high quality college and
university-level educational materials.
These materials are organized as courses, and often include course
planning materials and evaluation tools as well as thematic content. OpenCourseWare are free and openly licensed,
accessible to anyone, anytime via the internet.
(OpenCourseWare
Consortium, 2012)
OpenCourseWare is utilized by online distance learners to gain knowledge about a specific topic of interest. In many cases the course is pre-planned, designed for a distant learning environment, and contains most of Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, and Zvacek’s (2012) recommendations for online instruction. However, it may not be the most effective at maximizing active learning.
In the nine fundamentals of
teaching online give by Simonson, et al. (p. 134) the MIT
course successfully covers about eight of the nine. The MIT
class “dumped” the face-to-face course onto the web. The lecture video is just
a video tape of the lectures from class.
There is no interaction or connection made with the audience. An effective and well designed online course
would have student interaction between the professor and student as well as
student to student. Although the
audience is the same, the
objective for OpenCourseWare
is for anyone to learn while an online course has an instructor and resources
to guide the learning process. The course
outlines week by week assignments and readings that provide organization and
clear requirements for the learner. The
calendar and assignments show that the students are informed, however there is
no interaction that would provided constant information that Simonson, et al
(p. 135) state as a fundamental of teaching online. Therefore, the OpenCourseWare from MIT covers one and
a half of the nine fundamentals of teaching online.
Similar to the definition
established by the OpenCourseWare Consortium, “OpenCourseWare is class
materials such as syllabi, reading lists, lecture notes, and other documents
that were once used in an actual classroom and are now available to the public
for free” (Littlefield, 2012). The MIT
course has all these components. There
is no student interaction because the learner is not attending the course,
he/she is simple accessing the materials, which MIT does an excellent job of
providing. The course enhances the
learning experience by providing access to the video lecture on YouTube,
ability to download course material and view examples of student’s final projects. The uses of these technologies are great, but
it does not provide active learning.
OpenCourseWare is not based on the needs of the learner; it is designed
to provide a service to a learner. It is
the learner’s choice on what he/she will take away from the class.
MITOpenCourseWare is a great
resource and starting point for anyone wanting to learn more about a topic of
interest or online learning. But, OpenCourseWare
is not what instructional designers should look to as a model. It is the responsibility of the learner to
seek out forums and other means of communication to insure that he/she is
understanding and furthering his/her knowledge of the topic, rather than these
vital resources which are provided in effective online learning and
instructional design.
References
Littlefield,
J. OpenCourseWare: Access online class material from top
colleges for free. Retrieved from
about.com http://distancelearn.about.com/od/isitforyou/a/opencourseware.htm
OpenCourseWare
Consortium. (2012). What is OpenCourseWare? Retrieved from http://www.ocwconsortium.org/en/aboutus/whatisocw
Picard,
R. W., & Goodwin, M. (2011). Autism
theory and technology.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare. Retrieved from http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/media-arts-and-sciences/mas-771-autism-theory-and-technology-spring-2011/
Simonson,
M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012).
Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education.
(5th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.
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