The Impact of Open Source

          For this week’s discussion, I evaluated the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Open Course.  I chose to explore the course Survival Skills for Researchers: The Responsible Conduct of Research.

URL: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/media-arts-and-sciences/mas-714j-technologies-for-creative-learning-fall-2009/index.htm

This course is intended to provide graduate students and postdoctoral students with methods, which improve both validity and responsible conduct in scientific practice.  The instructors present practical steps for budding skills in scientific research and are intermix with discussion of cases.  The course explores study design, training of proposals and manuscripts, peer review, authorship, use of humans and non-human animals in research, accusation of misconduct, and intellectual property (Redneck & Brennan 2009).

This course is carefully preplanned and designed for the distance-learning environment because it uses a very straightforward approach of instruction.  Each course consists of the following sections:

Course Home

Syllabus

Calendar

Lecture Notes

Assignments

Readings

A well-designed course enhances the learning experiences and provides different learning tools to address different learning styles (Simonson, et al, 2009).  What I like about this course is that the course is in multiple languages, it contained supplemental readings and .pdf files of the lecture notes.  In addition, the course designer implement course activities that maximize active learning by allowing downloads of the learning materials and viewing video presentations.

References:

Redneck, Mitchel, and Karen Brennan. MAS.714J Technologies for Creative Learning, Fall 2009. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare), http://ocw.mit.edu (Accessed 09 Oct, 2011). License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA

Simonson, M., Smaldino S., Albright, M.,  Zvacek, S. Teaching and Learning at a Distance. Foundations of Distance Education.  (2009)4^th Ed. Boston, MA. Pearson Education.