Open courseware is described as the publication on course material by higher education institutions and shared with others on the web (Simonson et al, 2009). The open course website that I chose to evaluate is the Historical Jesus on Stanford on iTunes. It took me a minute to find a course that I actually wanted to sit and listen to. I didn’t totally agree with all that was said by the instructor Thomas Sheehan, but it was none the less interesting.
The courses of course are presented as audio or video podcasts via iTunes. The course is broken up into ten sections and a course syllabus. The course is in lecture format with a discussion at the end of each. I listened to the Call Me Yeshua lecture. This course was not a pre-planned or designed for the distance learning environment. The course is just a recording of a series of lectures. I think that might have worked if it was a video podcast rather than audio because Sheehan uses a lot of in-class visuals whether it be handouts or examples on the chalkboard. It would have been nice it these could have been seen by the listener. Listening to this podcast, I can conclude that the course also has a website, so it can be considered a hybrid course. This course is at its best a true definition of open courseware. It was posted online as is by Stanford for the purposes of sharing with others. This course does not follow the recommendations for online instruction as listed in the course textbook. As stated above, the only course activity was the discussion after the lecture.
Overall, I think that it is great that schools of higher learning have put some of there course online for other to experience. I wouldn't mind continuing using this open course provided that the schools put more topics that are of interest to me.
References
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance (4th ed.). Boston: Pearson.
Stanford on iTunes U http://itunes.stanford.edu/
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