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by ghaff 2160 days ago
Even MIT, which was pretty early on to online content with OCW, if you look at some of the early statements and materials, was very clearly positioned as raw materials to help teachers assemble their own courses. There was very little audio or video. It was pretty clear that MIT was taking some care to not release something that was potentially competitive with even auditing an actual MIT class.
1 comments
mennis16 2160 days ago
When was this? Not doubting you but by the time I came across OCW in 2012 there were quite a few courses with video lectures, at least you could cover the standard frosh year curriculum with videos and much of the year 1 CS courses. So that gets you an "associates" worth of CS content right there, and this was before I recall MOOCs being a hot topic more broadly.

There are also still quite a few MIT courses that have course websites/YouTube channels with videos but are not linked to on OCW nor adapted for edX. At least I've taken 3 such courses in the last couple years. So I don't think they are being strict about distribution either.

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ghaff 2160 days ago
Early 2000s (so about a decade earlier). Here's a quote from then-MIT president on introducing OCW.

MIT President Charles Vest said that “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.”

ADDED: Video was not nearly as democratized at the time. YouTube wasn't founded until 2005.

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mennis16 2160 days ago
Interesting, thanks for the info! I think the statement could still apply even with videos available, but of course it is also in MIT's best interest to say this.

Honestly I really like the idea of using OCW materials to run a course, I'd have loved something like that instead of the AP program in high school. It's too bad the original intended use didn't catch on (or at least I've never seen it used that way).

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