TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: MIT Begins Offering its Courses FREE on the Internet, All 1800!


MIT Begins Offering its Courses FREE on the Internet, All 1800!


Reuters News Wire (reuters@telecom-digest.org)
Sat, 10 Mar 2007 16:10:11 -0600

MIT to offer its courses free online by year end.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology will become by year's end
the first U.S. university to offer all of its roughly 1,800 courses
free on the Internet, a school official said on Friday.

"We started this project because MIT believes that one of the best ways
to advance education around the world is through the Internet," said
Anne Margulies, head of online curriculum.

Online students will not be able to earn an MIT degree or have contact
with faculty at the university, located across the river from Boston
in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

MIT launched its "OpenCourseWare" program in 2003 and already offers
hundreds of courses online. A small number of other U.S. schools are
following suit. Stanford put some classes on line last year and Bryn
Mawr plans to do so soon.

Last month, 1.5 million users went to the MIT course site, sampling
offerings like Cognitive Robotics, Inventions and Patents, and
Superconducting Magnets.

Most users -- 60 percent come from outside the United States --
gravitate toward the subjects MIT is best-known for: computer science,
physics and mathematics, Margulies said.

Even MIT students who pay thousands of dollars in tuition fees for
each course use the free online service to study for exams or sample
what courses they may want to take on campus, Margulies said.

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.

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