Monday, November 26, 2001

MIT Begins Effort to Create Public Web Pages for More Than 2,000 Courses By JEFFREY R. YOUNG The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has begun the pilot phase of its closely watched plan to create detailed Web pages for nearly all of its courses and develop courseware tools that other institutions could use free. In the process, officials at MIT are finding that professors' skill levels vary dramatically when it comes to using the Web in their courses -- which could make it difficult to create a system that is flexible enough to meet everyone's needs. Last month, MIT began working with about 20 professors from eight departments to create prototype course Web pages that will lay the groundwork for its OpenCourseWare project. The project, which is expected to cost as much as $100-million over 10 years, aims to publish Web pages for more than 2,000 courses. To meet that goal, MIT is hiring a support staff and trying to develop templates and search tools that will make it easy for Web users to look in on the institute's courses. MIT's plans for the project have sparked widespread interest at other institutions, and many see it as an important statement that course materials should be thought of not as commercial products but as scholarly publications, readily available for review and reuse by interested peers. What has most surprised the project's leaders so far is the range of Web savvy among professors. "We have faculty with enormously elaborate Web sites that are truly state-of-the-art, and we have faculty with nothing -- with paper notes that they give out," says Steven R. Lerman, a professor of civil and environmental engineering who is leading the project during the pilot phase. "The biggest challenge to OpenCourseWare is, How do you tailor supporting the faculty when they're all starting at very different places in the technological spectrum?" Among the goals of the pilot phase of the project, which will last through March, are finding out what professors want from course Web pages and creating a process for supporting and maintaining the pages. So far, the project is focused on creating interactive features for the Web pages that will serve professors and students on the campus, rather than on designing the interface that will allow people outside the university to make use of course materials, says Kyung I. Han, a consultant who is a manager of the pilot project. "As we move forward, then we'll tackle the off-campus users, and that will be an interesting challenge." The university has emphasized that its course Web sites are not distance-education offerings, but simply an educational resource. Only students enrolled in MIT courses will be able to use the interactive features of the Web sites. Mr. Han says that his team is also trying to develop ways to deal with professors' concerns about intellectual-property issues. Some professors worry that placing materials on public Web sites might hurt their chances of publishing or selling their work in other forms, such as in textbooks or software. "We want to have a base set of policies that we're going to abide by going forward," says Mr. Han. Professors will not be required to create course Web pages, but project leaders are hoping for strong participation. So far there has been more interest than the project can handle. When officials asked departments to volunteer for the pilot phase, 15 stepped forward, says Mr. Lerman. Only about half of those departments were chosen. Mr. Lerman says that he's also seen plenty of enthusiasm for the project from universities in other countries. Although MIT plans to make its course materials available only in English, outside groups have already expressed interest in translating some of the materials into Portuguese, Spanish, and Mandarin. "And we expect that many other places will be interested in translating OpenCourseWare materials," he says. For now, however, Mr. Lerman says his highest priority for the project is hiring an executive director, whom he hopes to have in place by January. Many of the decisions about the details of the project and hiring of additional staff members are being left for the executive director to make, he adds. MIT plans to have Web pages for 100 courses available by next fall, and for 500 courses by September 2003. Background articles from The Chronicle: Grants Help MIT Put Course Materials Online (06/29/2001) MIT Will Place Course Materials Online ( 04/20/2001) MIT Weighs the Pros and Cons of Creating a Web Page for Almost All Courses ( 03/23/2001) Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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