Opening Up More Learning

Posted by Kenneth Ronkowitz on

The Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University may look at quick glance as a version of the MIT OpenCourseware project. I think there are some significant differences.

"Through the OLI project, Carnegie Mellon is working to help the World Wide Web make good on its promise of widely accessible and effective online education. OLI grew out of collaboration among cognitive scientists, experts in human computer interaction and seasoned faculty who have both a deep expertise in their respective fields and a strong commitment to excellence in higher education. The project adds to online education the crucial elements of instructional design grounded in cognitive theory, formative evaluation for students and faculty, and iterative course improvement based on empirical evidence."

The MIT site offers materials from many of their courses which students and instructors can access and download. The OLI site is more involved in actually taking a course and working through an online environment.

The OLI courses include some interesting online instructional components like cognitive tutors, virtual labs, group experiments and simulations. The OLI researchers study the effectiveness and usability of the courses to improve the courses, and to contribute to effective practices in online learning environments. There is assessment and evaluation built into all courses. One objective of the project is to build a community of use for the courses in order to direct course development and improvement.

It's interesting that the courses are designed in a modular format, so you could use the courses as designed, or modify the content and sequence to fit your needs.

The first courses on the site are typical large lecture format courses (Economics, Statistics, Logic).

Will the most important impact of OLI be "increased access to education" or modeling effective online courses and course materials? The latter is something that the MIT effort lacks, so I am hopeful that OLI and other efforts will work towards both goals.

Take an online tour of the Open Learning Initiative

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