Quest 0.3 - A Comparison of MIT OCW and CMU OLI

"Carefully review five (5) random courses from MIT OCW (http://ocw.mit.edu/) and five (5) random courses from CMU OLI (http://www.cmu.edu/oli/). Write a post on the different ideals of quality expressed in the differing course designs; describe how you feel the different designs reflect on the different universities."

Click here to see a list of the courses I reviewed and a comparison of some of their respective features.

First, let's start with MIT OCW. Specifically, let's start with their website. I came to the website, and, looking around for a second, quickly found where the free stuff was. I clicked on the "Courses" tab and was presented with a daunting list of Department links. Let's see ... "Electrical Engineering and Computer Science." Click. Then, an even more daunting list of the courses themselves. With over 1800 courses on one page it seemed a bit cumbersome. OK, I'm just complaining. But there really is something psychologically intimidating about being confronted by 1800 hypertext links all at once.

Now, let's compare that initial encounter with MIT OCW to my first time on the CMU OLI website. I quickly found the tab at the top of the screen again--"open & free courses." Good. A page loads up. And, hey! There are even pictures! Wow, the content on this page is so much easier for me to sift through and navigate! ... Are these 11 links course categories? No. Apparently there are only 11 courses.

Alright. So in all fairness, finding a user-friendly way to display 11 course links on a single web page is slightly more manageable than displaying 1800. Still, my initial reactions to the two sites were completely different: CMU OLI - warm, friendly, aesthetically pleasing; MIT OCW - slightly spartan and intimidating.

The process of actually getting into the content of the courses was roughly the same. At the MIT site, I found a course that interested me and clicked the link--"Artificial Intelligence." When the front page for the course loaded I didn't immediately see where to go or what to do. I was a little lost. "How do I get this thing going? How do I watch the video?" (I had just assumed that there would be videotaped lectures for each of the courses.) After looking for a while, I saw the "download these course materials" link on the right hand side and figured that was as good a move as any. "Maybe you don't view these courses online."

I downloaded and extracted the zipped course materials and saw some cryptically named files, as well as "Readme.txt" (do people really ever read the README files?) and "Welcome.html" (which initially sounded just about as useless as "Readme.txt"). I eventually opened up the Welcome file in my web browser, not seeing any other promising alternatives. Do you know what came up on my screen? A local copy of exactly the same page I had just been looking at on the web.

It suddenly became very clear to me that MIT was not going to be holding my hand through this process.

After thinking it through for a bit, I also realized there was to be no lecture videos for this course. I basically just got a reading list, a syllabus, and a bunch of PDF and source code files to be used for assignments and assessments. Again, not exactly the most user-friendly scenario, but the utility is there. If I were a self-motivated learner, I could probably make good use of the materials I downloaded.

Hmmm...

CMU's OLI website was much more aesthetically pleasing. It turns out it was much easier for accessing course content as well. I clicked on the picture link for the Statistics course, clicked on a link to "look inside" and I was taken to a syllabus of the course. I clicked on one of the pages and was taken, not to a list of downloadable resources, but to an actual online course.

That was easy.

But I think what I just experienced gets at the primary difference between MIT OCW and CMU OLI, and can be summarized in the following question: Do I want free individual OERs, or do I want free pre-packaged courses?

It would appear that the ideal of quality which MIT values is to be able to grab bits of pieces of OER content from all of their courses, allowing the users to download them, putting them together and using them in any way they please. According to the OCW site, "MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content" (http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/about/about/index.htm). MIT offers these OERs in downloadable packages that give a snapshot of what the respective course might be like at MIT.

CMU, on the other hand, has favored a more integrated approach to OERs. They have provided their open content in the form of actual online courses that allow students to save their progress and obtain automated feedback at various points throughout the course. According to the OLI website, "Using intelligent tutoring systems, virtual laboratories, simulations, and frequent opportunities for assessment and feedback, OLI builds courses that are intended to enact instruction – or, more precisely, to enact the kind of dynamic, flexible, and responsive instruction that fosters learning" (http://www.cmu.edu/oli/index.shtml). Or again, "The Open Learning Initiative (OLI) is creating a new generation of online courses that teach more effectively, appeal to students more powerfully than anything in existence today" (https://oli.web.cmu.edu/).

So MIT's ideal of quality is providing as many individual resources as possible. CMU's ideal of quality is to provide complete course solutions. In my opinion, and for the reasons I have discussed above, MIT's website and their approach to OER content does not reflect as highly on the institution as does CMU's. It seems like CMU put more work into their offerings and care more about whether I learn anything. MIT seemed more concerned with telling me that I was not about to get an MIT education (http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/about/about/index.htm). However, I think each site has its advantages and disadvantages:

Quantity of content
Because MIT seems to be primarily concerned with just getting the course content for their entire course catalog out on the web, they are obviously able to make a greater number of courses open (about 1800). Because of CMU's commitment to publishing full online courses, their open course offerings are significantly limited (11 courses from what I can see.)

Reuse, Redistribute, Revise, Remix
While both MIT and CMU open content lend themselves moderately well to reuse and redistribution, they both somewhat restrict one's ability to revise and remix the content. For example, MIT's content offerings are sometimes in the form of scanned PDF images of handwritten notes. This does not lend itself well to revision, unless one is willing to take the time to transcribe the notes to a digital format. This type of scanned handwritten document has other usability issues as well, in that screen readers for the visually impaired are not able to make use of them.

CMU content, on the other hand, is obviously published with a high standard of quality, but its complete-package nature makes it more difficult to remix and reuse the individual elements that make up the courses.

Overall
I think that the two sites have their individual strengths, and depending on one's needs, MIT's OER offerings may be better suited than CMU's, or vice-versa. MIT's website reminded me of a huge pile of OERs, free for the taking. CMU's website gave me the impression of being enrolled in an online university. I think that MIT's offerings provide a greater number of options for teachers looking to add supplementary content to their own courses and for students looking to supplement their study materials. However, I think that CMU's offerings feel more like someone is holding my hand, and that they actually want me to learn something.

In the end, I believe that the usage of each site and their respective approaches to OER offerings are wholly dependent on the individual needs of the users of that content.