MIT OpenCourseWare

MIT OpenCourseWare is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to put all of the educational materials from MIT's undergraduate- and graduate-level courses online, free and openly available to anyone, anywhere, by the year 2007. MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) can be considered a large-scale, web-based publication of MIT course materials. The project was announced in 2001.

This project is jointly funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the MIT.

The main challenge in implementing this initiative has not been faculty resistance, but rather, the logistical challenges presented by determining ownership and obtaining publication permission for the massive amount of intellectual property items that are embedded in the course materials of MIT's faculty, in addition to the time and technical effort required to convert the educational materials to an online format.

As of January 2005, 915 courses are available online. While a few of these are limited to chronological reading lists and discussion topics, a majority provide homework problems and exams (often with solutions) and lecture notes. Some courses also include interactive web demonstrations in Java or Matlab, complete textbooks written by MIT professors, and even streaming video lectures.

Subject matter

OCW subject matter is not limited to technology. As of June 2004, courseware is available in the following areas:

Aeronautics and Astronautics
Anthropology
Architecture
Biological engineering
Biology
Brain and Cognitive sciences
Chemical engineering
Chemistry
Civil and Environmental engineering
Comparative Media Studies
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary sciences
Economics
Electrical engineering and Computer science
Engineering Systems
Foreign languages and Literatures
Health Sciences and Technology
History
Linguistics and Philosophy
Literature
Materials science and Engineering
Mathematics
Mechanical engineering
Media Arts and Sciences
Music and Theatre arts
Nuclear engineering
Ocean Engineering
Physics
Political science
Science, Technology, and Society
Management
Urban studies and Planning
Women's Studies
Writing and Humanistic studies
Implications

By making their educational materials openly available, MIT is demonstrating that they can give away such materials without threatening the value of an MIT education, or in other words, that there may be something in the educational process that cannot be captured in a book.

It is possible to look at this initiative as a shot across the bow of those who are trying to turn curricula into a commodity. Consolidation in the publishing industry has led to the formation of huge corporations that sell books and teaching materials to schools. These companies are always trying to leverage the capital value of their curricula. For example, they are, increasingly, experimenting with on-line distributed education in order to sell their content more widely and in that sense they may be trying to replace the traditional school.

History

The concept of MIT OCW grew out of the MIT Council on Education Technology, which was charged by MIT's provost in 1999 with determining how MIT should position itself in the distance learning / e-learning environment. MIT OCW provides a new model for the dissemination of knowledge and collaboration among scholars around the world, and contributes to the “shared intellectual commons” in academia, which fosters collaboration across MIT and among other scholars. The project was spearheaded by Hal Abelson and other MIT Faculty.

In September 2002, the MIT OCW proof-of-concept pilot site opened to the public, offering 32 courses. In September 2003, MIT OCW published its 500th course, including some courses with complete streaming video lectures. By September 2004, 900 MIT courses were available online. The response from MIT faculty and students has been very positive and MIT OpenCourseWare is seen as being consistent with MIT's mission (to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century) and is true to MIT's values of excellence, innovation, and leadership.

Spin-off projects

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: JHSPH OpenCourseWare
Utah State University: USU OpenCourseWare
Vietnam: Fulbright Economics Teaching Program: FETP OpenCourseWare
Universia.net is a consortium with more than 700 member universities in Spain, Portugal and Latin America that has translated many MIT Course into Spanish and Portuguese: Universia OpenCourseWare
CORE, China Open Resources Education, is a consortium of Chinese universities that has started to translate MIT-OCW courses into Chinese. They will also publicly publish their own Chinese courses in the coming years.

External links

MIT OpenCourseWare

BBC news story: Learn for free online

Wired: MIT Everywhere

Opencourseware How To designed to share the experience, key decisions, and lessons learned that led to the implementation of MIT's OpenCourseWare project.

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