World University: Difference between revisions

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where anyone can take or post (teach) classes

 

We're presently in the process of both envisioning and realizing a global, degree-granting (Ph.D., M.D., & Music School, etc.), free-to-students, open, virtual university and school, with great universities (e.g. Harvard, MIT, Ivy League Schools, Stanford, U.C. Berkeley, Oxford, T.U.M., Sorbonne, L.M.U., Juilliard, Cambridge, Cal Tech, etc.) as key players, using a Wikipedia model, and for everyone and especially the developing world - that [[Help:Editing|anyone can edit]].

 

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In many ways, World University is already open. You can take classes, for example, through MIT's Open Course Ware by clicking on the courses to the right, and learn, for example, what is the equivalent of a masters in physics or "Society, Technology and Science" at MIT. Or you post a very fun class about Mozart or massage. For the time being, World University might offer degrees over a 10 year horizon.

 

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Use the links to the left to begin adding a free course, language, country, degree or taking a course.

 

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While all countries (around 200, perhaps starting with the countries in GlobalVoicesOnline.org), and all languages, (possibly 3000, but starting with those languages in Wikipedia) will be part of this, we'd like to focus at first on the countries that MIT's One Laptop Per Child is also engaging: Rwanda, Ethiopia, Colombia, Haiti, Mexico, Peru, USA (Birmingham, Alabama), Uruguay, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Cambodia, & Papua New Guinea.

 

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So, for example, World University might offer four courses, at first, in each of these countries and in many languages, to be engaged possibly on One Laptop Per Child and programmable iPhone-like devices. And people in these countries, of course, can add their own courses to this Wiki, with knowledge they would like to share. In terms of possible degree-granting, Harvard professors, for example, might also teach 4 courses at the undergraduate level, and 1 graduate level course, in the fall of 2009, with at-large participation possible. A video-capable iPhone-like device would allow people who are illiterate to take and post courses to this wiki.

 

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Almost every aspect of learning that takes place in a classroom or learning situation now, is possible to engage interactively in virtual worlds like Second Life today, and these virtual world technologies will develop a lot in the next few years.

 

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World University is already open in rudimentary form, to which you can add courses in any possible field, and could extend thousands of years in the future - e.g. http://globaluniversity.pbwiki.com, - potentially generating a remarkable archive of courses over time. But if two paths emerge - degree and open course ware - in World University, MIT Open Course Ware is our model for degree granting academic course work.

 

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This "Multilingual University" is open to almost all possible courses, including Ph.D.-related ones, and those in Medicine, Music (both Western and Indian classical, with instrumental training possible), Veterinary, Law, Electrical Engineering, etc., as well as 'harmonizing' and therapeutic courses in fields like yoga, Watsu, and acupuncture.

 

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At present, if you're oriented to learning on your own, you can start taking courses from, for example, MIT's Open Course Ware's listing of 1800 courses, with many video lectures already posted. But credit and degree-granting isn't yet pragmatic in this envisioning, and we think this might take possibly 10 years to develop.

 

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People ultimately train their own bodyminds in whatever learning context, and World University may well facilitate this in new ways. World University engages an approach to knowledge where learning also occurs through various forms of dialogue and conversation, such as those that occur in seminars and through libraries' books and journals. And World University will engage the far-reaching potentials of the Information Technology revolution to make learning and teaching - knowledge exchange, very widely construed - global and innovative in an ongoing way.

 

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