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OpenCourseWare Update
"Two roads diverged in a wood, /
And I – I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all
the difference."
–Robert Frost, 1874-1963
A few years ago a team of faculty, administrators, and students on the MIT Council on Educational Technology (CET) found itself in the tangled woods where higher education converged with the Internet. The question? How should MIT position itself in the charged world of e-learning?
After more than a year of study, dialogue and deliberation, the recommendation in fall 2000 was that MIT should take the road less traveled: to launch OpenCourseWare (OCW) wherein MIT course materials that are used in the teaching of almost all undergraduate and graduate subjects would be made available on the Web free of charge, to any user anywhere in the world.
At a time when businesses and universities alike were caught in the "dot.com" frenzy, trying to make their fortunes through distance education, the Institute stepped off the path that in the end led many to financial failure. Instead, OCW took MIT in the opposite direction. As MIT President Charles M. Vest told The New York Times in April 2001, the idea of OCW was "counter-intuitive in a market-driven world."
Critics thought the proposal "crazy" at that time, but OCW was not an isolated idea. It grew from a process that examined how technology could support MIT's educational mission, and how the Institute might exercise leadership in the Internet Age. Leadership meant taking chances and setting an example, and with OCW, MIT unquestionably took leadership. OCW would not have been happened without the vision and courage of the Institute's senior administrators, and the faculty's remarkable dedication to education and MIT's mission.
With the official launch of the OCW Website this month with 500 subjects from all five MIT schools and 33 academic disciplines, what started as a vision is becoming reality. The Mellon and Hewlett Foundations and MIT provided the needed funds; the OCW organization provided the execution; and more than 450 faculty have contributed their course materials. A perusal of http://ocw.mit.edu/ reveals a remarkable showcase of the material we use in our undergraduate and graduate education: lecture notes, problem sets and quizzes, multimedia simulations, and a sample of video lectures. The goal is to put approximately 1,800 subjects – virtually all the subjects the Institute offers – on OCW by 2008.
Even before the official launch of 500 subjects, OCW's pilot site with its initial 50 subjects received worldwide attention and interest. In the past year, the site received more than 110 million hits from over 200 countries, and generated 7,500 e-mails from around the world. Those e-mails tell us that home-schooled children in rural Kentucky – 220 miles from the nearest library – are benefiting from access to MIT materials; and students across the United States are augmenting their learning through Gil Strang's video lectures, Chiang Mei's wave simulations, and Arnold Barnett's lecture notes. Internationally, OCW materials have been translated into 10 languages (that we know of, including Spanish, Portuguese, Mongolian, Ukrainian, and German); and the education ministries of several countries are involved in promoting OCW to their own universities. There is also the heartwarming story of how educators from a persecuted religious minority in the Middle East, denied access to higher education in their native country, are using MIT course materials to support an underground university for their members.
In addition, the "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-mail newsletter now boasts almost 11,000 subscribers, a self-selected audience that will be valuable in assessing the impact of OCW.
Here at home, faculty have become more aware of what their colleagues teach, while students have welcomed the syllabi and lecture notes available on OCW. Some of us have been recognized by peers at other universities for our OCW Websites, and in some cases this has led to new teaching and research collaborations. Many MIT faculty proposals to agencies such as the National Science Foundation now mention OCW as one of the ways pedagogy and research at MIT is having a broad impact.
With all this good news, we still have a long way to go to the publication of 1,800 subjects. If you are one of the hundreds of faculty who have already contributed your materials to OCW, I say "Thank you!" If you are not yet participating, consider the benefits of openly sharing your work through OCW – benefits for users of OCW, but also, the potential rewards for you in the creation of a visible Web presence for your teaching, and in increased opportunities for collaboration. The effort is minimal and the entire OCW staff is dedicated to making your participation as smooth and easy as possible.
For many of us, the ultimate vision for OCW is that MIT, by setting an example for how a university might rethink its mission in the Internet Age, will inspire many other institutions to openly share their educational materials. In establishing a model and standards, we make it easier for others to follow MIT's example, and perhaps, even do it better. Already, we have received inquiries from private and public universities in the United States, Canada, Europe,` and Asia, asking, "How might our institution do the same?" The potential impact of a worldwide network of "opencoursewares" could be truly profound.
There is a Chinese proverb that roughly translates to "Throw out a brick to attract a jade." In taking the road less traveled with OCW, MIT has offered educators around the world a new way of thinking about open sharing. Our hope is that one day, open sharing will be a road well traveled, a road covered with jade.
Read more about the worldwide impact of OCW in Wired Magazine at http://www.wired.com/wired/current.html. If you would like to participate in OCW, please contact Jon Paul Potts, the OCW communications manager, at jpotts@mit.edu or 2-3621.
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