Massachusetts Institute of Technology has announced it will become the first university to make full lecture notes, book lists, course outlines and assignments relating to virtually all of its courses available on its web site for free.
The project is expected to take ten years and cost $100 million but people using the online material will not gain MIT qualifications.
The move 鈥渨ill change the way the Web is used in higher education鈥� says MIT President Charles Vest. 鈥淚t will provide an extraordinary resource, free of charge, which others can adapt to their own needs.鈥�
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Steven Lerman, chair of the MIT faculty, said the project stemmed from concern over the growing 鈥減rivatisation of knowledge鈥�.
Jilly Salmon, an expert on e-learning at Britain鈥檚 Open University claims the plan is a publicity stunt. 鈥淭his is a great way for MIT to offer information about what it鈥檚 like to study there. But I don鈥檛 think information is knowledge and I don鈥檛 think reading lists are learning. Most students would say the kind of information MIT says it will supply is useless without understanding it and applying it.鈥�
The Open University teaches only through distance learning but its online material is only available to paying students. It also sells course-related study packs, audio and video tapes through its web site.
A spokesman for Oxford University has also criticised MIT鈥檚 announcement. Oxford, together with Princeton, Stanford and Yale universities in the US, is setting up a scheme to provide structured, tutored courses over the internet. This will only be free to people who have already graduated from one of the four universities.
鈥淲e have no plans to put anything else up for free because unstructured courses aren鈥檛 seen as being useful,鈥� he says.
An MIT spokeswoman says: 鈥淥f course, MIT does place a lot of emphasis on relationships between students and faculty 鈥� but if the basic information is available online, at least people can do the groundwork.鈥�
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