Recent articles in Inside Higher Education – focused on the field of modern languages – discuss the subject of open access scholarly publication and open access teaching.
I have been wondering whether it would be possible for us to offer languages like Greek and Hebrew at Butler University even when we cannot persuade the administration that it is economically feasible to hire an adjunct to teach a class for the number of students we’d have enrolled, by using lecture materials and other learning aids (e.g. on iTunesU) and simply having a Butler professor meet with them regularly to administer quizzes and exams.
I can see how, what might seem like an advantage to smaller schools and programs, could also seem like a threat to others, where the availability of such materials might seem to threaten existing jobs.
What is your perception of how the increasing availability of online teaching materials and publications is changing the educational world?
On a related topic, John Hobbins linked to a blog focused on composition in Hebrew as a means to language acquisition.