Open Yale #4: Ten Good Things to Say...

Since the previous postings have been rather critical of the Open Yale courses, here are ten good things to say about them (many of which I’ve stolen shamelessly from others).

1. The Open Yale materials may be valuable for students who are taking a similar course at other institutions and are seeking additional insight or another perspective on the subject...
2. ... or for faculty teaching a comparable course who seek other ideas or alternative approaches to the material...
3. ...or adult learners who are looking for non-credit enrichment or self-improvement learning experiences. (thanks to Lanny for these first three)
4. The Open Yale video lectures allow people all around the world to hear lectures from distinguished professors whom they otherwise would not hear.
5. The lectures have clear, nice-looking video and good-sounding audio; recording and digitizing work is well done (thanks to Al Powell)
6. These resources can be used by anyone who can find a way to learn from them. (adapted from comments #3 and 19 from Chronicle article)
7. These resources can be used by Open Educational Movement advocates to help create educational experiences for others.
8. The courses have transcripts which can be used to supplement the video lectures.
9. Courses have reading assignments and problem sets to accompany the video lectures.
10. The approach of the lectures aims to go “beyond the acquisition of facts and concepts to cultivate skills and habits of rigorous, independent thought: the ability to analyze, to ask the next question, and to begin the search for an answer.” (from the Open Yale web site)

(More thoughts on this in next post .)