It's admirable to attempt to collect free resources and organize them in a way that provides a natural progression for subject matter mastery, but essays and lectures does not a college education make. For that you need teachers and peers to discuss the information, to frame it and present it in ways necessary for different types of learners to grasp it, to evaluate your understanding, to challenge you to think about things in new ways.
For most people, just reading the information or watching lectures won't bring you to the same level of understanding (certainly there are exceptions to that rule).
Don't get me wrong, it's great to organize these resources and make them more available for people who wouldn't otherwise have access, but it bothers me to imply this is the same as a college education. Ultimately, I think that just devalues the work that teachers do.
Then again, I'd say at least half of students in a typical college class could care less about what they're learning.
If someone has the initiative to go through videos and essays, chances are they're learning more than the bottom 50% in the equivalent college class.
I think initiatives like this could eventually offer valid alternatives to the 'college degree', but not a 'college education'. A degree is what you get from mastering an area of studying. A college education includes additional social and professional skills, which I think is what you're concerned with these initiatives not addressing.
I think it's an interesting idea, but I went and took a look at the course on Web Programming and found it somewhat lacking. For instance, the section on HTTP links to the W3C documentation on POST/GET/etc... which is ok, but very dry reading and, IMHO, possibly too abstract and confusing to someone who didn't already have some experience writing webapps. I feel that the course needs more overall "glue" binding some of the concepts together. For example, there's a tutorial about PHP/Ruby, but it seems to reference materials from some other college course (that I couldn't locate).
Overall, it just didn't seem to hang together well.
This website will serve as a zero-cost alternative to those that lack the resources to attend traditional brick-and-mortar institutions
I completely agree with the observation that the duct-taping of a few, loosely connected resources to construct an authoritative syllabus / disrupt the existing education system through an online network of autodidacts and mentors is flawed in its very premise. I'm inclined to believe, though, that we're looking at an an early iteration and that the Saylor Foundation's initiative will evolve as feedback pours in.
and, if they are willing, a complement to mainstream education providers.
This seems to be the more practical component of the vision. My personal take: education will not be disrupted by applications that seek to uproot the brick and mortar educational establishment. Rather, platforms will emerge to augment the existing teaching / learning process and help students seek guidance when they need it.
I think the Khan Academy has pretty much set the bar for what an online 'education augmentation platform', if you were, should start out looking like, and the Saylor Foundation would do well to emulate them.
That said, the world really needs a central, well maintained repository for educational content at the college level, so I hope this initiative succeeds.
I really like the idea of the General Education Program. In fact, I think you'll have the most impact and do the most good by focusing only on this program.
There are many different websites that do what you do, i.e. providing a college education online for free. Khan Academy targets the technical subjects (and a younger demographic), opencourseware has thousands of lectures online, etc. To put it bluntly, if I want to learn biology or computer science, you've got nothing that I can't get anywhere else.
But listen to this quote from the your website: "The purpose of the General Education Program is to educate students about what we—as human beings—know about ourselves ... the curriculum will help you prepare to be reflective, confident, productive citizen of your local, national, and global communities". This is pure gold; I haven't seen this anywhere else. This is not education for the sake of getting a job, but rather for the sake of becoming a well-rounded person.
This program isn't finished yet, but once you can complete it and polish it, I think this will be a huge resource.
I can't speak for everyone, but if you build it, I'll come.
I was disappointed to find a pretty vanilla looking Java 101 as the Intro to CS course. I also wonder about the utility of developing a curriculum from the ground up by linking to articles and readings rather than building on existing material like MIT's OCW etc. Starting with that material and fleshing it out and filling in the gaps would be more effective I think.
It's not mentioned but [cost] online courses offer:
1) Slides with custom content for example a joke of what happens if everyone decided to lower their own wages. Considering that the pdf contents are dry, slides win in this aspect.
2) Community. Like-minded people discussing the course and how to solve it.
3) Peer/authority review. The teacher or a partner reviews the work done by the person.
Optional) Programmable quizs. Those generate pseudo random questions (Most easy for math-like courses).
Optional) As part of doing a course, have the student generate questions and answers (Best for non-math-like courses as per above). This is the student's contribution back to the foundation to continue to provide more information.
For most people, just reading the information or watching lectures won't bring you to the same level of understanding (certainly there are exceptions to that rule).
Don't get me wrong, it's great to organize these resources and make them more available for people who wouldn't otherwise have access, but it bothers me to imply this is the same as a college education. Ultimately, I think that just devalues the work that teachers do.