

MIT OpenCourseWare + VideoLectures.net - sebastjanm
http://videolectures.net/mit_ocw/

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netcan

        * OCW is not an MIT education.
        * OCW does not grant degrees or certificates.
        * OCW does not provide access to MIT faculty.
        * Materials may not reflect entire content of the course.
    

I wonder if removing the nots will ever be considered a goal.

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jacobscott
The final not I think is a goal that OCW is working towards. I doubt the first
three will ever be goals.

* MIT is not the University of Phoenix. You have to attend the school to get an MIT education.

* OCW is a project to provide open courseware. It is not a school.

* MIT faculty have their primary responsibility to enrolled students and their research programs (and not necessarily in that order). It doesn't scale (e.g., is impossible) for OCW to grant access to them.

MIT is an excellent engineering school, but there are many others. Among other
things, I think some of OCW's goals are to offer/help provide a superb
curriculum for those schools -- where, if enrolled, you would be able to get
an education, degree, and faculty access.

fwiw I have a masters from MIT, but no involvement with the ocw project.

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albertni
In many cases it simply is not physically possible to do a course justice just
through web materials. Of course, the obvious example is that in some classes
the labs and lab equipment. However, it should also be noted that a lot of the
value of some classes (whether they be MIT or somewhere else) comes from group
projects and other group activities that either wouldn't be reasonable for an
individual to complete, or wouldn't be nearly as helpful.

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netcan
Sure. I don't think it's easy or as good.

There'll probably always be an advantage to going to a physical university.
But there are online Universities that provide an education, degree, and
faculty access at widely ranging cost points.

The first two might be possible to offer free. Maybe. The last one would be
difficult to provide free. But maybe some sort of guided community support
could give a 90/10 solution that could scale.

The goal of an MIT level education & certification available to anyone with
the intelligence & time regardless of citizenship & economic situation comes
with a huge amount of utility. Economic, social & otherwise. I believe it may
also be very strategic in terms of world security & stability.

But an MIT level is not absolutely necessary. A tier 2 or 3 university level
might be sufficient. Maybe as albertni mentions, they aim to provide a piece
of the puzzle which can then be topped up with elements from other
institutions. For the above to be goals, the whole thing doesn't need to fall
on MIT's back.

Coursework can scale pretty much indefinitely. Certification, (i believe) can
be made to scale quite well but MIT is probably not the place to go for this.
Between those two, you don't seem that far from a free education. At least for
the very driven students.

I was never a great example (or a great student), but for me these were the
centres of gravity. Interactions that were important were mostly with tutors
(mostly phd candidates or later year students) & other students. These would
be harder to solve but maybe not impossible.

The point is that traditional, physical universities have not scaled. A
minority of those intellectually capable have access to them.

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te_platt
The more I learn the more I realize I know very little. A few more sites like
this and I won't know anything.

~~~
h34t
No kidding.

But I'd bet if you spend a few hours on Fox News, you'll be your genius self
again in no time.

~~~
te_platt
Usually I go read the comments on YouTube. That's where the real brains are.

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natch
It would be a genuine step toward Openness if they would put download links on
those pages. If bandwidth is the problem, they could be torrents.

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dkd
I am not sure about other people but for me, if i cannot download the lecture
videos, i wouldn't bother checking it out.

<http://see.stanford.edu>

it has really nice courses and you can even download lecture video via
torrents. :)

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jkm
May I know how to download lectures from videolectures.net

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schtog
Anyone else having problems with VideoLectures? Most of the time the videos
just hangs for me after a while and prett much always if I pause them for more
than, say a minute.

But this is awesome though.

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mark_h
This looks like an awesome resource, thanks for posting. Is it WMV only
though?

