I've always been a strong supporter (and beneficiary) of MIT's revolutionary OpenCourseWare (OCW) project. In a nutshell, MIT has developed a platform where selected courses would be accessible to the general public via it's online site - at no cost. The courses are complete with syllabi, reading lists, lecture outlines and at times, media files and bulletin boards. I decided to compare the OCW offering of Documenting Culture, a class I physically enrolled in 2002, with the same instructor. The OCW counterpart, even updated to 2004, is essentially the same course sans the classroom of students. Those interested in OCW can quickly get a feel for classes at MIT, the level or reading and work required, and the standard of academic and intellectual discourse.

Course Description

How — and why — do people seek to capture everyday life on film? What can we learn from such films? This course challenges distinctions commonly made between documentary and ethnographic films to consider how human cultural life is portrayed in both. It considers the interests, which motivate such filmmakers ranging from curiosity about "exotic" people to a concern with capturing "real life" to a desire for advocacy. Students will view documentaries about people both in the U.S. and abroad and will consider such issues as the relationship between film images and "reality," the tensions between art and observation, and the ethical relationship between filmmakers and those they film. 

In today's news on VietNam Net, MIT Open CourseWare launched in Vietnam, it appears the Vietnam has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with MIT concerning OCW. For me, this is an important move for education in Vietnam, if taken seriously. Educators and policy makers can use OCW as a model from which to model and reinvent quality courses in Vietnam, where the current pedagogy and practice suffers from apathy among instructors, rising costs of education without the benefits, and restriction and inaccessibility to contemporary information.

"The Vietnam Education Foundation (VEF), the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), and the VASC Software and Media Company (VASC) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to bring Open CourseWare (OCW) provided by the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT) to Vietnam.

“This is a historic event for education in Vietnam. It began in June when Prime Minister Phan Van Khai received a briefing on OCW at MIT. We have moved with great speed to bring all available classroom learning materials from the MIT campus to the campuses and homes of Vietnamese students and teachers.” said Kien Pham, Executive Director of VEF. “OCW has enormous potential to transform Vietnamese education,” he added." - Vietnam Net Bridge

Further Reading
MIT. OpenCourseWare
VietnamNet. MIT Open CourseWare launched in Vietnam

My final paper I wrote for the class
The Fiction of Reality in Contemporary Documentary Film (PDF, 472 KB)
{I'm also converting my own education to Open Source}