About 10-12 years ago, I was super hopeful about the promise of open university courses. I taught myself economics and many other subjects by carving out some time each day to watch a 30 minute video, take notes and do some homework.
The catalogs from many universities were already quite large at the time and I figured that in time you’d be able to get something close to a full undegraduate degree’s worth of classes at home from watching videos.
I am very sad that MOOCs (synchronous, time-limited, graded courses behind walled gardens) sucked so much air out of the room.
I would love it if I could just download and seed a torrent of some CC-licensed course materials from any number of universities — especially for some niche courses rather than just the “giant lecture hall” 101 courses.
I think the ADA lawsuit against Berkeley probably really damaged that dream, but in general I see it as a very disappointing failure of open / libre culture ☹
There is still good stuff here: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/audio-video-courses/
And they are still adding new courses. Maybe I’m just out of the loop and 10 years of course materials have accumulated out there from hundreds of universities and is ready for me to consume it.
If anyone has a rosy view of the open course movement I’d be very happy to hear it.