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Open courseware is starting a revolution…find out what it's all about

How can Open Courseware help to prepare you for academic contests?

Today you can find a wide range of academic competitions to participate in. These competitions are not only fun and interesting, but also tough - that is, if you're looking to win them. Passion, effort, and fluency in a certain subject will guarantee you a spot on a winners' list, but achieving such proficiency is easier said than done. Fortunately, open courseware can help out. OCW opens a new path that allows students to reveal their inner talent and become a contender. So how can it help you? Well, most OCW sites have excellent lecture notes for college-level material, and present these notes in an organized fashion. Using college-level notes to prepare for contests is, well, "priceless". And this is what makes OCW stand out - it's free! The OCW website for MIT (definitely a reputable and credible source) contains a large assortment of lecture notes that can help you gain a competitive edge for the different Olympiad competitions (i.e. Bio, Math, Chem, etc.).

In addition, the notes can help individuals like you prepare for different academic clubs such as the Science Olympiad Club. That's not all though. Not only can you find lecture notes, but you can also find practice exams and practice problems to help you reinforce your knowledge and gauge your progress. What also makes OCW sites nice, especially sites configured like MIT's website, is that they are user-friendly. The OCW website for MIT now has video lectures to accommodate audio-visual learners, and also a search engine - so you can find what you are looking for if you are not too sure of its location on the site. I personally found MIT's OCW site very helpful in preparing for the Chemistry Olympiad competition. Whether I wanted to review something elementary or something complex, I could find it on the site quickly and easily. The lecture notes presented information in a lucid, professional format. After learning new concepts, I used practice exams to assess my understanding. I recommend that anybody preparing for an Olympiad competition visit the MIT OCW website as soon as possible.

How Open Courseware can supplement your college-level education:

Cramming for exams, working on projects, and writing papers - all of these tasks characterize challenges encountered in college-level courses. OCW offers notes and projects which will help you gather the information you need to get the job done, and help you formulate interesting projects. In addition, you can find practice exams and practice problems to help you prepare for real exams. If you missed a lecture (because you were daydreaming or sick, for example) or you just want to review materials, you can watch video lectures or skim through notes and solved exams. The notes cover material found in AP classes - but you may have to sift through the different courses to find what you're looking for.

Nevertheless, the websites are comprehensible and versatile. Not only can you use the OCW site for study notes and exam prep, you can also use images and diagrams found throughout the site to enhance your presentations. (make sure you cite them!). OCW lecture notes and class websites usually contain interesting diagrams and various graphics that you could use on posters, in papers, and with Microsoft PowerPoint. So now it is evident that OCW websites offer invaluable academic tools and resources to facilitate your learning. And while you browse OCW websites you also can gain insight into how universities may structure their classes.

So the next time you are browsing the net or cramming for an exam, check out an OCW website and see how it can help you gain an edge in your studies. The best way to learn more about OCW websites is to visit them and browse around. Here are some links to start your exploration…

To learn more about OCW, click here

Resources:
Consortium website: http://www.ocwconsortium.org
MIT OCW website: http://www.ocw.mit.edu