Diana E.E. Kleiner, Founding Project Director and Principal Investigator, Open Yale Courses; Dunham Professor of History of Art and Classics, Yale University.
If you’re curious about the changing nature of higher-ed, you absolutely can’t afford to miss this fantastic interview with, Diana E.E. Kleiner as she discusses the lessons learned from spearheading the Open Yale Courses project. Near the end, she also hints at a fascinating new initiative from OYC.
This post is particularly topical because OYC announced the addition of SEVEN new courses today, which coincides with the publication of the first three books in The Open Yale Courses Series - the result of a collaboration between OYC and the Yale University Press!
1) Kindly introduce yourself and your role in Open Yale Courses.
I am the Founding Project Director and Principal Investigator of Open Yale Courses and also a faculty participant in the initiative. My Roman Architecture course was recorded for Open Yale Courses in spring 2009.
2) What is Open Yale Courses?
The purpose of Open Yale Courses is to share Yale’s academic treasures with the world by providing free access via the Internet to a selection of the University’s best undergraduate lecture courses. The courses range widely over the arts and sciences and consist primarily of introductory level college courses. Each course, recorded in its entirety as it was presented to Yale College students, is taught by one of the University’s most distinguished faculty members and offers the full experience of the Yale classroom. Participants may select courses by professor, course title, and recording date, and watch lecture videos directly from their browsers with the most up-to-date embedded video format. Open Yale Courses may be accessed at http://oyc.yale.edu and the video lectures can also be viewed or downloaded at iTunes U and through YouTube.
3) Where did the idea for Open Yale Courses come from and how did you come to head it?
While Deputy Provost at Yale, I was the University’s Liaison for Faculty Programs at AllLearn, Yale’s first online venture in partnership with Stanford and Oxford. Together, we created programs of one to eight weeks that were offered first to our combined alumni and then to the general public for a small charge. In 2006, we decided that a better approach was to share a selection of our undergraduate courses for free over the Internet; the result was Open Yale Courses. Over the last ten years, I have authored three online programs for AllLearn, my Open Yale course on Roman Architecture, and on-campus Web portals for my two undergraduate lecture courses, Roman Art and Roman Architecture (see the Wires Crossed review of the Classesv2 site for Roman Architecture).
4) How large is the Open Yale Courses team? Is there a full-time staff of videographers and editors dedicated to the project?
The Open Yale Courses Team is very small. I am Project Director, Christine Costantino is Project Coordinator, and Matt Snyder is Media Content Developer. The project is produced and supported by the Yale Center for Media and Instructional Innovation (CMI2). We hire expert videographers from the Yale Broadcast and Media Center, as well as a versatile group of Yale student assistants.
5) Why do you think that it’s critical for something like Open Yale Courses to exist?
Yale’s primary mission is to create and disseminate knowledge. Up until recently, that was done primarily through the publication of faculty research. With the Internet and the development of digital technology, faculty can now also share their courses more broadly, which is another way to exchange ideas and receive feedback from an even larger community of learners. It also allows the University to increase its international presence and to partner with other universities globally. Furthermore, since Yale’s aim is to encourage students “to lead and serve in every sphere of human activity,” Yale must be a leader in digital education.
7) How are the classes chosen? What is the process by which a Yale class becomes an Open Yale Class?
Open courses at Yale are not selected arbitrarily but with an eye to creating a comprehensive and varied liberal arts curriculum, which emphasizes close analysis and critical thinking. In every faculty recruitment cycle, I seek courses on both timely and timeless topics that range broadly across disciplines and approaches and are, above all, taught with engagement and passion. Every year, I try to add to the number of academic departments and to deepen the coverage of those subject areas already online. I also regularly introduce courses with complex technical or intellectual property requirements so that the project can continue to evolve and innovate.
I update the course catalogue every year. We released ten new courses in April 2011 and added another seven in April 2012, which include a course on African American history, another on three of America’s most iconic authors - Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner - and other exciting offerings in The Philosophy and Science of Human Nature, Atmosphere, Ocean, and Environmental Change, The Early Middle Ages, and Organic Chemistry (Orgo I, Orgo II). One of the challenges is what to do about updating courses in subjects as mutable as economics. Among the just released Open Yale Courses, for example, is an updated version of Robert Shiller’s popular Financial Markets course, which reflects changes to the worldwide economy since 2008, and focuses on the greater social purpose of financial capitalism.
8) What kind of feedback have you gotten from faculty, students and the non-Yale affiliated learners who take the courses?
Participating faculty remain enthusiastic and some consider their contribution to Open Yale Courses to be among their most meaningful Yale experiences. Yale College students appreciate having access to the materials, and surveys and emails attest that participants worldwide are enthusiastically “taking” our courses in full, replicating the on-campus experience more than in most other open educational projects, and that they perceive the complete course as particularly characteristic of Yale. In short, Open Yale Courses has become an essential part of Yale both on and off campus. The project has also received extensive press coverage worldwide since 2007 and was recently named one of Time Magazine’s best websites for 2011.
9) What has been the biggest challenge you encountered while working on Open Yale Courses?
Starting the initiative from the ground up and striving to sustain the project financially.
10) What has been the most surprising thing you’ve discovered while working on the project?
Even though journalists sometimes describe a dumbing down of contemporary culture, there are millions of people worldwide who love to learn for the joy of learning. As the Internet magically links these individuals, the circle of learning expands exponentially. I learn something new everyday from the people who write to me about my course and about the project and I am full of wonderment.
11) What are your thoughts on the changing nature of education? What is the optimal relationship between technology and learning?
A greater number of academic institutions are creating online courses and lectures. Most of this material is being used for self-directed learning but collaborative learning will grow with new technological advances like the iPhone and iPad. What excites me most is that online education makes it easier to learn at all times and in
all places and thus situates education where it should be—at the epicenter of everyone’s lives—not just during the student years but as a lifelong endeavor. I am thrilled at the part Yale has been able to play in that evolution.
12) MIT recently announced the launch of MITx. What’re your thoughts on accredited online learning?
I think there is real potential and I look forward to learning from the trajectory of MITx.
Open Yale Courses and the Yale Summer Session online are different programs although I hear that two Yale faculty are using elements from their Open Yale Courses in the 2012 summer program. A partnership I am especially enthusiastic about is that between Open Yale Courses and Yale University Press. The launch of seven new Open Yale Courses on April 5, 2012 coincides with the publication by the Press of the first three books in The Open Yale Courses Series, which is designed to bring the depth and breadth of a Yale education to a wide variety of readers at affordable prices. Based on the Open Yale Courses Program, these books cover a broad range of topics across disciplines in the social sciences, physical sciences, and humanities, and offer accessible introductions. The first three titles are: Theory of Literature by Paul H. Fry, Death by Shelly Kagan, and New Testament History and Literature by Dale B. Martin.
14) What’s next for Open Yale Courses?
In the belief that teaching and learning are among the most interactive and transformative human activities, we want to continue to offer opportunities that allow learning beyond the conventional classroom. We are incubating a new idea, which I’ll be happy to discuss down the line in a follow up conversation.
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