Some day ago, "la Repubblica" published an article by Alessio Balbi about an imminent change in high-education. The article quoted prof. David Wiley who said that Universities "will be irrelevant in 2020" [Deseret News].
The Italian journalist mentioned as an example MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW), an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to put all of the educational materials from its undergraduate- and graduate-level courses online, free and openly available to anyone and anywhere.
"As of August 2008, of the over 1800 courses available, only 26 included complete video lectures, and not all of these have complete lecture notes. The lack of lecture notes makes it difficult to follow some lectures, for example, when the lecturer is referring to slides being projected in the lecture hall. The selection of available courses is somewhat incomplete. For example, prerequisite classes for a given course are frequently not available. However, the quality of those courses which include complete materials is very high, and many of the lecturers are extremely compelling. The video is available in streaming mode, but may also be downloaded for viewing offline, though the procedure for downloading is not explicitly given. Many video and audio files are also available from iTunes U." [Wikipedia]
Among all 1800 courses, I found the course 'Medieval Literature: Dante, Boccaccio, Chaucer' - Spring 2005 - prof. James Cain
Other universities offering open courses can be found at OpenCourseWare Consortium.
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