Following in the footsteps of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University will start giving away online materials for a smattering of courses. The project—modeled after MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative, which has already published more than half of the university’s 1,800 courses—will start small, with six courses available online.
A growing number of institutions, including the Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, and Utah State Universities, have started to experiment with open courseware. But some campus officials remain skeptical of the projects’ value: "I’ve tried teaching from someone else’s syllabus before," says Kyle Johnson, director of student affairs information technology for Duke University, "and it’s a real pain." (Educause blog)
For more on the rising popularity of open courseware, see an article from The Chronicle by Jeffrey R. Young.
