OpenCourseWare

<p>Any MIT students here? What do you guys think about the OCW.. Is it comparable to the work you guys do in class.. Is it enough..? What i mean is is it enough for someone who just want to learn for the sake of learning..</p>

<p>Personally, I've never found OCW to be a substitute for actually taking a class. A student with sufficient discipline could probably make it into a reasonable approximation to a class, but it takes a lot of input -- getting the book, reading the lecture notes carefully (or ideally, listening to the lectures), actually doing the problem sets. The problem sets are not very useful in the absence of a key, I think -- sometimes the problems may look very easy on first glance, but they almost never actually are. A student working alone would be a lot less likely to puzzle through all of the nuances the way a group of students would, and would be more likely to come to superficial, incorrect answers.</p>

<p>With a good textbook to reference, 8.01 and 8.02 can be self taught using the video lectures.</p>

<p>I think they'd be great as supplements to a high school physics class (especially if your high school class is not very rigorous). I felt that the year of "liberal arts physics" I had in 12th grade gave me no preparation for 8.01 and 8.02.</p>

<p>I absolutely love OCW and feel it's an incredibly valuable resource. Then again, I should clarify by noting that I'm a physics major, and a lot of content exists for physics on OCW that doesn't necessarily exist for the other courses.</p>