagues "undertake this project
uncertain about what direction it will take, but in a kind of
open spirit that making the education that's provided at Yale
as widely available as possible is part of the mission of
education, and that it will take us in so many directions that
we can't necessarily anticipate."
-- Andy Guess
Comments

One of the comments in the article that most struck me was
"Besides their popularity and general introductory nature,
Shankar suggested that Yale initially chose courses taught by
experienced or award-winning lecturers -- those who would best
represent the university off campus and online." I am not sure
that most institutions heavily invested in distance learning
have given consideration to encouraging the "experienced or
award-winning" faculty to lead the distance learning effort at
their institutions.
Sebastian J. Vasta, Director of Distance Education, at 12:40 pm
EST on December 12, 2007

Open Courses
What a wonderful opportunity for people without the resources
needed to attend Yale. I do wonder about the issue of
intellectual property, which is becoming so sticky. What will
the implications be for professors and universities in relation
to sharing this content with the world?
Louise, Managing Director at Honolulu Theatre for Youth, at
3:00 pm EST on December 13, 2007

Next step
I know some of you may not up to this and I know there are
issues that need to be worked out. But I like to, again, toss
the idea that we should find a way to give certificates/degrees
to people that is capable of learning themselves. These people
can be charged minimum fees for the certificate/degree
evaluation. With this being available, we prompt the goal of
education is to build the ability to learn.
It shifts the obligation of learning to students. As long as
students can learn, they will be charged much less than those
need extra services that cost institutions to setup.
This will give society the right education mindset.
Duncan, at 10:55 am EST on December 14, 2007