Did you know that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers
free online access to the materials used in almost all of its courses?
While you won’t earn credentials from MIT or get access to its faculty
through the OpenCourseWare site, it’s a remarkable resource for
self-education — or as a starting point for crafting your own professional
development programs for staff and volunteers, especially in the areas of management
and communications.
MIT OpenCourseWare
offers a variety of educational resources from lecture notes and readng
lists to problem and answer sets, videos and audio, and other
features, depending on the course.
No registration, user ID, or password is needed to view these course materials online, or to download them for offline use.
Course materials may be redistributed for non-commercial purposes
and without charge, on a Creative Commons Share-Alike license, as long
as proper attribution is given to MIT and the course authors. (See the terms of use for details.) You may also revise and modify the materials to suit your organization’s needs. (See MIT’s case studies (PDF) to learn how others have benefited.)
Here are a few of the courses I’ve spotted that may be of particular
interest to people working in non-profit organizations and associations:
- Management Communication
— communication principles, strategies, and methods to develop the
writing, speaking, teamwork, and interpersonal communication skills
necessary for managers;
- Ethics and the Law on the Electronic Frontier
— see especially the lecture notes on Personal Information on the Web,
Anonymity vs. Transparency, and Profiling and Datamining Post-9/11, and
the extensive reading list on Internet ethics and privacy issues;
- People and Organizations
— examines the historical context in which professionals work and the
major challenges facing the management profession today, with a focus
on negotiations, teamwork and leadership;
- Building and Leading Effective Teams
— introduction to leadership, teams, and learning communities: lecture
notes for an intensive one-week workshop from the Sloan School of
Management;
And if none of the available courses meet your organization's requirements at the moment, you can get notification of
new OCW courses, translated courses, and video/audio features by
subscribing to RSS feeds to match your areas of interest.
