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Fri 11 Jun, 2010 08:57 am
I always wonder if it would be a good idea to start a free, online college. It would be Open Source kind of like wikipedia, and allow anyone to participate in developing its courses. I would love to see a college level math course, taught in step by step fashion that is free to anyone. It could be used as a tutor, have its own worksheets, and computer graded tests.
Does anyone else think this is a good idea?
Any comments or suggestions about what you would want to see in such a site?
@lazymon,
It would be good idea; I'm just a little worried about the possible plagiarism that would ensue.
I guess, as long as its written in such a way that it's like a textbook with one or two representative examples per subject area, then it might be ok.
@Victor Eremita,
Yeah I haven't thought much about the problem of plagiarism.
I wonder how Wikipedia gets around it?
One other thing I forgot to ask. Does anyone know of a site similar to what I described?
It won't let me edit the first post
@lazymon,
If a student copies prose from wikipedia, essay checkers like turnitin.com can analyse the prose against popular websites. It's harder to catch plagarism for math and science though.
@Victor Eremita,
Awesome thanks.
Reading this article
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/psamples.html
He states that Wikipedia complains to editors who plagiarize from wikipedia... That doesn't make sense because I thought it was open source.
@lazymon,
open source doesn't mean just take it. The problem is that you have to credit wikipedia. As the link says: "For every site that takes content from Wikipedia and properly gives credit, there are several that take content and don't give credit." No self-respecting plaragist would put in their works cited: wikipedia.
@lazymon,
A lot of universities are putting their lectures and course material online for free. As an example there's MIT's Open Courseware:
http://ocw.mit.edu/
However, I'd like to see more open source textbooks.
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