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Open Source and E-Learning Continue to Converge

We've reported before on how big universities such as U.C. Berkeley, as well as publishing companies such as CNet have used the open source Moodle platform to deliver e-learning content online. M.I.T.'s Open Courseware site, and its M.I.T. World video effort, are also notable for providing excellent, free educational content online. Meanwhile, the United States is the single largest e-learning market worldwide with revenues exceeding $17.5 billion in 2007, according to a report from Global Industry Analysts. Now, U.C. Berkeley is funding the development of an open source project for expanded distribution of free recordings of lectures and other events, as the San Francisco Business Times reports. There are other notable free e-learning initiatives underway, too.

The San Francisco Business Times notes that in the case of U.C. Berkeley:

"The university has already spent $220,000 this year on this project, named 'Opencast Matterhorn.' Now grants totaling $1.5 million from the Andrew W. Mellon and William and Flora Hewlett foundations will cover that expense and pay for further development of the system."

You can already find many U.C. Berkeley lectures on YouTube, such as this one on game development, and Marian Diamond's lectures on human anatomy. It would be good to see more universities around the world pursuing free e-learning content online, and open source platforms are ideal for keeping costs sensible. The S.F. Business Times reports that Berkeley "will work with ETH Zürich in Switzerland, the University of Osnabrück in Germany, Cambridge University in the United Kingdom and Canada’s University of Saskatchewan on the project."

Bill Gates recently put a series of classic lectures at Cornell from legendary physicist Richard Feynman up online, delivered with Microsoft's Silverlight technology. "It starts to push forward the idea if someone is great lecturer, then their work should be out there and available," Gates told CNet. I watched a couple of the Feynman lectures, and they are excellent--funny, too. Plus, you can start and stop them whenever you want, unlike a live lecture.

E-learning is fertile ground for open source software offerings, and hopefully U.C. Berkeley will deliver its e-learning software as open source, for other universities to take advantage of.  Also, if Bill Gates truly wants to encourage open, widespread delivery of lectures online, why not fund an open source platform that schools and other organizations around the world could freely customize and use?
 

• Moodle
• Bill Gates
• U.C. Berkeley
• E-Learning
• Feynman

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