The MIT OpenCourseWare Update -- Vol. 3, Issue 1

Many users have contacted MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW), asking for information about MIT's curriculum so they would be able to design their own course of self-study. In the interest of improving the user experience with MIT OCW materials, we are now offering a guide to the MIT's undergraduate and graduate curriculum on the MIT OCW Web site. Users are reminded that following these MIT curriculum requirements does not make them eligible to receive a degree or any other sort of certification. This is merely an informational service that MIT OCW is providing for its users.

On this page, you will find a list of all 33 of MIT's academic departments, along with a degree table that offers links to the degree requirements -- both undergraduate and graduate -- for each department. In addition, we provide the graduation requirements for MIT undergraduates, and an explanation of the various degrees MIT graduate students may pursue.

Again, users are reminded that MIT OCW is not a distance-learning initiative, there is no registration or enrollment process required for users to view course materials. Nor is there a certificate or degree granted upon completion of the materials. MIT OCW is a publication of the course materials that support the dynamic classroom interactions of an MIT education.

We hope this serves as a useful tool for educators, students, and self-learners interacting with the MIT OCW materials. Please feel free to send us your feedback on this new MIT OCW user feature.

Video lectures are useful for users of MIT OCW, and we continue to strategically publish video lectures from select faculty at MIT. But there are several reasons that MIT OCW does not include video in every course. The main concern is cost: While the technology for compressing and storing video is becoming more affordable, it is still not affordable, or feasible from a production standpoint, for us to be compressing 20 video lectures for all 915 of our courses. MIT OCW does not have that kind of storage capacity at this time.

We are hoping that by providing the syllabus, reading lists and lecture notes, we are offering a chance for educators and students to jumpstart their own teaching and learning within their chosen discipline. While the video lectures for Course 18.06: Linear Algebra, for example, are very easy for people with fast Internet connections to watch, MIT OCW is not intended to be a complete distance learning resource, it merely provides the raw materials of an MIT education.

For more information about our video and audio lectures, please visit the new Video and Audio on MIT OCW page in the Help section of our site.

While MIT is known as a world-class research and technology institution, there is a very rich tradition of the study of the arts and humanities at the school. Charged with the energy of new ideas, the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) attracts many of the world's finest faculty, students, and researchers. SHASS, in fact, is the common denominator of an MIT student's undergraduate education, providing a foundation of knowledge that enhances life-long learning in every field.

Among the 13 departments and programs offered by SHASS is the MIT Music and Theater Arts Section, which offers a variety of challenging and rewarding musical opportunities for students at every level of preparation and talent, including Course 21M.361 -- Composing with Computers, a course taught by Professor Evan Ziporyn.

In this course students use computers and computer-aided technology as compositional tools, that is, as a means to music-making and an avenue to approach musical and acoustic concepts. Each unit of study consists of a series of short composition projects using specific types of hardware and software in clearly delineated ways. This involves live recording and digital editing, digital processing, analog sound synthesis (real and virtual), MIDI sequencing, and building interactive environments. For enrolled MIT students, the course culminates in a large, final composition and a public concert.

The course syllabus is divided into four units: Sound Structures, Feedback, Structuring Sound, and Interaction. There is also a rich list of suggested readings (including Computer Music: Synthesis, Composition, and Performance by Charles Dodge and Thomas Jerse), CDs, and video that help illustrate the principles taught in the course. In addition, Professor Ziporyn has compiled 11 labs that help teach students the principles of sound and music composition.

This course has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese through MIT OCW's partnership with Universia.net, a Madrid-based content provider for more than 800 universities in Spain, Portugal, and Latin America.

ANSWER: MIT OCW offers the educational materials from 915 MIT courses. There are three ways to access the materials: Utilize the Search function that can be found in the left-hand corner of every page on the MIT OCW site. Search for specific text, such as certain academic discipline area, across all courses or within just one course. To perform a detailed search, use our Advanced Search.

A second way to see what courses are available is to click on Course List that is listed in the top right-corner navigation of every page on the MIT OCW Web site. This will allow you to view the list of every available course, grouped into the 33 MIT academic departments.

Or, view the courses currently available grouped by MIT department. The departments that have MIT OCW course sites available are listed in the left-hand navigation bar of the MIT OCW homepage. An example would be the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Click on the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science link in the left navigation bar on the MIT OCW homepage, and you will go to the department homepage, which includes a complete list of MIT electrical engineering and computer science courses offered, along with a brief description of the department and its curriculum goals.

MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) is a large-scale, Web-based publishing initiative with the goal of providing free, searchable access to MIT course materials for educators, students, and individual learners around the world. These materials are offered in a single, searchable structure spanning all of MIT's academic disciplines, and include uniform metadata about the contents of the individual subject sites.

"The MIT OpenCourseWare Update" welcomes your feedback and suggestions about this newsletter and the MIT OCW Web site. Please send your feedback to Jon Paul Potts, MIT OCW Communications Manager, at jpotts@mit.edu. Our mailing address is MIT OpenCourseWare, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 9-213, Cambridge, MA 02139.

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