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Openness by department at MIT
This semester is the first semester when everyone who requested a Stellar class website had to choose whether to limit access to the students in their course, or let anyone at MIT or the world to look at the site.
I did a little look at the classes requested so far to see how many people are picking a closed access site vs. an open site. What's interesting is that numbers really vary based on the department. Here is a random sampling of departments:
| Department | Closed | Open |
|---|---|---|
| Chemical Engineering | 100% | 0% |
| Political Science | 89% | 11% |
| Urban Studies | 67% | 33% |
| Civil & Env. Eng. | 36% | 64% |
| Electrical Eng. & Computer Science | 35% | 65% |
| Brain & Cog. Science | 5% | 95% |
| Chemistry | 5% | 95% |
In general the classes that are in the minority camp (e.g. BCS classes that are closed or PoliSci classes that are open) are likely to be cross-listed courses. So it appears that either the role of departmental cultures or the role of influential administrators who set up course for many people skew a departments' bias. It's great to have this information on hand the next time a student group approaches us requesting more open access, because we can now tell them which departments to lobby.
Tags: Stellar MIT OpenAccess