Boston University Free Culture

Hey, the Freep wrote a thing about us! Neat. I know I trash them a lot for being made fun of by the Onion, but they’re quite a bit better this year.

New group aims to put BU lectures online for public

Andy Facini

A Boston University group is pushing for the school to follow in the footsteps of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to start putting class material online for public access.

In the first meeting of BU Free Culture at the George Sherman Union backcourt yesterday, the group focused on the creation of an OpenCourseWare program, similar to that of MIT, which recently opened the program to allow the public to browse through class notes, lectures and assignments of any of the school’s 1,800 courses.

“BU should be more open with its information,” said Free Culture President Rich Jones, a College of Arts and Sciences sophomore. “It is very easy to turn a school into an open-access school, and it would be very beneficial to the public.”

“We want to help teachers to use OpenCourseWare,” Jones said. “It’s harder for us as students to ask for [the program]. The goal is to get teachers to advocate, too.”

CAS computer science associate professor Leo Reyzin said the website would be a useful tool for students to prepare and organize for classes, and said “there is certain value to the transitory nature of the lectures.”

Free Culture hopes to have an OpenCourseWare program running within some departments on a trial basis.

In addition to OpenCourseWare, Free Culture plans on addressing other issues related to the dwindling of individual privacy, including issues with the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America.

“There are major privacy concerns [at BU],” Jones said. “[BU] can monitor your instant messages, emails and which websites you use.”

Free Culture is a chapter of FreeCulture.org, an international student organization that advocates public involvement in intellectual property issues.

“You don’t have to be an activist to add to the global understanding of culture,” said CAS sophomore Paul Sawaya.

http://media.www.dailyfreepress.com/media/storage/paper87/news/2007/12/07/News/New-Group.Aims.To.Put.Bu.Lectures.Online.For.Public-3139008.shtml

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