OpenCourseWare is a movement where universities offer educational materials for free online. It is used for self-improvement and offers advantages over traditional education. Online study groups can help replace the social element of the classroom. Some believe credit should be offered, but others fear it could devalue education and stop the momentum of free online education.
OpenCourseWare is the term used to describe a movement where universities offer many of their educational materials for free online. This is generally done to support the basic philosophy that information should be freely available. Universities that provide OpenCourseWare often provide a variety of different materials, including lecture videos from famous professors for an entire course. There is typically no way to obtain a degree using this educational approach, and it is mostly used for self-improvement purposes.
Some people form online study groups built around the idea of OpenCourseWare. Participants can rate each other’s material and meet online to discuss the subjects they are studying. This can help replace one of the major missing ingredients of the OpenCourseWare experience, which is the social element of the classroom.
Using OpenCourseWare has some advantages over traditional educational methods. For one thing, people can generally learn things in any order and at any pace they like. They are usually not stressed by the learning process because they will not be evaluated on their performance. This often means they can take a more relaxed approach to their studies and learn for the sheer love of learning, without any of the politics or pressure that can be associated with many learning experiences.
OpenCourseWare is available in a wide variety of topics, including everything from culinary education to high-level science. Some subjects are easier to study online than others. More intellectual things can sometimes be easier to learn in an online environment than things that require a lot of hands-on training. Because of this, it might be easier to study something like philosophy than computer repair.
Some people think there should be a movement towards offering some type of credit to students studying OpenCourseWare. There are already people who can claim an educational background in some area on a resume based on their online studies, but can’t actually produce proof of a degree. People who favor the idea of offering degrees say it would make education more open to the poor, and they also believe this type of online study is legitimate enough to deserve credit for the things they’re learning.
Others fear that offering any kind of credit could make an education so easy to obtain that it would mean nothing. There is also concern that any move toward credit offerings would cause universities to remove online materials to protect themselves financially. They fear this could potentially stop the momentum for free online education in its tracks.
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