**OT**MIT to make nearly all course materials
available free on the World Wide Web
Unprecedented step challenges 'privatization of knowledge'
APRIL 4, 2001 • Contact
information
MIT OpenCourseWare
Fact Sheet
MIT OpenCourseWare
– Faculty Views
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -– The Massachusetts Institute of Technology—in
an unprecedented step in world-wide education—announced today it plans
to make the materials for nearly all its courses freely available on the Internet
over the next ten years.
The website for the project—MIT OpenCourseWare—would include material
such as lecture notes, course outlines, reading lists, and assignments for each
course. Over the next decade, the project expects to provide materials for over
2,000 courses across MIT's entire curriculum—in architecture and planning,
engineering, humanities, arts, social sciences, management, and science.
MIT President Charles M. Vest said of the program: "MIT OpenCourseWare
is a bold move that will change the way the Web is used in higher education.
With the content posted for all to use, it will provide an extraordinary resource,
free of charge, which others can adapt to their own needs. We see it as source
material that will support education worldwide, including innovations in the
process of teaching and learning itself."
Professor Steven Lerman, chair of the MIT faculty, said that the project stemmed
both from enthusiasm for the opportunities that the Internet affords for wide-spread
sharing of educational ideas, and from concern over the growing "privatization
of knowledge." He noted that many universities, including MIT, see the
Internet as a means of delivering revenue-generating distance education.
But, he said, "we also need to take advantage of the tremendous power
of the Internet to build on the tradition at MIT and in American higher education
of open dissemination of educational materials and innovations in teaching."
The project would begin as a large-scale pilot program over the next two years,
starting with the design of the software and services needed to support such
a large endeavor, as well as protocols to monitor and assess its utilization
by faculty and students at MIT and throughout the world. By the end of the two-year
period, it is expected that materials for more than 500 courses would be available
on the MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) site.
MIT sees a variety of benefits coming from the MIT OCW project:
Institutions around the world could make direct use of the MIT OCW materials
as references and sources for curriculum development. These materials might
be of particular value in developing countries that are trying to expand their
higher education systems rapidly.
Individual learners could draw upon the materials for self-study or supplementary
use.
The MIT OCW infrastructure could serve as a model for other institutions
that choose to make similar content open and available.
Over time, if other universities adopt this model, a vast collection of
educational resources will develop and facilitate widespread exchange of ideas
about innovative ways to use those resources in teaching and learning.
MIT OCW will serve as a common repository of information and channel of
intellectual activity that can stimulate educational innovation and cross-disciplinary
educational ventures.
The program will continue the tradition of MIT's leadership in educational
innovation, as exemplified by the engineering science revolution in the 1960s.
At that time, MIT engineering faculty radically revised their curricula and
produced new textbooks that brought the tools of modern science, mathematics,
and computing into the core of the engineering curriculum. As their students joined the engineering faculties of universities throughout the country, they
took with them their own course notes from MIT, and spread the new approach
to engineering education.
In similar spirit, but with new technologies, MIT OCW will make it possible
to quickly disseminate new knowledge and educational content in a wide range
of fields. President Vest commented that the idea of OpenCourseWare is particularly appropriate for a research university such as MIT, where ideas and information
move quickly from the laboratory into the educational program, even before they
are published in textbooks.
MIT believes that implementation of OCW will complement and stimulate innovation
in ways that may not even be envisioned at this point. "We expect that
MIT OCW will raise the tide of educational innovation within MIT and elsewhere,"
said MIT Provost Robert A. Brown.
"By making up-to-date educational content widely available," he said,
"OCW will focus faculty efforts on teaching and learning on their campuses.
It also will facilitate a new style of national and global collaboration in
education through the sharing of educational content and the potential of telecommunications
for real-time interactions."
The concept of MIT OpenCourseWare was born from deliberations of a study group
chartered by MIT's Council on Educational Technology. The Council, a group of
educational leaders from throughout MIT, asked the study group to consider ways
to use Internet technology to enhance education within MIT as well as MIT's
influence on education on a global scale. The group was composed of faculty
and staff from MIT, and was assisted by consultants from Booz-Allen & Hamilton
(BAH), who are helping with organizational aspects of the project.
The Booz-Allen team was led by BAH Vice President Reginald Van Lee. Mr. Van
Lee, an MIT alumnus, said "MIT continues its role as the preeminent, global
leader in the development and dissemination of new ideas and knowledge. We are
excited to have contributed to this innovative and important step in the advancement
of higher education."
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