NYU offers open courses

The school becomes the latest to get in on the rising tide of free online courses

In recent news, President Barack Obama referred to college as an “economic imperative" and urged Congress to pass a tuition tax credit.  But as education professionals and activists debate ways to make college more affordable and accessible to all students, some universities have decided to cut out the middleman altogether by offering “open courses”: televised lectures, syllabi, and reading lists that are available to anyone who has the desire to learn.  New York University became the latest institution to offer such courses, launching its “Open Education” pilot program Friday morning. 

The pilot will offer two undergraduate courses to start with—“American Literature until the Civil War,” taught by professor Cyrus Patell, and “New York City: a Social History,” taught by professor Daniel Walkowitz.  Among the advantages listed on the project’s NYU page is its use as supplemental educational material for students around the world who might be taking similar classes, as well as its ability to be re-used for future classes.  The site notes that “recordings of high‐quality introductory lectures given by NYU faculty could be assigned to new students for review prior to the first class meeting, regardless of location. This reuse of content could also help to free up 'seat' time, as high-consensus content could be provided online, leaving more time for increased student participation in face‐to‐face class discussion.”

"The faculty at NYU does not see this as being primarily for NYU students, but for anyone with a greater interest in education, NYU, or a particular subject," said Dr. Walkowitz in a phone interview.  "Nor does the faculty see this as an alternative to coming to class.  Rather, it will showcase NYU's class offerings and also provide an opportunity for current students to go back and review lectures."

NYU is also aware of the project’s potential for expanding NYU’s global exposure, citing a recent survey conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that found that "35 percent of MIT freshmen who knew about the OpenCourseWare initiative reported that availability of the materials significantly influenced their decision to attend the institution."

Experimenting

The pilot began building in the Fall 2009 semester, when the university began filming four courses in the College of Arts and Sciences and posting the lectures on Blackboard.  In the following spring semester, six more courses offered by the College of Arts and Sciences were filmed, as well as one course from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.  In the Fall 2010 semester, the Open Courseware has gone live while ten more courses are being recorded, this time from a combination of classes in the College of Arts and Sciences, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, and the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service.

During the project's development, the school experimented with different methods of recording classes, such as through video casts and podcasts.  The university's vision for the future of the project includes interactive features, such as tools for online discussion, annotation, pop-up definitions for obscure words, live links, and bookmarking, as well as translations into key languages.  Those involved with the project were not immediately available for comment, but according to the website: “Our objective is to become the first university to deploy 21st‐century technology to reinvent the 19th century tutorial model--on a global scale, to boot. NYU is one of a number of universities who are seeking to develop portal campuses around the world.”

The rise of open courseware

A number of other institutions and companies have already caught onto the surging tide of open courseware, including Pennsylvania’s university system, which is considering making all of its language classes online only.  Yale Law School also recently hopped on board by partnering with University of the People to share its resources and promote the “tuition-free” online university. 

Udemy.com, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup founded in 2009, jumped into the open courseware game early on and now offers a number of full-length, televised courses on its website across a wide range of different subjects from top tier institutions, like Stanford, MIT, and UC Berkeley.  In August, the company announced that it had raised $1 million in seed funding.

But while open courses such as these provide anyone interested in a subject with an opportunity to learn more, Dr. Walkowitz notes that it is not a stand-in for a university education.  "Education is not held in time--it isn't static.  The dynamic quality of education is completely absent from these courses," said Walkowitz.

This is due partly to the fact that education and ideas are continually changing, new books are being written, previously held facts are constantly being updated, and so on.  Additionally, class discussion is absent from these online courses, which only feature the professors' lectures and occasionally student questions, if the microphone can pick it up.

While the open courses are not an alternative to a traditional in-class education, they will certainly play a big role in finding new ways to provide affordable and accessible educational options.

Image source: Yale.edu