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graduate courses online

June 10, 2008 by coglanglab, 1 year 23 weeks ago
Comment id: 30599

There's a famous joke:

What do you call a graduate student who gets As in every class? Someone who didn't spend enough time on doing research.

The idea of graduate work in science being available online sounds nice, but I'm not sure how it would work. The main problem would be that coursework isn't really the point of a graduate degree in science: research is. My graduate program in psychology is on the low end in terms of required coursework (about 4-5 semester-long classes), but at other programs with more classes (psychology programs in particular), I've heard faculty grouse about students wasting too much time on classes.

Finally, most of my classes, at least, are discussion-based. It is hard to do achieve that using OpenCourseware.

That said, I think OpenCourseware is great. I've used it and plan on using it more in the future. But I think it probably works best for introductory material (i.e., undergrad material). I wish you luck in the project. Let us know which classes are best.

Please try my web-based experiments

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