<p>Have any of you watched or listened to any of the Yale Open Courses (<a href=“http://oyc.yale.edu/[/url]”>Welcome | Open Yale Courses; Yale’s version of the Open CourseWare project) that are available online? In general, I found the content and production to be of fairly high quality. </p>
<p>What did you think of them? How do they compare to college course lectures you’ve attended in your education? Yale students, how do they compare to the average course lectures you’ve attended----are they typical, or much better than average?</p>
<p>I do not know how they compare to the other Open CourseWare but I just took an hour to listen to an introductory lecture in mechanics and it was WAY better than an online BYU course. WAY BETTER !</p>
<p>The Yale stuff is very good. Good production quality, they provide the other materials and they’re probably using their best presenters in lecture halls. One downside is copyright material which they don’t show but other ocw sites have this issue too.</p>
<p>The Game Theory class is tremendous. Not only does Yale provide the lectures, but they also provide a transcript of the lectures, the blackboard notes (which are impossible to read on the video), the homeworks and the exams.</p>
<p>Like BCEagle, I’m guessing they chose their best lecturers. Evidently, they have some excellent lecturers!</p>
<p>I also watched a few lectures of the mechanics class. Again, excellent. For both the Game Theory and the Mechanics classes, a student who just watched the lectures but didn’t do the reading or the problem sets wouldn’t get much out of the class.</p>
<p>The Game Theory class was amazing! I did a huge game theory project this year and ended up watching every single one, and using the notes and such. If the other classes they have online are half as good, I’m very impressed!</p>
<p>I loved the Modern Poetry class, but was frustrated that the online course doesn’t let you see the numerous visual aids the professor uses in the class (because of copyright issues, I believe). I’d be going along great, taking notes, and then have to pause the program to go look up a painting of Yeats done by his father, or the cover of a Frost first edition. Of course, apparently the Yale students can just trot down to the rare book library and see the first editions for themselves. Me, jealous? Much.</p>
<p>My daughter enjoyed the poetry course - she did it a while ago.</p>
<p>The Game Theory course came in the second set of videos and I think that the professor did the course with OCW in mind. That’s different from presenting your regular course with a cameraman.</p>
<p>I just watched 2 clips of the Political Science class. I was not impressed at all. Granted–my impression is based only on the 2 clips that I viewed.</p>
<p>Having watched most of the Game Theory class, I completely disagree that it was done with Open Yale in mind. First of all, this is a class with 280 students, huge for Yale, indicating it is and has been enormously popular-- the professor has been giving this course for a while with great success. Second, the professor spends a lot of time writing on the board. We watchers at home can’t even see what he’s writing (Open Yale conveniently provides blackboard notes). Third, the professor actually has the students, notably a young man and a young woman who, he pretends, are fruitlessly trying to arrange a date, play the games he is about to discuss. Fourth, he tells jokes aimed at Yale students, for example gibes at Harvard students. </p>
<p>There’s plenty of interaction between professor and students.</p>
<p>Yeah, because 20 year olds know so much about game theory. I love to sit in a class with 12 fellow students and listen to them pontificate on matters they know so much about.</p>
<p>Some classes lend themselves to lots of discussion between professor and student, and between student and student. The Yale Game Theory class isn’t one of them. With 280 students or with 12, the professor’s going to be doing a lot of lecturing. Hence, the class is a suitable, and indeed an excellent, choice for taping.</p>
<p>The students (in game theory) can prepare the material (by reading or by lying in bed watching videotaped lectures if they want). Then they can come to a class, preferably with no more than about 12 other students, and engage in discussion, interaction and problem-solving with the guidance of the professor. The active learning component will be stronger and they will learn more.</p>
<p>Those Yale classes are NOT models of good educational practice.</p>
<p>Swat does have a game theory class…econ 012.</p>
<p>Bowdoin does too.</p>
<p>There are also more difficult game theory classes than the one we see at Yale. Yale probably has more difficult courses than this one too. Courses where you need a more mathematical background.</p>
<p>Seems like an incredible waste of class time. Me and my friends just discussed, interacted and problem-solved outside of class. I didn’t need a professor watch over me while I did problem sets, and I certainly didn’t need to waste my professor’s time while we fumbled around looking for solutions (and looking for solutions by ourselves is a good way to learn).</p>
<p>Lectures supplemented by a lot of questions seems like a far better model for classes like this. More discussion is cool in literature classes, but hardly required in game theory. Besides, this class probably had sections where TAs went more in-depth with problem demonstrations and other things.</p>