5 ms·

Support MIT OpenCourseWare

35 points by malikNF 9y ago

blcknight 9y ago
Am I the only one that finds OCW conpletely underwhelming? Lecture slides and notes which make up a lot of the content isn't very useful to me without the lectures. Stanford has a few classes with all the lectures on YouTube. During my first algorithms course in undergrad they were super useful and the professors were really good at explaining things in plain languages. Better than my own instructors. Same thing for Khan Academy. Their content is brilliant. OCW is just a data dump.
- blcknight 9y ago
  Although maybe in now wrong. It seems some have video lectures now.
  - davidivadavid 9y ago
    They've had videos for about as long as they've existed. OP is misinformed.
    - wuch 9y ago
      Available material vary considerably between courses, and those with video lectures are in minority.
    - Blackthorn 9y ago
      For a few classes. Most do not.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      There was very little video and audio when it was started. Remember it dates to 2002 (i.e. three years before YouTube was founded) and it wasn't really routine, easy, or inexpensive to take video of lectures, edit it, and host it online. Also, as I said in another comment, the main impetus of OCW was to provide materials for educators to use in order to create their own courses. In a way, I suppose it was part of a similar top-down, enable institutions to provide local learning opportunities thinking that One Laptop Per Child was part of as well.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Profragile 9y ago
  They do have video lectures, now on YouTube. They had it even before YouTube existed. I remember watching OCW video lectures around 10 years ago.
- malikNF 9y ago
  I think calling OCW just a data dump is a little bit too over the top. I am following their Linear Algebra course ( https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06sc-linear-algebra-fall-2011/index.htm https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06sc-linear-algeb... ) and so far it's been really great. There are questions and answers after each lesson, you even get exams and their answers so you can test your progress. Also the youtube comments for some of these classes seems to suggest that a lot of people are really thankful for the content.
- ghaff 9y ago
  It's a bit of a mix. There is video and audio for some classes. The other material ranges in how detailed it is. When OCW was originally introduced, it wasn't really intended as a "MOOC," as the term is used today. It was more intended as source material for other teachers to put together classes following the curriculum developed by MIT than as something that students would use directly. This original purpose didn't really pan out and the material for some classes has morphed accordingly but it means that you have a fair bit of variety in the posted materials. ADDED: If you want turnkey classes, MIT also has a fair bit of material on edX which it co-founded.
gravypod 9y ago
My first thought was "Wow! Is MIT really in need of this money?" If not are they're just probing the public opinion on double selling already on hand material. Endowment: $13.182 billion (2016) Academic staff: 1,021 Students: 11,319 Undergraduates: 4,512 Postgraduates: 6,807 Campus: 168 acres From [1] For anyone who hasn't worked in academia there are three big funding sources for a university: 1. Endowments: Someone donates you money, you put it into a saving/investment portfolio, and you spend the interest of it. It's continual/perpetual funding for whatever you want. 2. Overhead on grants: I'd bet more then half of MIT's money is taxpayer-funded. MIT has a 54.70% overhead which means that of any grant that anyone on campus gets only 45.3% goes to real research. (I will say that a 54.7% overhead is pretty average. My school has a ~60% overhead.) 3. Last and least, Students: MIT's admission costs are $41,547. That's $187,460,064 total in from their current undergraduate class. They're still making money from grad students but it won't be the same amount so I didn't add them into them mix. You also need to remember for every dollar they take in from someone, they'll find at least 2 dollars to take in from someone else. When you go to a college and pay their admission free, you're paying the subsidized version and the college is getting rich. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Tec...
- linkmotif 9y ago
  My sentiment exactly. I tried leaving this comment the other day on another OCW-related post, but didn't have the patience to put together numbers like this. MIT is a cash monster that like all schools of its caliber at this point exists basically only to perpetuate itself. This institution sued Aaron Schwartz so hard and so relentlessly just to make the point that open knowledge is not their business. Giving them money is truly a waste of money when you can give that money where it might have some impact.
- mathattack 9y ago
  You catch my thoughts here. I'm torn between "This is a great resource, we should pay for it" and "Does MIT really need any more money?" This does seem to just be one aspect of their annual fundraising. Donors like to see their money go to specific targets, and this happens to be a feel-good one.
axonic 9y ago
I have mixed opinions about OCW but overall I think it is an invaluable resource. I am presently working through MIT 20.219 Writing and Hosting the Educational Show (2016, Choe, E.) and 18.006 Calculus Revisited (2010, Gross, H.). The calc classes are from 1970 so I wondered why they were there. After watching 3 lectures straight until 0600 and laughing through it, I saw why. I've also done Harvard CS50x, and many others from various sources. Some classes are more to sell the school to potential students than to share knowledge but MIT stays away from that. Self-learning is tricky for some but I think learning how to learn is as critical as the course content. My learning has accelerated greatly since studying teaching adult learners and graduate students. You are your own teacher in a way and must take responsibility for your own learning outcomes. Politics drive education, many factors influence the level of commitment from MIT to the OCW program and learners, but I don't believe that should change the value of the content and if public funding will keep it online, I support it. I owe them so much for what I've learned from the MIT culture, its amazing faculty, and the students who help shape the learning environment. I get called to consult and develop for some of the biggest companies in the world now and I can be confident in the quality of my work and what I teach others :) I call that value.
- ivan_ah 9y ago
  Thanks for plugging this 18.006 Calculus: https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-006-calculus-revisited-single-variable-calculus-fall-2010/index.htm https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-006-calculus-revisited-... Prof Gross is an awesome teacher. The lecture series include a lot of prerequisite material form high school math so would be great for someone to get started with math.
gumby 9y ago
A comment on the comments about MIT's role as a school, government "subsidies" etc: Don't think of MIT as a school, think of it as a very large research lab with a small school attached. There are about 10K students, but about 20K staff, a surprising number of which don't even interact with grad students much less undergrads (and undergrads are often found in research labs to a much greater degree than other schools). So if you quote the stats, consider that tuition (and residence fees etc) is only about 14% of revenue. Does that mean the education is subsidized by the other 86%? No, education (which includes operating the dorms etc) is only about 16% of expenses (this has fluctuated but hasn't changed hugely over the 30 years since I graduated, not that I monitor the budget every year!). So there's a reason why you feel like students aren't appreciated t MIT -- by many people they aren't. OCW is not just a great resource, but a way of making the educational mission more visible (and to the administration visibility is primarily how much money you bring in -- which I consider reasonable, as long as it's not the only metric). I get several hardcopy pieces of MIT propaganda per month; less than half of it mentions students, almost none of whom are undergrads. And this is despite the fact that my donations and participation are almost all in support of undergraduate education.
- ghaff 9y ago
  I don't necessarily disagree with some of your points. But MIT has about 12K staff (of which about 2K are faculty or teaching staff). And I believe that the remaining 10K includes Lincoln Labs which has about 4K employees.
  - gumby 9y ago
    FWIW there's Lincoln Labs, MITRE, Draper and other such fig leaf spinouts designed to get paper over MIT's Vietnam-war-era restrictions on classified research.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      Lincoln is still officially part of MIT. Draper is not. (Not sure what status MITRE ever had.)

35 points by malikNF 9y ago

Am I the only one that finds OCW conpletely underwhelming? Lecture slides and notes which make up a lot of the content isn't very useful to me without the lectures. Stanford has a few classes with all the lectures on YouTube. During my first algorithms course in undergrad they were super useful and the professors were really good at explaining things in plain languages. Better than my own instructors. Same thing for Khan Academy. Their content is brilliant. OCW is just a data dump.

blcknight 9y ago
Although maybe in now wrong. It seems some have video lectures now.
- davidivadavid 9y ago
  They've had videos for about as long as they've existed. OP is misinformed.
  - wuch 9y ago
    Available material vary considerably between courses, and those with video lectures are in minority.
  - Blackthorn 9y ago
    For a few classes. Most do not.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    There was very little video and audio when it was started. Remember it dates to 2002 (i.e. three years before YouTube was founded) and it wasn't really routine, easy, or inexpensive to take video of lectures, edit it, and host it online. Also, as I said in another comment, the main impetus of OCW was to provide materials for educators to use in order to create their own courses. In a way, I suppose it was part of a similar top-down, enable institutions to provide local learning opportunities thinking that One Laptop Per Child was part of as well.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Profragile 9y ago
They do have video lectures, now on YouTube. They had it even before YouTube existed. I remember watching OCW video lectures around 10 years ago.
malikNF 9y ago
I think calling OCW just a data dump is a little bit too over the top. I am following their Linear Algebra course ( https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06sc-linear-algebra-fall-2011/index.htm https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06sc-linear-algeb... ) and so far it's been really great. There are questions and answers after each lesson, you even get exams and their answers so you can test your progress. Also the youtube comments for some of these classes seems to suggest that a lot of people are really thankful for the content.
ghaff 9y ago
It's a bit of a mix. There is video and audio for some classes. The other material ranges in how detailed it is. When OCW was originally introduced, it wasn't really intended as a "MOOC," as the term is used today. It was more intended as source material for other teachers to put together classes following the curriculum developed by MIT than as something that students would use directly. This original purpose didn't really pan out and the material for some classes has morphed accordingly but it means that you have a fair bit of variety in the posted materials. ADDED: If you want turnkey classes, MIT also has a fair bit of material on edX which it co-founded.

gravypod 9y ago

My first thought was "Wow! Is MIT really in need of this money?" If not are they're just probing the public opinion on double selling already on hand material. Endowment: $13.182 billion (2016) Academic staff: 1,021 Students: 11,319 Undergraduates: 4,512 Postgraduates: 6,807 Campus: 168 acres From [1] For anyone who hasn't worked in academia there are three big funding sources for a university: 1. Endowments: Someone donates you money, you put it into a saving/investment portfolio, and you spend the interest of it. It's continual/perpetual funding for whatever you want. 2. Overhead on grants: I'd bet more then half of MIT's money is taxpayer-funded. MIT has a 54.70% overhead which means that of any grant that anyone on campus gets only 45.3% goes to real research. (I will say that a 54.7% overhead is pretty average. My school has a ~60% overhead.) 3. Last and least, Students: MIT's admission costs are $41,547. That's $187,460,064 total in from their current undergraduate class. They're still making money from grad students but it won't be the same amount so I didn't add them into them mix. You also need to remember for every dollar they take in from someone, they'll find at least 2 dollars to take in from someone else. When you go to a college and pay their admission free, you're paying the subsidized version and the college is getting rich. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Tec...

linkmotif 9y ago
My sentiment exactly. I tried leaving this comment the other day on another OCW-related post, but didn't have the patience to put together numbers like this. MIT is a cash monster that like all schools of its caliber at this point exists basically only to perpetuate itself. This institution sued Aaron Schwartz so hard and so relentlessly just to make the point that open knowledge is not their business. Giving them money is truly a waste of money when you can give that money where it might have some impact.
mathattack 9y ago
You catch my thoughts here. I'm torn between "This is a great resource, we should pay for it" and "Does MIT really need any more money?" This does seem to just be one aspect of their annual fundraising. Donors like to see their money go to specific targets, and this happens to be a feel-good one.

axonic 9y ago

I have mixed opinions about OCW but overall I think it is an invaluable resource. I am presently working through MIT 20.219 Writing and Hosting the Educational Show (2016, Choe, E.) and 18.006 Calculus Revisited (2010, Gross, H.). The calc classes are from 1970 so I wondered why they were there. After watching 3 lectures straight until 0600 and laughing through it, I saw why. I've also done Harvard CS50x, and many others from various sources. Some classes are more to sell the school to potential students than to share knowledge but MIT stays away from that. Self-learning is tricky for some but I think learning how to learn is as critical as the course content. My learning has accelerated greatly since studying teaching adult learners and graduate students. You are your own teacher in a way and must take responsibility for your own learning outcomes. Politics drive education, many factors influence the level of commitment from MIT to the OCW program and learners, but I don't believe that should change the value of the content and if public funding will keep it online, I support it. I owe them so much for what I've learned from the MIT culture, its amazing faculty, and the students who help shape the learning environment. I get called to consult and develop for some of the biggest companies in the world now and I can be confident in the quality of my work and what I teach others :) I call that value.

ivan_ah 9y ago
Thanks for plugging this 18.006 Calculus: https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-006-calculus-revisited-single-variable-calculus-fall-2010/index.htm https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-006-calculus-revisited-... Prof Gross is an awesome teacher. The lecture series include a lot of prerequisite material form high school math so would be great for someone to get started with math.

gumby 9y ago

A comment on the comments about MIT's role as a school, government "subsidies" etc: Don't think of MIT as a school, think of it as a very large research lab with a small school attached. There are about 10K students, but about 20K staff, a surprising number of which don't even interact with grad students much less undergrads (and undergrads are often found in research labs to a much greater degree than other schools). So if you quote the stats, consider that tuition (and residence fees etc) is only about 14% of revenue. Does that mean the education is subsidized by the other 86%? No, education (which includes operating the dorms etc) is only about 16% of expenses (this has fluctuated but hasn't changed hugely over the 30 years since I graduated, not that I monitor the budget every year!). So there's a reason why you feel like students aren't appreciated t MIT -- by many people they aren't. OCW is not just a great resource, but a way of making the educational mission more visible (and to the administration visibility is primarily how much money you bring in -- which I consider reasonable, as long as it's not the only metric). I get several hardcopy pieces of MIT propaganda per month; less than half of it mentions students, almost none of whom are undergrads. And this is despite the fact that my donations and participation are almost all in support of undergraduate education.

ghaff 9y ago
I don't necessarily disagree with some of your points. But MIT has about 12K staff (of which about 2K are faculty or teaching staff). And I believe that the remaining 10K includes Lincoln Labs which has about 4K employees.
- gumby 9y ago
  FWIW there's Lincoln Labs, MITRE, Draper and other such fig leaf spinouts designed to get paper over MIT's Vietnam-war-era restrictions on classified research.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Lincoln is still officially part of MIT. Draper is not. (Not sure what status MITRE ever had.)