Hi all, I'm definitely just as excitable over this topic as everyone else. There's so much to get excited about! The first thing that came to my mind about the cost is that they probably tallied up every microscopically detailed expense; that's what US schools do, afterall. Also, some of the expenses may actually overlap with other work MIT does. I was unsure, though, if that 10-15k was a per year expense, or per course. The wording in the article was vague, and journalists are notorious for using statistics at odd angles for their shock value.
Jesse http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Jesse_Groppi skype: jesse.groppi On 15/11/2009 08:20, Samuel Rose wrote: > Hi Steve, greetings Wiki Educator > > My name is Sam Rose > > I am Director of Forward Foundation, partner in Future Forward > Institute, creator of open source http://socialmediaclassroom.com, > http://localfoodsystems.org and a member of http://p2pfoundation.net > > a quick response follows: > > On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 6:34 AM, Steve Foerster<[email protected]> wrote: > >> Interesting article in the Guardian about OERs: >> >> http://tinyurl.com/yhf44oj >> >> What got me was the part near the end where it's talking about MIT's >> OpenCourseWare project and says, "But it costs the university between >> $10,000 and $15,000 to put the material from each course online because >> the materials have to be properly licensed and formatted." >> >> I'm sorry, what? I'm racking my brain trying to figure out how they >> could possibly spend fifteen grand just getting course materials from a >> professor's PC to their web server. I mean, yes, they package things as >> zip files and everything, but fifteen grand?! The only thing I can >> think of is that they have to buy these materials from their own faculty >> members, is that the case? >> >> (By contrast, imagine what WE could do with thirty million dollars!) >> > > > Having worked with many Universities, I can tell you that they are > generally role-based economies, which means that there is a specialist > for everything. And specialization tends to have been in existence for > decades or centuries in these institutions. So, this means that MIT > likely pays not just the professor, but also multiple IT people, PR > people (including copy editors, program directors, etc), and records > managers, and archivists to produce this material. So, the number that > they publish means that this is their accounting of the parts of the > salary for all of the people in their huge bureaucracy that the work > is passed around to. > > I would be willing to bet that the amount represented as being spent > is quite accurate, and typical of how a major University would handle > this. I agree that the amount of resources expended revlieals an > incredible amount of wastefulness. I agree this demonstrates that > network-based production ecologies can out-compete traditional > industrial ecologies on cost and resource usage. I believe it could > currently be argued that network based production ecologies can also > out-compete in terms of quality, too. > > Right now people "trust" the "brand" of MIT, but what if there were > one or more ways to "certify" network-based contributions" I think > that certification/maintaining of open education packages by smaller > service organizations will increase perceived trust. This > certification and maintaining could potentially be done by up to > thousands of collaborating participant groups, educators, etc. > > > >> -=Steve=- >> >> >> -- >> Stephen H. Foerster >> http://hiresteve.com >> http://hiresteve.com/blog >> http://wikieducator.org/steve >> >> >>> >> > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
