Lectures, class notes and videos - all without leaving home

Instead of spending $40,000 a year, you can now take a course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for free from the comforts of your own home.

MIT has now made 90 percent of its courses available online, as part of the school's OpenCourseWare program, which began in 2000.

Across the globe, 150 universities have also taken on similar initiatives, but Penn, however, has no plans to put its course material online.

OpenCourseWare uploads lecture notes, course documents, audio recordings and visual images online.

MIT, like other schools, will not offer credits to online course-takers, but Steven Carson, external relations director for MIT OpenCourseWare, said the program is a useful tool for universities to distribute important information to Internet users worldwide.

While MIT's program will eventually include all of the college's course content, other universities have focused on their specialties.

For instance, the University of Notre Dame, known for its ethics and religious research programs, is making courses in these fields available to the public.

OpenCourseWare is also a resource for MIT students. Around 90 percent of students access the site to supplement their courses, Carson said.

But at Penn, the focus is on making materials such as public lectures - rather than course material - available on the Internet, said Ira Winston, executive director of Computing and Educational Technology Services.

Winston added that maintaining a program such as OpenCourseWare would be a costly endeavor. At MIT, around $4 million is spent annually to upkeep the system.

"I think there are better ways to use the money," Winston said.

Penn students also expressed some concerns about public access to the University's lectures.

"Giving it to the general public wouldn't be fair because we're paying for all this," said College sophomore Paul Garr.

OpenCourseWare would also present problems for many faculty members who are concerned about protecting their intellectual property rights, said Gates Rhodes, Penn Video Network director.

He added that because students would be captured in videos during class discussions, student privacy rights would also be a concern if videos were made public.

Penn faculty will probably continue to use resources, such as Blackboard, to distribute materials in a more private setting, Rhodes said.

"It's not going to go beyond the classroom," he said.

In terms of material available to the public, Penn has focused on iTunes U, which provides podcast access to audio and video content from the Penn community, including public lectures and student-group meetings.

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