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Information versus Knowledge
Summary Notes and Comments by J. T. P. Yao, 4/30/01
According to the article entitled "MIT to offer course material online"
(The Battalion, 5 April 2001, p. 5A), the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT) "plans to offer nearly all its course materials
on the Internet for free." MIT President Charles Vest said that "The
project could provide course models for colleges around the country
and help developing countries improve their higher education systems.
The school's reputation also gets a boost." "The project is voluntary,
and some professors may decide not to participate, said Hal Abelson,
a computer science professor involved in the project. The Web site
will fall short of the student experience at MIT… The site will
contain just the 'raw materials' of the courses, not the teaching,
Abelson said."
I applaud the fact that MIT will offer course material online. In
1996, C. B. Brown said that there is a distinction between "information"
that is readily available and "knowledge" that must be acquired through
diligent study (C. B. Brown, 1996, "Trapped in One's Own Times: The
Individual's Relationship to Education and Practice," Civil Engineering
Systems, Vol. 14, pp. 1-18). Even before the computer age, there are
libraries. All the information in written form is stored there. Now
we have Internet where information is aplenty. However, it takes discipline
and diligence to digest the information in order for someone to gain
knowledge. In other words, information is a necessary and not sufficient
condition to acquiring knowledge. Having information available does
not equal to one's gaining knowledge. I believe that teachers are
still needed (and cannot be forgotten) for most of us.
[Readers who are interested in these articles are encouraged to read
the original papers in their entirety. Other summary notes on faculty
reward systems are available on the Internet at http://lohman.tamu.edu
under the heading "Summaries of Papers ..."]
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