MIT is moving forward with there OpenCourseWare initiative. They are putting course materials for hundreds of their classes online for free and open use. The caveat, online participants will miss the classroom discussions and won't earn a degree.
I latched on to the following excerpt from a recent article in Wired magazine.
Ultimately, MIT officials know, OpenCourseWare's success depends on the emergence of online communities to support individual courses. Margulies says MIT is eager to find third parties to create tools that would enable learners or educators to easily organize and manage discussion groups using OpenCourseWare content. "We'd like to see self-managed OpenCourseWare communities," says Margulies. "Our vision is to have this open source software on the site, as well as information that helps people build a learning community, whether it's in Namibia, Thailand, wherever."
Isn't Drupal uniquely suited to provide exactly this kind of community building? The requirements sound similar to those for the Dean for President drupal network.
What do you think? Where does drupal fall short? What are some of Drupal's unique strengths that can be applied?
If there is a general agreement that Drupal is a good match, I'd be happy to work out a 'pitch' to send to MIT's OpenCourseWare leaders.
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