With this extra week I have taken time to go through "How the Open Source Movement Has Changed Education: 10 Success Stories" again. I thought I would just point out and comment on a random, nit-picky thought I had during my second (perhaps more thorough) reading.
The opening baited lines of the article read: "How would you like to study at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) for free? ... MIT announced that the OCW program, a free and open educational resource (OER) for educators, students, and self-learners around the world, is online and will be completed by 2008." These phrases were designed to work for exigence in this article. However, they are not exactly true. What's worse, they are proved false by the very first hyperlink in the article.
After clicking the first link, the reader is taken to a page with the article "MIT to make nearly all course materials available free on the World Wide Web." This article quotes MIT's President Vest as saying: "Let me be clear: We are not providing an MIT education on the Web. We are providing our core materials that are the infrastructure that undergirds an MIT education. Real education requires interaction, the interaction that is part of American teaching." This quotation instantly undermines the opening lines of the Open Source Movement article.
Is the misleading paragraph a severe case of botched citation? Maybe. Does it render the rest of the article untrue? Maybe not. Either way, from the start I decided to read the article skeptically. Couldn't the author find anything that was comparably exciting- but more true- to start off the article?
Additionally, as you can see about, the MIT released article had a typo, thereby lowering its credibility in my eyes as well. (Unless "undergirds" is a work Merriam-Webster and I haven't heard of.)
These articles echo the many people do not give the same affectionate copy-writing attention to materials published online compared to those in print. I find this bizarre as more and more collegiate journalism programs are beefing up on print-alternative education (like writing for the web). I wonder if all this sloppiness will resolve itself as the new generation for journalists (who have been properly trained for non-print publishing) will learn, graduate, and trickle into the work force. Certainly the Online Education Database and MIT should hire them.
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Hello
ReplyDeleteWow..it is important to cross examine everything you read. I browsed the article paying no attention to detail. When I read the testimonials, the majority of the users regarded MIT as a source for information to impact their learning experience in a non-MIT classroom. Chelsea made a good point in class about using the MIT website as a means to develop a class curriculum. Do you remember the conversation that took place during Friday Gallery Talk? A gentleman shared his experience with an unhappy visitor, who thought a painting by John Baldessari was the wall text for the exhibition. She complained about the obvious typos in the text. After the encounter, he began to question the notion that artwork can have mistakes but wall text cannot. If I see a typo in a blog or journal article I am not immediately turned away. I really do not regard websites as legitimate sources of information. I prefer a hard copy of a book especially when citing sources for a research paper.
Hi Nichole-
ReplyDeleteYour blog made me smile... I'm in your camp.
I just recently watched a TED video that offers an interesting response to the MIT President's statement, "Real education requires interaction..."
Check it out @ http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/sugata_mitra.html
-anniep
Hi, guys. I'm glad you two don't just think I'm being too judgmental and nit-picky about this. I think I just experience some 'nam-style flashbacks from my freshman writing class. My instructor used to constantly talk to us about ethos- or, how much the audience respects the author based on his/her scholarly qualifications, writing styles, etc. From that class I learned to loss a little bit of respect for each writing error, much like my instructor would knock off 5% from our grade for each ill-placed comma. Still, I have trouble trusting someone who did not put the care and attention into double-checking his text and facts. I'm glad to see you guys care, too! Maybe this will all help us realize the importance of proof-reading things like our blogposts.*
ReplyDelete*Please, just this once, excuse any misspellings in this comment.