WHILE in Uganda a few years ago, a New 杏吧原创 reporter was
shocked to see the state of the science faculty library of Makerere University.
It was little more than a broom cupboard with a couple of chairs in it. The
books were old and few, and were too valuable to be taken away: avid students
had to read them at the seats provided. Behind this sad excuse for a library was
a tragic truth. Just keeping up with modern thinking is beyond the means of many
developing countries.
Enter the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Last week, MIT announced
that it will post most of the ingredients of its courses on the World Wide Web.
Lecture notes, assignments, video lectures, course outlines, test questions and
reading lists will all be there for anyone to use free of charge. The project
will cost the university some $100 million over 10 years. This is some
gift. So, what鈥檚 the catch?
The move certainly turns on its head the trend of trying to make money from
the Web and education. Companies and universities have been falling over
themselves to provide distance-learning courses over the Web鈥攁t a price.
MIT鈥檚 plan has pulled the rug out from under these organisations, some of which
admit to already rethinking their strategies.
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In future, MIT says, it too might enter the distance-learning business. This
first step will do it no harm. Students anywhere in the world searching for help
with their coursework will find themselves on the MIT site. The material there
will serve as an advert for the university鈥檚 openness, confidence and
innovation.
Cynics might argue that Version 1 of MIT鈥檚 Open CourseWare, as it鈥檚 called,
is simply a loss leader. Once other universities and students have become
dependent on it, Version 2 will come with a small price tag, they suggest. But
the powers-that-be at MIT deny this. One of their motivations, they say, is
disillusionment with the 鈥減rivatisation of knowledge鈥�. This idealism smacks of
old-style academia: the idea that knowledge has a value beyond money.
In reality, we know it never went away鈥攊t just went out of fashion. It
was a key element of the early Internet. And it gained a new lease of life in
the open source movement, which promotes the idea that everyone benefits when
the source code of computer programs is made freely available.
The notion that a lecturer in Singapore or Sheffield can improve an MIT
course and post it back on the Web is exactly analogous to what the open source
movement does. If all universities followed this model, it could transform
education. In 20 years, the Web could be a repository of free educational
material on any topic. This would be an extraordinary resource.
So MIT deserves top marks. For now, the biggest impact of its move will be
felt in developing countries. Forget about costly books. A PC, a modem and a
phone line could bring up-to-date thinking from great teachers to the most
far-flung countries. Students in Makerere can finally come out of the
closet.
