Open Course Essay

Open courses are a great idea for several reasons. First of all, this is a great way for students to experience new material without the constraints of grades. Secondly, this allows one to look into whet6her they are actually interested in pursuing learning in a given area.


In the new technological age, I feel that open courses are a great idea for the student who is seeking knowledge simply to expand their knowledge base. My choice to review open courses was http://oyc.yale.edu/. At this site I was able to review information for a possible future study into classical literature. The course I looked at was Introduction to Ancient Greek History, which was taught by Prof. Donald Kagtan in the fall of 2007. The specific site for the course was http://oyc.yale.edu/classics/introduction-to-ancient-greek-history/content/syllabus.html

This open course seemed to be the perfect place to gather more knowledge to either learn for one’s own sake or to see if one was interested enough in the subject so as to take more courses in the given area.

Yes, the course seemed well planned for both in the classroom lecture and as an open course online. The entire semester was set up in link forms in chronological order which would allow the student to view the entire semester at their own pace, which is one of the most important tenets of distance education, to me.

As far as adhering to the things needed for online education this site holds true to many of the options that are listed in Design for Distance Education such as use a large font, Use few words per line, and use white space to enhance readability (Teaching and Learning at a Distance p134). I found that this made it similar to older distance education formats, but for me these are better.

This site lacked many of the “bells and whistles” that are found on more recently created sites, but sometimes all this can detract from the purpose of the site. The basics are clearly covered here and this makes this a bona fide educational experience, which could certainly parallel those that students get on campus at Yale.

This open course does not meet all of the requirements for online education that are listed in the textbook, but I feel that this site is a good one, even without all of those.

As for whether this site designer used course activities to maximize active learning for the students, I think that the answer is clearly no. This is basically a campus-style lecture course, which has been put online in its barest form. Certainly, it does have the basic requirements for that type of course-ie- lectures, syllabus, grading, etc. But it does not maximize student learning not in the same way that new courses do that not only have lecture videos but also require students to regularly attend a discussion board or maintain a blog or that use any of the other parts of new media to supplement the student learning experience.

Overall, this site uses an antiquated teaching method, which may still appeal to older students but on the other hand it is one that I think that younger students might find boring and hard to hold their attention. It certainly has its merits, but those are few and far between. There is much that I would do differently if I had been given the chance to design this learning experience as an ID. I think that a new generation of learners deserves a new generation of educator, who is willing to find new ways to pass on knowledge to all learners and not just to those of a certain type.

Open courses are a great way to help students expand their knowledge of material in different areas, but I still think that we as ID’s should be certain that these experiences provide a good learning experience for students of different learning styles.