[FSF India] [INFO] MIT's Open Courseware

[Raj Singh]

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

Unprecedented step challenges 'privatization of knowledge'

APRIL 4, 2001

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."

CONTACT:

Patti Richards
MIT Lab for Computer Science
Phone: 617-253-8923
prichards@lcs.mit.edu
_________________________________________________________________

MIT OpenCourseWare - Fact Sheet

1. What is MIT OpenCourseWare?

The idea behind MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) is to make MIT course
materials that are used in the teaching of almost all undergraduate and
graduate subjects available on the web, free of charge, to any user
anywhere in the world. MIT OCW will radically alter technology-enhanced
education at MIT, and will serve as a model for university dissemination of
knowledge in the Internet age. Such a venture will continue the tradition
at MIT and in American higher education of open dissemination of
educational materials, philosophy, and modes of thought, and will help lead
to fundamental changes in the way colleges and universities engage the web
as a vehicle for education.

MIT OpenCourseWare will provide the content of, but is not a substitute
for, an MIT education. The most fundamental cornerstone of the learning
process at MIT is the interaction between faculty and students in the
classroom, and amongst students themselves on campus.

2. What course materials would be available on OpenCourseWare?

MIT OCW will make available the core teaching materials that are used in
MIT classes. Depending on the particular class or the style in which the
course is taught, this could include material such as lecture notes, course
outlines, reading lists, and assignments for each course. More technically
sophisticated content will be encouraged.

3. In what format will the course materials be placed on the web?

The MIT OCW website will be coherent in design but flexible enough to
accommodate many different types of courses, lectures, seminars, etc. The
design and searching capabilities will help users locate materials by
discipline and subject area, type of materials, name of individual faculty
or author, and type of instruction.

4. How does OpenCourseWare differ from other types of web-based education,
including distance learning?

Many individual faculty at MIT and other universities already use the web
extensively to make standard course materials available to their students.
Some colleges and universities now require a website for every class. But,
to a large extent, these websites are designed for and access is provided
only to the students of these institutions. MIT OCW is an unprecedented
institutional effort of a much broader magnitude, as the goal is to provide
the course materials free and open to the world. Nothing of this scale has
ever been attempted before.

MIT OCW is not a distance learning initiative. Distance learning involves
the active exchange of information between faculty and students, with the
goal of obtaining some form of a credential. Increasingly, distance
learning is also limited to those willing and able to pay for materials or
course delivery.

MIT OCW is not meant to replace degree granting higher education. Rather,
the goal is to provide the content that supports an education.

5. Who will use OpenCourseWare and what are the potential benefits?

The materials on the OCW site will be open and freely available worldwide
for non-commercial purposes such as research and education, providing an
extraordinary resource, free of charge, which others can adapt to their own
needs. Some of the anticipated benefits are:

* Faculty at colleges and universities around the world can use the OCW
materials to develop new curricula and specific courses. 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 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 would develop and could facilitate widespread
exchange of ideas about innovative ways to use those resources in teaching
and learning.

* Within MIT, OCW would serve as a common repository of information and a
channel of intellectual activity that would stimulate educational
innovation and cross-disciplinary educational ventures.

6. Are faculty required to participate in MIT OCW?

Participation of MIT faculty in MIT OCW will be voluntary, although judging
by the number who already actively utilize the web as part of their
teaching, we expect that within 10 years, over 2000 MIT courses will be
available on the MIT OCW website. Resources will be available to provide
teaching assistants and professional production support for developing and
maintaining the MIT OCW website. MIT will commit to the continuous support
of the MIT OCW educational environment.

7. Are there other experiments in educational technology at MIT?

MIT is undertaking a number of ambitious projects to enhance and
potentially transform the educational experience through the use of new
technologies. These projects are stimulated and supported by MIT's Council
on Educational Technology and by Project I-Campus, a collaboration between
MIT and Microsoft Research.

Listed below are examples of such projects:

* TEAL: The TEAL Project will establish a technology enabled active
learning environment for large enrollment physics courses, which will serve
as a national model for such instruction. Building on the experience of
other universities, TEAL will merge lectures, recitations, and hands-on
laboratory experience into a technologically and collaboratively rich
experience. Software and teaching materials developed in this effort will
be made available nationally at little or no cost, in the hopes of
motivating a national effort along these lines.

* WebLab: MIT students can now test and probe fragile, microscopic
electronic structures via a novel online lab that can be accessed from dorm
rooms and other locations 24 hours a day. Although the lab's focus is the
study of microelectronic devices, WebLab has the potential to revolutionize
science and engineering education by providing online access to
state-of-the-art labs.

* ArchNet: The ArchNet project is based on the idea that educational
technology should be employed to create and enhance learning communities.
All community members will have individual workspaces in ArchNet which
provide them with personalized entry points to the system, and which also
allow them to represent themselves and their work to other members of the
community. Learning community environments of this sort will be very widely
used in professional education in the coming years.

MIT is also engaged in several collaborative and distance learning projects
around the world. In the future the technologies that are being developed
to support these efforts will also be utilized to enhance OCW materials.
Some of these projects include:

* MIT's Design Studio of the Future (DSOF): The DSOF is an
interdisciplinary effort between the School of Architecture and Planning
and the School of Engineering that focuses on geographically distributed
electronic design and work group collaboration. As a design project moves
along, aspects of the work can be shared, discussed, changed, and
implemented through electronic means.

* MIT-Singapore Alliance: In November 1998, MIT joined in an alliance with
the two leading research universities in Singapore--the National University
of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University--to explore the
application of information technology in the creation of a new global model
for long-distance engineering education and collaborative research.

* MIT's System Design and Management Program (SDM): MIT's first degree
granting program offered through distance education, SDM provides students
with expertise in both management sciences and engineering, specifically in
the areas of system design and new product development.

* Cambridge-MIT Institute: This is a new enterprise between MIT and
Cambridge University in England that will develop educational and research
programs designed to stimulate the development of new technologies, to
encourage entrepreneurship, and to improve productivity and
competitiveness. A key component will be an undergraduate student exchange
program.

8. What intellectual property policies will govern OCW materials?

The policies toward the intellectual property created for MIT OCW will be
clear and consistent with other policies for scholarly material used in
education. Faculty will retain ownership of most materials prepared for MIT
OCW, following the MIT policy on textbook authorship. MIT will retain
ownership only when significant use has been made of the Institute's
resources. If student course work is placed on the MIT OCW site, then
copyright in the work remains with the student.

9. What is the projected timetable for OpenCourseWare?

If funding comes through as hoped for, we would begin a pilot program in
the fall of 2001, with a goal of making over 500 courses available on the
World Wide Web over the next 2 1/2 years. Over the next decade, the project
expects to provide over 2000 courses across MIT's entire curriculum--in
architecture and planning, engineering, humanities, arts, social sciences,
management, and science.

10. How will OpenCourseWare be funded?

We are currently seeking outside funding partners to help cover the
start-up and annual costs of the project for the first decade of operation.
We anticipate that development costs during the initial phase of the
project will be between $7.5 million and $10 million per year.

_________________________________________________________________

MIT OpenCourseWare - Faculty Views

Paul Penfield, Jr.

Dugald C. Jackson Professor of Electrical Engineering in the Department of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and affiliated with MIT's
Microsystems Technology Laboratories.

Comment from Professor Penfield:

Everybody knows that the way to make progress in science is by using the
best results of others -- "standing on the shoulders of giants" is one way
of expressing this idea. That's why we publish scientific results. OCW will
let the same thing happen in education. I'm personally looking forward to
having my ideas used and improved on by others.
_________________________________________________________________

Jonathan A. King

Professor of Molecular Biology

Comment from Professor King:

This initiative is particularly valuable for courses covering emerging new
areas of knowledge, as well as intersecting disciplines. Having spent many
years developing a course on protein folding that served the needs of
biochemists, chemists, chemical engineers and computational biologists, I
am delighted that this work will be made available to a far broader
audience.

_________________________________________________________________

Olivier J. Blanchard

Class of 1941 Professor Deparment Head, Department of Economics

Comment from Professor Blanchard:

A clear case of a small effort, and large benefits. I very much hope that
our collective lecture notes become the most popular net destination.
_________________________________________________________________

Shigeru Miyagawa

Professor of Linguistics and Kochi Prefecture-John Manjiro Professor of
Japanese Language and Culture

Comment from Professor Miyagawa:

OCW reflects the idea that, as scholars and teachers, we wish to share
freely the knowledge we generate through our research and teaching. While
MIT may be better known for our research, with OCW, we wish to showcase the
quality of our teaching.
_________________________________________________________________

John Lienhard

Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Comment from Professor Lienhard:

Why do I support OpenCourseWare? Last year, I posted my undergraduate heat
transfer textbook on the web for no-charge distribution. It is a 700 page
pdf file, fully hyperlinked, and also properly typeset. In the domestic
book market, the cost for this book would be $85 for the hardback or $45
for the paperback. My aim, however, is to provide the knowledge to those
who can't afford to buy the book. The book has been downloaded by users
from around the globe. Those users include many professors and students at
remote universities in the third world. But the book is also being
downloaded by students at universities in the United States and engineers
in domestic industry. So the reach of my ebook has been quite broad. I
therefore have every reason to believe that MIT's OpenCourseWare Initiative
will immediately gain such a worldwide reach, and that it will allow MIT to
expand its influence to students, teachers, and technical professionals,
domestically and, especially, in less-developed nations.
_________________________________________________________________

Stephen C. Graves

Abraham J. Siegel Professor of Management & Engineering Systems
Co-director, Leaders for Manufacturing Program & System Design and
Management Program

Comment from Professor Graves:

The OpenCourseWare initiative is a bold act of leadership by MIT to apply
technology to foster a global learning community that conceivably will
strengthen all components of our higher education system.

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