Friday, May 20, 2005

Japan OCW Alliance Six Japanese universities have formed the OpenCourseWare (OCW) Alliance to provide online access to their course instructional materials. "The OpenCourseWare project was firstly developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in order to provide a free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world. In Japan, in cooperation with MIT, the six universities listed below have established the JAPAN OCW ALLIANCE and are now offering the content of their academic courses to the general public." The Alliance web page is available in Japanese and English as are the OCW web pages at the six participating universities. At the level of individual courses, the home pages, syllabi, calendars, and some lecture notes for the courses are also in English, but graph labels and other detailed materials are often available only in Japanese.  In some courses the English language materials are skimpy while others are quite detailed. Making these course contents available is an impressive effort that provides additional resources for instructors (and students) world wide. American instructors will be especially interested to see how their subjects are covered at these major institutions outside the United States. ____JH 10:01:58 AM    COMMENT []