Open Course MIT

Open courses offered online by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) appear to be carefully pre-planned and designed for a distance learning environment. Courses follow recommendations for online instruction with course activities that maximize active learning for the students.
This Website provides a list of disciplines from which the students may select a course of interest. I selected course 16.346, Astrodynamics. The web page provided a course description, course feature, and technical requirements for the course. A visual representation of the movement of stars was provided on the first page. This kept my interest focused on this page.
A section on the left side of the page provided tabs for selecting course information such as course syllabus, lecture notes assignments, and video lecture presentations. A list of lecture notes provided information on 33 separate modules by “figure, problem, and page numbers in the lecture notes, all referring to sections of the course textbook with relevant content.” Lecture notes were in PDF format and could be easily downloaded for printing or saving in separate storage device. No external resources or links were included with the course information and documents. All course content appeared to be contained within the MIT open course website. The list of course lectures appeared well defined and notes on PDF documents are succinct. However, module learning objectives are unclear or not defined. This may be a problem with distance learners.
The components of the CMS for this open course includes reading assignments, and content presentations using videotaped lectures. However, I did not see information relating to course communications between student and learner. The only communication feature seemed to be a tab for providing feedback on the course. No digital dropbox for submitting required work was provided. Teacher-learner interaction mediums were not provided. Tabs for active discussion of course content or question and answer sessions were also not provided.


Reference:
Battin, Richard. 16.346 Astrodynamics, Fall 2008. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare), http://ocw.mit.edu(Accessed 06 Dec, 2010). License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA