– By Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

Always wished you could study at one of the world’s most premier institutes? Well, your dream is almost a reality, thanks to the OpenCourseWare movement started at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The school, which already has 1,550 of its courses up on the Internet, with access provided free to anyone interested, is planning to make all 1,800 courses taught in its classrooms available online by the end of 2007.

It’s an ambitious and generous endeavor, and it’s been aptly dubbed “an act of intellectual philanthropy”. Internet users all over the world are able to access and download syllabus details, video and audio lectures, notes, homework assignments, illustrations, and other course content, not only in English, but also in various other languages with the help of companion sites that take care of the translation.

The OCW consortium, comprising MIT, Tufts University, the Johns Hopkins University, Michigan State University, Michigan University, Notre Dame University, and Utah State University in the United States, and institutions from China, Japan and Spain, has come in for some effusive praise from users the world over. While professors are using material from the site to supplement their own teaching methods, students are gaining by access to extra study material, and those with a thirst for knowledge are quenching theirs effectively. If you were to go by one user’s opinion, OCW is single-handedly undoing all the damage done to the United States’ reputation by the Iraq war.

The venture, while offering knowledge to all, is not a substitute for a formal education, as all its supporters agree.

For one thing, OCW learners aren’t able to receive feedback from a professor - or to discuss the course with fellow students. A college education is "really the total package of students interacting with other students, forming networks, interacting with faculty, and that whole environment of being associated with the school," says James Yager, a senior associate dean at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Even so, it’s a commendable and generous gesture on MIT’s part!