Friday, December 30, 2011

MIT Online Learning Courses: What Does it Mean? - Rhett Allain, Wired

What is MITx? Here are all the details from MIT. Let me just point out some key aspects.
Free. Free as in “Grab a brew. Don’t cost nothin.”
  • This is not just course materials (like the Open Courseware Project). It also includes online learning tools.
  • I guess if you think of Open Courseware as a textbook, MITx would be the whole class.
  • Oh, and open source learning tools.
There will be some type of MIT-based certificate based on student mastery. It isn’t quite clear yet, but the announcements does say “mastery” and it does not say “grades”. This could be a great opportunity to move away from grades.