MIT Open Courseware

The most well known among open course providers is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), whose open course ware can be said to have brought about a revolution in this field. The content provided by MIT can be expected to be of the highest merit considering the reputation to uphold. OCW shares free lecture notes, exams, and other resources from more than 1800 courses spanning MIT's entire curriculum. Courses targeted at undergraduates and postgraduates are available here, and of late they have started courses even for High school students. The nature of the information provided includes assignment and exams with solutions, lecture notes (PDF format), presentation slides etc. Further you can download the entire course in the ZIP format. Apart from this there are classroom lecture videos available for viewing online. These recordings are available in Real Media format for both slow (56Kbps) and fast (220Kbps) connections. Further these files are also available for download from iTunes®. They can also be downloaded in the audio format if needed, a boon for students living in countries with slow internet speeds . A word of caution, the above text doesn’t mean that all types of contents are available for download. The amount of information available depends on the comfort levels of individual faculty members at MIT. The availability of information on the MIT open courseware or for that matter on any courseware doesn’t mean that you can dump your books. These open courseware’s are only for supplementing the educational needs of the learner, for example discovering a new technique to solve a given problem. Students and learners will still need a comprehensive source of information.
To summarize, MIT's open courseware initiative was a revolutionary way of disseminating information to learners and educators worlwide. The students can gain much from the expertise of the worlds best teachers.

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