Tuesday, December 20, 2011

M.I.T. expands Its Free Online Courses

Though students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pay thousands of dollars for classes, the university will declare a new program on Monday agree to anyone anywhere to get M.I.T. courses online free of charge and for the first time receive official certificates for representing mastery of the subjects educated.

“There are several people who would love to enhance their education by having admission to M.I.T. pleased, people who are very skilled to get a certificate from M.I.T.,” said L. Rafael Reif, the provost, in a seminar hall with reporters Friday. 

M.I.T. guides the way to a period of online scholarship 10 years ago by posting course materials from approximately all its courses. Its free OpenCourseWare now consist of nearly 2,100 courses and has been used by more than 100 million people. 

But the new “M.I.T.x” interactive online education platform will go advance, giving students admission to online laboratories, self-assessments and student-to-student deliberations. 

“The technologies accessible are much more superior than when we started OpenCourseWare,” Mr. Agarwal said. “We can offer educational tools to self-assess self-pace or make an online learning community.”
The M.I.T.x classes will have forums and online discussions where students can raise questions and, frequently, have they replied by others in the class. 

While access to the software will be free of charge, there will most likely be a “reasonable” charge, not yet strong-minded, for a documentation. 

M.I.T. said its new education platform should ultimately crowd a virtual community of learners around the world and develop the education of M.I.T.’s on-campus students, with online tools that improve their classroom and laboratory practices. 

The growth of the new platform will be attended by an M.I.T.-wide research program on online teaching and learning, together with grading by computer.

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