I learned that the it is has been a long time in the works for the world's top universities to finally get on board with online education. Now a person can go online to learn more through open coursware. The following two paragraphs in the article really caught my attention:
As with many technology trends, new services and platforms are driving change. Last spring marked the debut of "iTunes U," a section of Apple's popular music and video downloading service now publicly hosting free material from 28 colleges. Meanwhile, the University of California, Berkeley recently announced it would be the first to make full course lectures available on YouTube. Berkeley was already posting lectures, but YouTube has dramatically expanded their reach.
If there isn't yet something for everyone, it's only a matter of time. On iTunes, popular recent downloads include a climate change panel at Stanford, lectures on existentialism by Cal-Berkeley professor Hubert Dreyfus, and a performance of Mozart's requiem by the Duke Chapel Choir. Berkeley's offerings include 48 classes, from "Engineering Thermodynamics" to "Human Emotion."
Like the experiences we are having in our information literacy cohort, it seems that not only secondary education but higher education is also changing due as a result of the Internet. That anyone can now go online to pick a lecture they are interested in hearing and viewing to learn more about a particular topic-is amazing. Apparently what is happening at Berkeley is catching on as further in the article it mentions that their eight YouTube courses drew 1.5 million downloads in the first month. The first month? Amazing. What will be the long term implications of the use of technology and highter ed? How might this change or otherwise alter the style and methodology of instructors? What about how people learn? The more I think about this the more mind boggling I find it.
For an example of these programs check out the one at MIT: http://ocw.mit.edu/ I also need to check it out.
In the meantime . . ."Happy New Year!!" I hope that all of you have a great 2008! I know you will wish me the same!
2 comments:
As someone who has contemplated getting a degree via online learning I'd be curious to know what people think about how "online degrees" are perceived. Would a potential employer dismiss it as not being as "valid" as a degree earned sitting in the classroom, or...?
So, I could view course offerings and even take a class via YouTube? wow Does it bother you that a person could spend all day in front of a computer screen and not have any human contact at all? And what will this mean in the evolution of our species? (if anything...) I must admit, however, that I wouldn't mind taking classes online, especially if it was easy and convenient, not letting the computer get in the way of learning. But I also wonder about Deanna's comment.
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