Get Your Lectures From MIT, For Free!

CadCrazy · 04-01-2008, 12:49 AM

The open source movement is fast catching up in the field of education as well. It will not be wrong to name 2008 the year of perpetual freedom!

Things will change dramatically in the year 2008. With open source movement starting to get takers in the mainstream, it is poised to change things to an extent nobody imagined earlier. One of the prominent examples is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s OpenCourseWare initiative which has already been a major hit amongst students throughout the world.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers publication of core teaching materials -- including syllabi, lecture notes, assignments and exams-from virtually all MIT courses, 1,800 in total. The site includes voluntary contributions from 90 per cent of faculty and more than 2,600 members of the MIT community.

First announced in 2001, OpenCourseWare has grown from a 50-course pilot to a site that includes virtually the entire MIT undergraduate and graduate curriculum. Materials are published under an open licence that encourages reuse, redistribution and modification for non-commercial purposes.

Back in India, Rai Foundation runs its RAI OpenCourseWare, which it says is its "quest of bringing world-class higher education within the reach of one and all. With the Rai OpenCourseware available free on the Net, learning is just a click away for self learners who aspire to add value to themselves and thereby for the community at large."

The website says, "The RAI OpenCourseWare can be, if you wish, simply downloaded from the Internet. Educational institutions who wish to use it for their students can also do so by only providing an acknowledgment to Rai Foundation Colleges as 'Source'."

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