MIT Scholar

MIT Open Courseware is something that many of us are familiar with. MIT puts up syllabus, course notes, sometimes lectures and asssignments from all of their courses. They are not distance learning courses, they are meant to be a repository of resources for faculty, contributing to the community of scholars. They have over 2000 courses up there.

9% of their visitors are faculty, 40-some percent are students.  The big surprise is that another 40-some percent are independent learners - folks just learning for their own edification.

With those folks in mind, they have crafted some new courses called MIT Scholar. These courses are more courses, rather than just a materials repository. They pull together work from several classes on the same topic. They structure the materials in more of a course structure, with units or modules, etc. They are supporting community through OpenStudy ( website that facilitates online study groups).

Independent learners and students alike are enjoying this new format. However, creating the courses take significantly more effort on MIT's part to create.  Creating one of these courses is the equivalent of 7 regular classes. They only have limited resources, so as they create scholar classes, the regular classes are less current. So, they are trying to determine how to move forward. They are also wondering how these scholar courses work with MITx, the MOOC effort.

MIT Scholar - 12 courses