*OCW is a free teaching and learning resource with open license for quality educational materials. It allows anyone to access the free teaching and learning materials; thus, it is different from cyber lecture that approves credits by taking courses. Started by MIT, OCW has been provided by world-renowned universities and Kookmin University started the service from September 2013. 

Camera-installed 18 on-cast lecture rooms

Kookmin OCW that is useful among the students

You may think that this free lecture service is good for non-students or students from other universities. But it is only half of the advantages provided by the Kookmin OCW. Since Kookmin OCW provides lectures from actual courses, it is beneficial to Kookmin students. If you once worried about whether to take a certain course but there is no one who previously took such course, the Kookmin OCW can guide you. You can register for a course after taking the online lecture that you want. Also, you can review the parts that you missed in the actual lecture after going back home.

▲ It allows PPT split screens that show many screens at the same time.

Eun-yeong Song (class of ’12 in the School of Business Administration) realized good result through the online lecture last semester, pointing it as the biggest factor for her academic improvement as ‘she was able to take parts that she missed and review again. Also, PPT materials were provided along with the professor’s lecture so it was convenient to compare the class materials with handouts.’ On the other hand, she emphasized the importance of students’ will as ‘students may be complacent when dealing with actual lecture due to the availability of an easily accessible system for their course.’

Expanded open lecture is welcomed among professors. 

The actual effect of the online course was asked to Professor Tae-hui Yi who utilized the online lecture service for the Principle of Accounting and it was answered to be ‘effective.’ When the professor asked students if they watched the online lecture at home, more than half raised a hand and all students showed positive response for the question whether this service is helpful. ‘Students cannot grasp the contents if they miss a part in the actual lecture. The good thing is that it allows taking the course while riding a bus. It will be a great help to courses like engineering that requires technical and systematic understanding so the number of open lectures should be increased for the students.”

Regarding the loose class attitude due to such easily accessible service, Professor Yi said it would be overcome by increasing the attendance ratio for the overall academic evaluation. He said that he feels some pressure to the tight schedule for each lecture but since the examples and cases introduced in the lecture help facilitate better understanding, the students can relax and focus more on the lecture. If the teaching personnel become passive on providing such class details, appropriate teaching method based on the open lecture service should be developed. Professor Yi said there are pros and cons when a new idea is introduced, but it is foolish to prevent something good due to the fear of cons.

If you wonder about lectures of other universities?

▲ SNOW site that provides free translation service for the lecture of MIT

Opening the lecture sources through OCW is actively promoted not only in Kookmin University but also in other universities worldwide. If you wonder about the lectures of other universities, utilize KOCW and SNOW. KOCW is the abbreviation of the Korea Open Course Ware and as its name implies, it provides the most extensive academic resources of Korean universities including 4,762 lectures in connection with 151 universities across the nation. 30 lectures of Kookmin University are also listed. In SNOW, it is possible to take courses of world-renowned universities such as MIT, Harvard University, and Yale University. As Korean subtitles are provided, it is okay to take any course. Also, it is convenient to download the Korean and English text of the lectures.

KOCW for lectures of Korean universities: www.kocw.net
SNOW for lectures of foreign universities: www.snow.or.kr

 
Meanwhile, online lecture is uploaded not to the Kookmin OCW but to the cyber university depending on professors’ decision. In this case, only the course-registered student can access the online lecture. To compare with Facebook, it can be made available to everyone or limited only to friends. It can be interpreted that more lectures are recorded than the ones registered in the homepage. When registering courses, the time as well as the lecture room must be considered. If you take a course in an on-cast lecture room, you are given additional opportunity to review the class materials to get better credits.