MIT tops the list of renowned school to offer impressive catalog of courses online and you may found around dozen complete courses of MIT in most of the E-learning sites. It has also posted the syllabuses and reading lists of almost every course it has offered in the past 5 years. To get more number of students ready, the school has also started a sub-site for the high scholars. Yale also has launched a complete video taped version of almost seven of its major courses online. These were added last month by Yale and some of the courses include astronomy, philosophy, poetry and psychology. Yale is also in the plan of adding 30 more courses to the new website soon.

Interesting news in this regard is about the Open Coursework Consortium. This serves as a repository of dozens of free online courses that one could use to gain more education for free. This includes courses from University of Notre Dame, Johns Hopkins and many more. This site also offers courses in other languages than English. There are also iTunes University, Duke, Berkeley and Stanford that have posted their free video and audio lectures in the Internet.

• Open courseware is a free way to educate people who are uneducated.
• It provides study material as provided in schools, colleges etc.
• Study material like syllabus, lecture notes, reading list and other documents that are used in general class rooms are now  available for general public for free on the internet.
• In order to serve general public several universities make these materials available online on their websites.

Let’s discuss the difference in enrolling in an open courseware and in enrolling in a regular course:

• Open courseware can be accessed from anywhere i.e. its study material can be read from anywhere you want to. In regular course you have to go to school then only you can avail education.
• You can even use your study material the way you like to i.e.in the form of diagrams or in detail as you feel comfortable.
• You will not have any sort of connection with the faculty of the university providing you the course. In regular courses students have full interaction with the administration as well as with the professors who teach them.
• You cannot use credit to take admission into an open courseware university but in regular course you can.

What are the uses and advantages of open Courseware?

• Open courseware is a system of self educators. In this system the person who wants to get enrolled has to study by himself, no class room no black board no books nothing is provided. In this the students have to learn, read and understand by themselves.
• It is autodidacts, home scholars and anyone who is interested in studying or learning on their own without going to schools or colleges can avail their services.
• If you want to study online and feel anxious about investing your money and your precious time into some beneficial program then you can definitely go for open courseware. Give it a try and experience the big difference.
• In open courseware if people wish to study in groups, or by meeting persons in person then this meeting takes place over the internet.

What are the other benefits of this program?

• Open courseware is not the substitute of going to schools and studying but it is just another option available.
• Open courseware sites are great in providing educations by helping you in the way you need for your course.
• Several new features have also been added in Open courseware. Some of them are video lecturer i.e. people using pen courseware use  the video lecture as a method to go in depth of hard subject matters and also to keep up with the missed lecture notes.
• To contribute to your lecturer notes and your course notes, several lecture videos are available to the open courseware sites.
• Sharing courseware with others and helping them to rise up is not as good as going and studying in a college but it surely is better than not being educated at all.