Report on MIT open source learning

David Diamond reports in Wired on initial feedback on MIT’s open source online curriculum: “One of the most popular offerings turned out to be Laboratory in Software Engineering, aka 6.170, a tough requirement for electrical engineering and computer science majors. Lam Vi Quoc, a fourth-year student at Vietnam’s Natural Sciences University, relied on 6.170 lectures to supplement a software lab he was taking, and Evan Hoff, a software developer in Nashville, followed the course to improve his coding skills. In Karachi, Pakistan, a group of 100 students and professionals met weekly to study 6.170. In Kansas City, five members of the Greater Kansas City Java Professionals Association gathered monthly to take the course. In Mauritius, a tiny island nation in the Indian Ocean, Priya Durshini Thaunoo used 6.170 to prepare for a master’s degree program at the University of Mauritius. Saman Zarandioon, an Iranian refugee living in Vienna, studied it to continue an education that was stalled by the Iranian government. And software developer Rahul Thadani in Birmingham, Alabama, took it to sharpen his skills.” Great to feel the spine tingle. (Via BoingBoing.)

The thing may work well, but when I search Google for “Management 15.810,” (Introduction to Marketing) which Wired lists as one of MIT’s most popular open source courses, I find this this page, which is a gateway to a bunch of pages that are blank except for the words, “This page is a stand-in for empty content.” Hmm.