MIT Open Courseware Videos Don't Play

[jchunter]

An interesting thread! It seems to me that most of the colleges and universities offer a very limited selection of courses via iTunes---and many of them are only course fragments.

On the issue of technology, I have a definite opinion after over forty years of "professing". It is the preparation and delivery that are important, not the mode of delivery. As an example of a well-done lecture, try any of Walter Lewin's lectures on physics (on iTunes). I don't know the guy, but I can certainly recognize a good, well-constructed lecture. On the other hand, try a random sample of others and use the experience to evaluate my following assertions.

There is virtually no emphasis nowadays on planning and delivering good lectures. Today's student expects lots of technical effects to hold his or her attention, and academic administrators would like to do away with live teachers because they are a high expense item. So they want to mass market their product, reaching as many paying students as possible. They expect their faculty to raise funding and spread the fame of their institution as widely as possible. That prof who prepares lectures instead of writing grant proposals does neither.

All that said, it's too bad there isn't more attention (and funding) expended to modernize that old delivery technology---for all those technical effects aren't inherently bad. They are just used too often only for the gee whiz! effect.

Sorry for the rant, now back on topic---?

IMHO, Your comments are well taken and on topic. Right behind videos not playing at all should be a discussion on how effectively online courses present the subject matter when they do play.


IMHO, MIT deserves a lot of credit for putting most of their courses online "as-is" because, though imperfect, they do allow students to escape the surly bonds of space and time. They don’t have to travel to a classroom and they can study the material at any time of day or night. Even fragmentary class material could be valuable to a motivated student who is prepping for a course ahead of actual enrollment.


To your point, selecting the best and most organized presenters to video tape is a no-brainer. Also, there are simple techniques that would improve the video presentations, such as close micing the presenters because open classrooms make a lot of noise and echoes reduce word recognition. Higher video resolution would also help.


Interactive graphics would allow far better presentation of abstract phenomena such as electromagnetic field dynamics. Carnegie Mellon (CMU) has several new courses that use these techniques but of course, they use Adobe Flash Player, which means that I have to use my "Grandpa Box" (desktop computer) instead of the iPad to evaluate them.


Most of all, I feel that learning equations and doing classical homework problems has always been woefully inadequate to teach the application of theory to solving real problems. Interactive Tutor programs that provide immediate feedback on the student’s approach to problem solving would be far better. Classical textbook homework problems have never been effective because human paper graders are usually so slow that the class has already moved on by the time the student discovers his mistakes.


A few years ago I tried CMU’s Andes Physics Tutor, an early experiment that does very little teaching and a LOT of problem solving. Andes allows the student to declare a coordinate system and the variables (scalar and vector) that he needs to solve the problem. The student is then free to write the equations needed to solve it. If Andes doesn’t like his equations or his choice of variables, it will tell him immediately. OTOH, if likes them, it will do the computational grunt work required to solve them and give the student an instant grade on his efforts. All in all, if I had had such a Tutor when I first studied Physics, I would have understood it far, far better.

 

[OCWJoe]

Me again - I am using Safari and viewing the videos on the OCW site and they work properly.

Thanks,
Joe

 

[jchunter]

Joe,
That is very curious. For example, "Intro to Computer Science and Programming" flashes a large error window as soon as I hit the Video Lectures button, saying that it requires Adobe Flash and Java Script. When I press the play (arrow) I get a big slash across the play button. If your iPad 2 actually has Adobe Flash installed, I would be flabergasted! Is it possibly Jail Broken?

Edit: Well, I am just an iPad novice but my friend Google found this...

 

[twerppoet]

Perhaps you two should compare URLs, just to make sure you are going to exactly the same site.

 

[OCWJoe]

Nope, no FLASH installed. The JW Player that is used on the OCW site has a YouTube failover. When FLASH is not detected, the player fils over to the default YouTube player. It should work fine for you. We have many many users and this is the first that I have heard of the problem , so I am thinking it must be a local issue with your iPad. Is you OS etc. up to date?

 

[jchunter]

My iPad is new (1 month old). OS is 4.3.5. Safari is as-delivered.
There are explicit directions on post #13 on this thread on how to reproduce the ocw.MIT.edu video problem.
If there is now some sort of Flash bypass on that site, my straightforward entry to these courses must be bypassing it. Ergo, a small bug needs to be fixed on the website.

However, Apple's Flash ban is the real source of a much larger problem, which impacts many online courses at many universities. Negotiate a Flash license ASAP, Apple.

 

[twerppoet]

However, Apple's Flash ban is the real source of a much larger problem, which impacts many online courses at many universities. Negotiate a Flash license ASAP, Apple.

Flash on iOS devices is not going to happen. Has nothing to do with licencing. Apple is simply opposed to it. I'm only mentioning it because you've said this several times now. If you to really want read all the arguments there are a lot of threads on the issue, so lets not make this another one. I will leave you with a link to Apples official stance on the subject, but again, lets not irritate the moderators by debating it here.

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/