Yale University will offer free digital videos of some courses on the Internet, as well as transcripts in several languages, to make their school more accessible to the public, according to CNN.com.
The 18-month pilot phase of the Open Educational Resources Video Lecture Project is funded by a $755,000 grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, according to a Yale press release. The Hewlett Foundation is a social and environmental organization that specializes in providing grants for open educational resources through the Internet. Yale will offer seven free courses online during the 2007 academic year.
While Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also offer free online courses, Yale is the first university to offer free video lectures.
Jim Lee, the associate director for technical support and training for the Center for Teaching Excellence and a School of International Service professor, said he is now recommending that AU apply for such a grant. CTE teaches AU faculty how to use podcasts, multimedia conferences and video streaming in and outside of the classroom.
Lee said the video lectures and syllabi offered through the Yale grant are self-taught courses.
"There is an explicit statement that no interaction with the instructor will take place," he said. "I've done this and more for almost a decade with an online syllabi and video, and there's been no great rush to take my course without me instructing."
Vi Ettle, associate provost for administration, said although AU does not offer free video lectures school-wide, AU does offer them in numerous classes.
"You can also access our lectures, which are put on podcasts, and all kinds of video streaming on a case by case basis," Ettle said. "However, not all faculty are doing it."
The Washington College of Law has thousands of lectures available on podcasts, Ettle said.
"We're just not advertising it," she said.
AU offers online courses taught by faculty through their Distance Education Program, Ettle said. However, they are not free of cost and, as of now, are only offered during the summer.
Ettle said there is some discussion now about allowing certain courses to be offered in the fall and the spring.
At least two distance learning courses are being offered this fall - one in SPA and one in SOC, Ettle said.
"Those are very rare kinds of things," Ettle said. "They are not normally offered."
Dayna Wells, a sophomore in SIS and the College of Arts and Sciences, said she took two online SIS classes this summer so she could take extra classes while being at home in Houston.
"I liked the fact that I could do it on my own time schedule, and I liked the fact there was time so you could devote attention to it over the summer," Wells said.
However, Wells said she disliked that she couldn't hear the professor's opinion as much as she would in an actual classroom setting.
Ettle said the reason there are not more online classes offered is because there are not enough faculty comfortable enough with technology to teach the courses online.
"Teaching online is different from face-to-face," Ettle said. "It is a different form of delivery and a different kind of skill"
