MIT to put bomb / drug making info on net

[Blank Frank]

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/04/technology/04MIT.html?ex=987386578&ei=1&en=077d52b01c55685c



Auditing Classes at M.I.T., on the Web and Free


By CAREY GOLDBERG

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 3 — Other universities may be striving to
market their courses to the Internet masses in hopes of dot-com
wealth. But the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has chosen
the opposite path: to post virtually all its course materials on
the Web, free to everybody.

 M.I.T. plans on Wednesday to announce a 10-year initiative,
apparently the biggest of its kind, that intends to create public
Web sites for almost all of its 2,000 courses and to post materials
like lecture notes, problem sets, syllabuses, exams, simulations,
even video lectures. Professors' participation will be voluntary,
but the university is committing itself to post sites for all its
courses, at a cost of up to $100 million.

 Visitors will not earn college credits.

 The giveaway idea,
President Charles M. Vest of M.I.T. said, came in a "traditional
Eureka moment" as the institute — like nearly every other
university — brainstormed and soul-searched about how best to take
advantage of the Internet.

 Called OpenCourseWare, the initiative found broad resonance among
the faculty members, said Steven Lerman, the faculty chairman.

 "Selling content for profit, or trying in some ways to
commercialize one of the core intellectual activities of the
university," Professor Lerman said, "seemed less attractive to
people at a deep level than finding ways to disseminate it as
broadly as possible."

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