YALE ONLINE

Yale U. Plans to Offer Some Course Materials, Including Lecture Videos, Free Online

By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

Cameras are rolling in Yale University classrooms this fall, as part of a project to make video recordings of several courses available free for anyone to view online.

Yale is the latest institution to pledge to create 'open courseware,' in which detailed material from courses is placed online in the hopes that it will be used by educators and students elsewhere. Open courseware was pioneered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which in 2001 announced plans to put material for nearly all of its courses online.

Yale plans to start out slowly, publishing materials from seven courses by the fall of 2007. After that, the project might expand if it is deemed a success. The effort is supported by a $755,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Ramamurti Shankar, a professor of physics who is teaching one of the courses, said knowing that his lecture might be watched online by a wide audience keeps him on his toes. 'I have to be a little more careful than I usually am,' he said.

Even so, he was 'caught on candid camera' last week when he made a mistake writing an equation on the board, and a student had to correct him. He said he hoped that if 'some kid is watching this in another part of the world where you're not supposed to question your professors,' the student would see the value of questioning authority.

In an announcement on Tuesday, Yale officials said that the university would be the first to offer complete"