Thursday, March 1, 2001

MIT Professors Propose a Costly Effort to Put All Course Materials Online By JEFFREY R. YOUNG Administrators and faculty members at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are debating what could become a $100-million effort to create extensive World Wide Web pages for nearly every course the university offers. Under the program, which was proposed by a committee of faculty members and administrators, the university would publish a vast collection of course materials on the Web, although it would not deliver the courses to students at a distance. Course Web pages are nothing new, but the scope of M.I.T.'s proposal -- called OpenCourseWare@MIT -- is unusual. Many colleges and universities encourage professors to publish Web pages for their courses, but few have made a public commitment to making course Web pages standard. Although the details of M.I.T.'s proposal are far from final, backers say the university might spend as much as $100-million over 10 years on the project, with the goal of creating Web pages for about 2,000 courses. Much of the money would pay for support services to help professors get their lecture notes and other teaching materials online. The program would be voluntary, but the university would strongly encourage every professor to participate. At a recent faculty meeting, the university's president, Charles M. Vest, spoke favorably of the proposal, according to an article in the M.I.T. student newspaper, The Tech. "I think we're in a kind of brief shining moment in general in that the World Wide Web is making information available to the world for free," Mr. Vest is quoted as saying. "I would like to think that, for at least a brief period of time, we could be a leading source of higher education on the Web." The goal is to use the course Web pages as "a public window into M.I.T.," says Steven R. Lerman, a professor of civil and environmental engineering who is a proponent of the project. "It's a way to look in and see what sorts of things we're teaching." Mr. Lerman says the materials could benefit professors at other institutions, especially those in developing nations, who might want to know how M.I.T. teaches a given subject. But he notes that that such sharing does not constitute distance education. "The syllabus and lecture notes are not an education," says Mr. Lerman. "The education is what you do with the materials." In fact, the Web-page proposal is a statement that the university does not plan to focus on delivering courses beyond the borders of its campus. "It's a large effort at M.I.T. that says, 'We're not going to do distance education,'" says Hal Abelson, a professor of computer science and engineering who is also involved with the proposed project. "It really is making a statement about what the university is about and what it's not about." Mr. Abelson says the proposed effort would benefit students by increasing the amount of material available over the Web. And M.I.T. hopes that if it goes forward, other universities will follow its lead. The title of the project is a reference to open-source software, for which developers make computer code freely available to others on the condition that other developers freely publish any improvements they make. Mr. Lerman and Mr. Abelson have been vigorously pitching the plan to various groups within the university over the past few months to get feedback from them. "This is one of the most widely vetted initiatives that I think we've had in a long time," says Mr. Lerman, who says that more than 25 forums have been held to discuss the plan. "Unless the faculty thinks this is a good idea, it doesn't make sense for us to do it." Some professors have expressed concern that the plan will be cumbersome to initiate and that its goals are unclear. William L. Porter, a professor of architecture and planning, says he worries that the materials on course Web sites might not reflect well on the institution. "There's a danger that what actually gets placed there is not valuable enough in educational terms to really serve the objectives," he says, adding that it is difficult to translate classroom interactions into a Web page that will be meaningful to outsiders. John R. Williams, an associate professor of engineering systems whose research is in developing software for distance education, says he worries that the OpenCourseWare@MIT effort might keep the university from getting involved with distance-education projects. "I just don't see how this sets us apart from all the course materials that are out there," says Mr. Williams. "This will achieve something, but if you had $100-million, would you spend it this way?" Some professors have also complained that giving their lecture notes away on the Web might prevent them from publishing books based on the material. "My sense around campus is not that there's opposition, but that there are concerns that this needs to be thought out," Mr. Williams says. Top administrators at the university could reach a decision on the plan in a matter of weeks, says Mr. Lerman. M.I.T. is not the first institution to try to make Web sites as common as blackboards in its courses. In 1997, the University of California at Los Angeles started an "instructional enhancement initiative" that provides at least a basic Web page for every undergraduate course in its largest unit, the College of Letters and Science. The proposal initially drew criticism from professors, who complained that the Web pages would be a distraction, as well as from students, who objected to a student fee that was created to pay for the project. Officials now say such complaints have died down and that the program has been a success. Brian P. Copenhaver, provost of the College of Letters and Science, says that unlike M.I.T.'s proposal, U.C.L.A.'s project focuses on helping students rather than people outside of the university. He adds that he is not aware of other universities that have promised to offer a Web page for every course. Background article from The Chronicle: UCLA's Requirement of a Web Page for Every Class Spurs Debate (8/1/1997 ) Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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