MIT to make nearly all course materials available free on the World Wide Web.
joseph hobeika
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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