We “can’t do that”…

There’s a great interview with MIT Prof. Walter Lewin that occurred during the little conference I ran earlier this month. What’s great is I can totally hear Lewin giving the answers he gave. One of the things I find interesting in the interview is his description of how it was through individual initiative that his Physics lectures were recorded. The powers that be just didn’t see the potential or the value. Sound familiar?

I actually had a chance to talk with him for a few minutes during the awards banquet. We talked about use of OCW materials and alternate accreditation/certification mechanisms. Essentially are there “acceptable” ways of receiving “credit” for topics such as introductory physics? The upshot, he did agree that if the “test” is “acceptable” then he could be convinced that these alternate schemes are ok. Which is, I think, what it really comes down to–can we develop non-traditional mechanisms for individuals to show competency without having to take a traditional term-long course? I think we can. (In fact MIT does it all the time, students are able to take a test to pass out of some of our general courses like Physics.)

But back to the title for the post, in the interview he says:

E-P: So when did your coursework officially become OCW as it’s known today?

WL: I think in 2001, OCW started. So I told them they can have my 1999 lectures. They said, ‘Walter, there’s no way we can do that. We can only show people’s notes and people’s slides, but we cannot show videos.’ This was because they simply did not have the software to put video on the OCW site yet.

Educator Insider News Blog. (2011, May 19). Dr. Walter Lewin of MIT Talks About Opening Courses Before OCW. Retreived May 24, 2011 from Education Insider News Blog: http://education-portal.com/articles/Dr_Walter_Lewin_of_MIT_Talks_About_Opening_Courses_Before_OCW.html

Why did I pull out that particular quote? Well because it was just another example of the powers that be not implementing what was readily available.

Let’s see 2001. Yes it was possible to put videos on web pages. Hrm I was doing it on my Master’s work back in, um, 1995. It’s not that there wouldn’t have been issues with the kind of traffic they experienced, but even in 2001 there were well known ways of addressing those issues. It’s just par for the course it seems.