A World of Learning

By: Jonathan Potts

Imagine being able to take a Carnegie Mellon course without leaving the comfort of your home. Now imagine being able to take 10. This is no pipe dream. In 2002, the university launched the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) to develop online versions of high-demand courses.

And this isn’t just any online learning opportunity. Behind every course offering is Carnegie Mellon’s collective expertise in cognitive psychology and human-computer interaction. Take an OLI course, and you get Carnegie Mellon quality instruction, bolstered by the university’s pioneering research into how computers can help people learn.

Carnegie Mellon has received $3.4 million in grants from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to create 10 introductory-level courses, ranging from statistics to biology to French. Already OLI offers courses in several disciplines, including logic, economics and causal reasoning, along with a physics course based on a computer tutor developed at the University of Pittsburgh. The courses are designed to be taken wholly online or to complement conventional classroom instruction. The courses are free to use by individuals and available for a fee to institutions that offer them for credit.

While students are learning, so are Carnegie Mellon professors. An interdisciplinary group of researchers is testing several courses to determine whether students learn key concepts better using the online version or from a traditional lecture, or to determine which features of the online courses work best.

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Related Link:
Open Learning Initiative