David Kanter | Sharing the riches of a Penn education

Reaching the end of an economics scenario, professor Rebecca Stein said, "Let's go ahead and draw our production possibilities frontier." She drew the graph, helping me understand a concept that had been a bit confusing when I had first tried to understand it from my textbook.

I then pressed 'pause' and took a break.

Normally the desks in Stiteler don't come equipped with a pause button. But this lecture was different - I had been enjoying it in QuickTime from my bedroom.

Each of my lectures is recorded online, nicely synchronized with the slides from class. With a couple mouse clicks, I can also access my weekly homework at Aplia.com and pull up a database of every microeconomics midterm and final from the past 13 years.

Thanks to the power of modern technology, I can essentially take a Penn Economics course with little more than a computer and an Internet connection.

Not that the Internet can replace the in-class experience. Questions are tough to ask in cyberspace, and I couldn't imagine doing a chemistry lab without the instruction, supervision and facilities that only a university can provide.

But the Internet has fundamentally changed the educational landscape, giving world-class institutions a golden opportunity to disseminate knowledge and instruction once reserved for a select few. And if Penn truly wishes to remain faithful to its purported goal to globally "exchange knowledge that improves quality of life for all," the University has not only a responsibility, but also a moral obligation to share course content with the rest of the world.

Some institutions have already made good on this obligation. Like with most things pertaining to advancements in technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is leading the way with its OpenCourseWare program.

Back in 1999, then MIT President Charles Vest asked his school's faculty to respond to two questions: How is the Internet going to change education? And what's MIT going to do about it?

MIT OpenCourseWare spokesman Stephen Carson told me that the faculty eventually decided upon a pretty simple answer. They decided to "take what we're doing on campus and put it on the Internet."

Following this simple plan, MIT now has over 1,800 courses - 90 percent of the courses it offers - on its OpenCourseWare Web site. When you select a course, you usually get access to its syllabus, reading list, assignment schedule and old exams. Many course sites offer additional material, including audio and video recordings of lectures.

Carson also told me that 45 percent of the site's users were professors or students at other universities, looking to supplement their own courses. Yet over half of the site's traffic is composed of unaffiliated independent learners from all over the globe. Carson noted that this meant that "there is obviously a pent-up demand for access to educational materials," even if the learners can't receive accreditation for their work.

Following MIT's lead, 180 other institutions have joined MIT in the OpenCourseWare Consortium. Ninety of these schools have made actual course content available to the public. Unfortunately, Penn isn't one of them.

That doesn't mean that some individuals here at Penn aren't trying to use the Internet to increase global educational access. John Mark Ockerbloom, Penn's digital library architect and planner, runs a site called The Online Books Page, which serves as a useful directory for books available online. Ockerbloom told me that he often gets thanks from people in "developing areas who wouldn't otherwise have access to the books."

Yet the University can - and should - do far more to spread the gospel of education around the world. A meager sampling of sound bytes at Penn's iTunes U site simply doesn't cut it. Penn needs to put actual course content on the Web to further its commitment to "engage globally" because, in the end, education is a human right - not merely a privilege for a couple thousand college students who were lucky enough to study at a world-class university.

The powers that be at Penn can continue to pump out fancy slogans calling for our University to fulfill its "Compact" of increased access, integrated knowledge and local and global engagement.

But until the University actually takes substantive steps - like starting an OpenCourseWare program - to fulfill its mission, such a "Compact" remains little more than empty rhetoric.

David Kanter is a College freshman from East Falmouth, Mass. His e-mail is kanter@dailypennsylvanian.com. David Versus Goliath appears on Wednesdays.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.