MIT is planning to launch an open platform for free online classes, complete with certification for those who demonstrate mastery of their topics. The university announced “MITx” on Monday, though it doesn’t plan to launch the experimental prototype version of the platform until Spring 2012.
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MIT already has a robust free online library of its course materials called OpenCourseWare (OCW). The 10-year-old site includes 2,100 MIT courses and has been used by more than 100 million people. Anybody can use it to view MIT class lecture notes, assignments and solutions, image galleries and, in some cases, even lecture videos.
MITx will put more structure around some of the school’s online class content, including student-to-student discussions, self-assessment tools and access to online laboratories. After it releases the platform for its own site, it will allow any learning institution to use it for their own course offerings.
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Students who complete courses will be eligible for certification, but don’t get too excited at the prospect of hanging an MIT degree on your wall without squeezing through the university’s notoriously narrow admission criteria. MIT isn’t going to attach its name to the certificate. Rather, it plans to create a not-for-profit body with a different name that will offer certification for a “modest fee.”
The day when the Internet enables widespread quality education has been envisioned by people like Bill Gates, who argued at Techonomy 2010 that “It?s very clear that five years from now, on the web, for free?you will be able to find the greatest lectures in the world.”
Meanwhile, universities have been inching toward legitimizing online learning. In May, New York University began allowing students from the tuition-free, online-only University of the People to use their online credentials to apply to study at its Abu Dhabi campus. Prestigious schools such as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Georgetown have launched online degree programs.
Whether online learning can compare to or aid campus learning are contentious issues (few argue that an online education is not an improvement over none), but MITx may help add some data to the debate. This being an MIT initiative, it will be coupled with a campus-wide research project.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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