Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Open Courseware

Evidence toward a trend. Over the last three years I have developed the though that curriculum should be developed once and used by everyone. At this time, on the planet earth, there must be a huge duplication of course material and curriculum. I wonder how many 1st year spanish courses have been developed, and how many more will be developed. Or what about 1st year calculus. The duplication of course material and effort in creating and delivering this material must be staggering. What a waste of Masters and PhD educated peoples time. Why not just develop the course material once and have it shared around the globe? It would all become a part of the creative commons. It could all be a part of a SCORM type standard which uses a UDDI type directory service for the discovery of the course material required by either student or teacher. We can see the beginnings of this with the opencourseware site of MIT. This isn’t a matter of if a global repository of courseware will be available, but when it will be available…