Dan Mogulof
Executive Director, Public Affairs
U.C. Berkeley
101 Sproul Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
Dear Mr. Mogulof,
I was delighted to read that Berkeley is putting some videos of courses online. When I read a while back about Yale and some other schools posting lectures online for free, I hoped that Berkeley would some day do the same. I was an English major there a number of years ago and loved it. In a few of my classes I met people who were auditing, and I knew I would wan to do that one day. I harbored a secret desire to be a perpetual student, delaying graduation indefinitely so that I could take all of the fascinating courses I could not possibly have had time for in my two years there.
As a full-time mother of a young child, I now find that I am not at leisure to jet off to campus and sit in on a class or two. This is one of the best ideas for uses of the internet that I have witnessed. I wonder whether there is a worry about students skipping class altogether if they can watch the lectures at home. I suppose that would not be much different than taking an online course, but I remember that this concern came up for many professors when they began putting podcasts of lectures online. Will this be the end of the campus?
I noticed a good number of science classes in your video library; I hope you plan to add classes from a cross section of disciplines. It is nice to see that you have the lunchtime poetry series on there. Keep it up!
Truly,
Liz Mann
