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The promise of Open Course Ware in the education system of Bangladesh

Mashuqur Rahman

Sometimes it is said that the Internet would revolutionize the education system of the world, and it is indeed becoming a reality through the OCW. Open Course Ware or OCW is a new phenomenon in the education world. It aims at making knowledge of any educational institution free and available to all through internet. OCW is what its name implies the educational course materials of an educational institution made available to everyone to use for free via internet.

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The concept of OCW was pioneered by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in order to spread the knowledge accumulated in MIT to a wider audience. In 2001 MIT declared that they would put all their undergraduate and graduate course materials like lectures in video and/or audio, lecture notes, books written by faculty members on that particular course, test papers etc online. Their aim was to put knowledge online so that anyone could download and benefit from those completely FREE OF CHARGE. And they called it MIT OCW. So far they have placed more than 1400 of their courses online (http://ocw.mit.edu).

This MIT initiative caused huge excitement in the academic world. The project became a real success once the initial legal problems of making propitiatory educational materials available free of charge to everyone were overcome. It has helped innumerable students and self-learners from across the world to benefit from the educational materials found in the MIT OCW. The dissemination of knowledge caused by the OCW bridged the gap of standard and technology existing among different educational institutes around the world. These materialsreceived freebecame the foundation of several research and development projects undertaken privately. Many other universities were quick to understand the usefulness of OCW and started their own OCW projects. Several Japanese, French and Chinese universities made their course materials public following the footsteps of MIT (a complete list can be found in http://ocwconsortiu m.org/use/index.html). In 2005, MIT along with some other leading OCW projects created the Open Course Ware Consortium (http://ocwconsor tium.org/) - a base for other educational institutions to come up and enrich the world of knowledge with their respective research data and course materials.

Some may wonder how OCW differs from some other online educational universities and institutes. The difference is substantial the OCW is designed as not a replacement of the traditional universities and learning systems but as an augmenter; it does not provide any certification or testing system. It simply helps by providing educational materials to anyone who is willing to benefit from it.

OCW can make substantial contribution on developing the education system of our country, not only in graduate and undergraduate levels but also at the school level. This claim may seem very far-fetched in today's perspective, where computer and the Internet facility is available to a very few. But in the near future this may not be the case if the price of computer and Internet keeps falling at today's rate and both become a widespread commodity like the TV or radio.

Already the $100 laptop program: 'One Laptop per Child' (also pioneered by MIT to bridge the 'Digital Divide' existing among the developed and developing countries) is being championed in our country by the famous Dr Yunus. If the 'One Laptop per Child' program becomes a reality or the Internet and computers become so cheap that it becomes widely used in our country, then this OCW, if implemented, can make real contribution to the total change in our education system. Even today implementing OCW in different universities can bridge the noticeable gap in the standard of curriculum and teaching method that remains between many good private and public universities and not-so-good universities; the reason being Internet is available to most of the university students in our country. OCW can make available substantially deep knowledge and educational materials to students and self-learners totally free of cost and enrich the academic world and the world in general.