The Impact of Open Source

MIT OpenCourseWare
I have chosen to evaluate one course from the MIT OpenCourseWare. It is a free publication of MIT course materials that reflects almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT however:
• 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.

For more information, please use this link  http://ocw.mit.edu/about/  to access the website page about MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW).

7.014 Introductory Biology is the course I have selected to evaluate. It is a recorded face-to-face course that had been taught at the MIT campus in the semester of Spring 2005. The course is carefully pre-planned and very well designed for a traditional class. However it can be used as a quality distance learning course along with the availability of online study groups that will add a sort of apparent asynchronous discussion feature to the course, but there will be no rules or instructors to organize such discussions.

As per the website orientation video, (getting started with OCW,  http://ocw.mit.edu/help/get-started-with-ocw/  ), the course materials are posted for MIT students in order to plan their workload or review the concepts they have learned in pervious semesters, and also it is available for the independent learners in order to enhance their skills or tackle on the subjects using different lecture resources.

Anyone can access the course for free without registration and he / she can subscribe to RSS feed in order to get notifications of any course updates.

Course Design and Activities

The course structure is very well organized with a variety of tools including syllabus, calendar, recitation, reading, assignments, exams, study materials, video lectures and unit questions, however all the tools were designed for a traditional class. For example, the syllabus is general and very brief, it does not have much information about the course weekly tasks as in reality the “Syllabus should be equal to the instructional plan” as Dr. George Piskurich mentioned in Laureate video program “Planning and Designing online Course”.

In order to plan for instruction at distance, Simonson et. al., (2009) stated that “we have to keep in mind that courses previously taught in traditional classrooms may need to be retooled. The focus of the instructions should shift to visual presentations, engaged learners, and careful timing of presentations of information”. However, the only retooling I have noticed is adding the videos for a recorded FTF lectures without any modifications to account for teaching the class online.

It is also clear that the course designer implemented different activities that allow for student group work however that was only executed during the FTF class. For distance learners, these activities end-up as posted assignments without a having a chance for instructor lead organized group work.

Reference:

Piskurich, G., & Chauser, J. (n.d.). Planning and designing online courses. Video. Produced by Laureate Education, Inc.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.