Friday, February 20, 2004

MIT OpenCourseWare Update These excerpts from the latest OCW update by Jon Paul Potts report that MIT's OCW is moving toward 700 courses; he also provides statistics on user profiles. JH ____ ---------------------------------------------------------------- The MIT OpenCourseWare Update: February 2004 A Monthly E-mail Newsletter for Users and Friends of MIT OpenCourseWare ---------------------------------------------------------------- The February 2004 MIT OpenCourseWare Update Contains: 1. 200 New Courses To Be Published 2. Early MIT OCW Evaluation Data 3. Digging Deeper: Course 16.901 1. 200 New Courses To Be Published ---------------------------------------------------------------- The MIT OpenCourseWare team is moving forward into the March 2004 publication cycle with 200 new MIT courses scheduled for publication by March 31. These 200 courses will bring to 700 the total MIT courses for which we offer free and open access. In Fall 2004, we will publish 200 more courses from across the breadth of MIT's five schools and 33 academic departments. For a complete list of all MIT OCW offerings, visit the complete course list. Look for notice of new courses in subsequent issues of "The MIT OpenCourseWare Update" email newsletter. 2. Early MIT OCW Evaluation Data --------------------------------------------------------------- Who are MIT OCW's users? Where do they come from? How do they find out this project? All of these questions are vital to understanding how well MIT OCW is fulfilling its mission, and are very useful in helping us establish a thorough and continuous feedback process that guarantees the project's improvement over time. Our evaluation program focuses on understanding specifics in three areas of user behavior: Access: Who is using MIT OCW? Use: How are they using it and does it meet their needs? Impact: What outcomes result from this use? We use many tools to evaluate our success, including Web analytics that measure traffic to the site; data such as the number of subscribers to this email newsletter (19,600 to date); and an online intercept survey which many of you may have answered between the dates of November 6 to 19, when the survey tool invited (via pop-up window) a random sample of MIT OCW visitors to complete an online survey. These various data sources provide a rich statistical picture of site usage. Among our early findings: MIT OCW traffic volume is high, and there is a core of repeat visitors. The site recorded 728,000 visits between October 1, 2003 and November 31, 2003 - an average of almost 12,000 visits per day for that period. MIT OCW has attracted international attention, with over half the site traffic coming from outside North America. 45% of visitors to MIT OCW come from North America (USA/Canada). Western Europe is second most common point of origin (19%) and East Asia is third with 18%. The Middle East and North Africa (1.6%) and Sub-Saharan Africa (0.4%) represent measurable portions of MIT OCW's traffic Educators, students and self-learners access the site extensively. Numerically, self-learners predominate, representing almost 52% of visitors. Students represent approximately 31% of visitors, and educators represent over 13% of total visitors to the MIT OCW site. User awareness of MIT OCW comes via a range of channels. Almost 63% of visitors became aware of MIT OCW via online or offline media articles. Site activity is heavily impacted by media coverage - a peak of usage following our October 2003 global publicity efforts was in excess of 60,000 visits in one day. Over 25% of users report that they became aware of MIT OCW through a colleague, peer, or teacher. MIT OCW use is centered on subjects for which MIT is a recognized field leader. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science course sites attract 34% of traffic for users who accessed specific course materials on MIT OCW, while only accounting for 10% of the total courses published. Mathematics, Management, Economics and Physics sites account for an additional 26% while representing 21% of courses published. These early findings will help us evolve our publication and processes going forward. We will be publishing more findings and in-depth data in the Evaluation section of the MIT OCW Web site in Spring 2004. 3. Digging Deeper: Course 16.901 --------------------------------------------------------------- Each month, this newsletter offers subscribers an in-depth guide to one particular subject. This month, we delve into "Course 16.901: Computational Methods in Aerospace Engineering," a course from MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. In his course, MIT Professor David Darmofal offers an introduction to computational techniques arising in aerospace engineering. Applications are drawn from aerospace structures, aerodynamics, dynamics and control, and aerospace systems. Techniques explored through the Lecture Notes include: numerical integration of systems of ordinary differential equations; finite-difference, finite-volume, and finite-element discretization of partial differential equations; numerical linear algebra; eigenvalue problems; and optimization with constraints. In addition to the complete set of 36 Lecture Notes in PDF format and Assignments, this site includes a variety of Study Materials, including coded examples and projects from Spring 2002. MATLAB¨ software is required to run the .m and .mat files found on this course site. ---------------------------------------------------------------- MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) makes the educational materials used in the teaching of virtually all MIT undergraduate and graduate subjects available on the Web, free of charge, to any user, anywhere in the world. This groundbreaking initiative promotes the open dissemination of knowledge, fostering MIT's mission to advance education and serve the world. "The MIT OpenCourseWare Update" welcomes your feedback and suggestions about this newsletter and the MIT OCW Web site. Please send your feedback to Jon Paul Potts, MIT OCW Communications Manager, at jpotts@mit.edu. To subscribe a friend to this newsletter, forward the following link to them: http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/ocw-mail If you choose to not receive this newsletter, unsubscribe at: http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/ocw-mail _______________________________________________ ocw-mail mailing list ocw-mail@mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/ocw-mail 11:36:01 AM    COMMENT []

CETIS Report about ADL Project I'm passing along this OLDaily citation from CETIS about new developments underway at ADL. "In ADL technical director Phil Dodds' words, the forthcoming reference model is motivated by an identified need for contextualised learning object discovery. The ideal is that learners would be able to discover and identify relevant material from within the context of a particular learning activity. There's to be no need to leave a familiar environment, and the results should be 'more precise for our environment' than what can be done using web search engines or other discovery technologies." Of course the most prevalent device for contextualised learning discovery in higher education is the course and it may be that courses may prove to be the fundatmental units for contextualizing and locating learning objects. JH ______   ADL to make a 'repository SCORM'. As reported in OLDaily in January, ADL is planning a 'repository SCORM' known as the "lovely named" CORDRA. This article describes the proposal, outlined at the ADL plugfest in Zurich, Switzerland. "The ideal is that learners would be able to discover and identify relevant material from within the context of a particular learning activity." Good coverage, many links. By Wilbert Kraan, CETIS, February 19, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily] 10:55:33 AM    COMMENT []