What makes an "OpenCourseWare" project?

An OpenCourseWare is a free and open digital publication of high quality university-level teaching materials – including syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, and exams – organized as courses. OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiatives typically do not provide a degree, credit or certification, or access to instructors. The materials are made available under open licenses, for use and adaptation by educators and learners around the world.

OCW is a concept developed at MIT by a faculty committee that posited that the best way to advance education around the world was to share their course materials openly and freely, utilizing the World Wide Web. The OCW concept is a part of the larger open knowledge movement that promotes free and unrestricted access to knowledge. An OCW site provides open access to the primary teaching materials for courses taught at educational institutions, enabling educators to draw on the materials for teaching purposes, and students and self-learners to utilize the materials for the development of their personal knowledge in a particular subject area.

Thus, an OCW site:

• Publishes course materials created by faculty (and sometimes other colleagues or students) to support teaching and learning from at least 10 courses from a duly accredited institution
• Is IP-cleared, meaning that the OCW publisher has the rights to make the materials available under open terms and that nothing in the materials infringes the copyrights of others
• Offers the materials free of charge for non-commercial use
• Is universally accessible via the Web
• Permits use, reuse, adaptation (derivative works), translation, and redistribution of the materials by others

What institutions have already published OCW projects?

The OCW idea is starting to catch on at universities around the world. There are now more than 50 OCW-like initiatives underway at universities in the United States, and around the world. To see a complete list of institutions and organizations participating in OpenCourseWare Consortium activities, visit the About Us section of this Web site.

How can I find what courses are available from OCW Consortium member institutions?

Users are advised to visit the Use section of this Web portal. There are two ways to find the courses you might be interested in. You can visit the individual OCW sites by clicking on the name of the participating institutions, and then browse the complete course listings on the individual member Web sites.

Or, users are advised to use the Google Search box at the top right-hand side of the page. Simply enter the topic you are interested in – such as biology – or the language you are searching for courses in – such as Japanese – and a list of all course meeting your search criteria will be returned to you on the search results page.

Why should my institution undertake an OCW project?

OCW is a bold idea. Often, faculty members and academic leaders regard their primary course materials as the "crown jewels" of the instructional program – the essence of what they offer to students, the products that generate tuition revenues, and the substance of what they publish in textbooks. It can be challenging to persuade colleagues that publishing course materials freely and openly over the Internet is a good idea. To be sure, there are hurdles and costs to mounting an OCW effort, and people will raise legitimate concerns and harbor understandable reservations about it. Yet, we believe there is a strong case that the benefits of OCW far outweigh the costs and concerns. At MIT, with 1400 courses published through June 1, 2006, and at other institutions participating in the global OpenCourseWare Movement, we have demonstrated that the obstacles are manageable.

An OCW initiative aligns closely with the educational and public service missions of a non-profit institution of higher learning. More importantly, such an effort resonates deeply with faculty who have a passion for teaching and who have dedicated their lives to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge. This is why a key factor for success of an OCW initiative is to ensure that a core group of faculty stand squarely behind the effort and can serve as champions of the idea.

The principal components of the case for OCW are:

• Benefits for users and for global society – OCW helps advance knowledge by providing resources for educators, who may draw on them for curriculum development and teaching purposes, and students and self-learners, who may use the materials for their personal knowledge development. These resources may be particularly helpful for people in developing regions of the world.
• Benefits for the institution and its community – There are many practical benefits for the provider/publisher of an OCW, at all levels:
  • Institution – Advances the institutional mission, stimulates innovation, and generates alumni and community pride.
  • Academic departments – Showcases the departments' offerings, enhances faculty and student recruitment, accelerates adoption of digital materials in teaching, and fosters collaboration among faculty.
  • Faculty – Provides a new vehicle for contributing to faculty members' discipline, affords greater visibility for themselves and their work, provides a valuable service to faculty for enhancing the presentation of course materials, provides an information resource, and embraces faculty values.
  • Students – Helps plan their courses of study and provides supplementary study materials.

Reasonable people at your institution will no doubt raise legitimate concerns about launching an OCW effort at your institution. Proponents must be prepared to address reservations about such issues as cost, erosion of distance education revenues, drain on faculty time, intellectual property, and others.

How much will it cost my institution to undertake an OCW project?

Many factors influence the cost of an OCW initiative:

• Scope of the intended OCW publication;
• Pre-existing availability of course materials in publishable digital formats;
• Availability of other in-house services that may reduce the need for, or scope of, a separate OCW publishing organization;
• Capabilities of the existing technology infrastructure for managing OCW content and for hosting the distribution of that content over the Web.

What kind of materials would my faculty publish on their OCW Web sites?

Typical content may include:

• Planning materials – Syllabus, calendar, pedagogical statement, and/or faculty introductions
• Subject matter content – Lecture notes, reading lists, full-text readings, video and/or audio lectures
• Learning activities – Problem sets, essay assignments, quizzes, exams labs and/or projects

How does an OCW project deal with the intellectual property rights of the faculty who are sharing their materials, and other copyright owners?

The materials published on an OCW Web site should be IP-cleared, meaning that the OCW publisher has the rights, either through ownership or by license (permission), to make the materials available under open terms and that nothing in the materials infringes the copyrights of others. The publisher may retain the right to publish the materials in other forums.

How can my institution become a member of the OpenCourseWare Consortium?

Click here to obtain information on joining the OpenCourseWare Consortium.

Do users need to register to use OCW materials, and can they receive credit?

Because OCW projects are not intended to be distance learning, or degree granting, initiatives, there is no registration process required for users to view course materials. An OCW project is a publication of the course materials that support the dynamic classroom interactions of that particular institution's education. OCW is available on the Web, free of charge, to any user anywhere in the world.

What are the prerequisites to use OCW materials?

Because OCW projects are not degree granting, or credit bearing, initiatives, there is no registration process required for users to view course materials. There are also no prerequisites for users who utilize OCW course materials in their own learning. Users are encouraged to review the curriculum and graduation requirements of the host institution to discover the course sequences that may be available through an individual institution's OCW project.

How can I utilize OCW course materials?

The underlying premise and purpose of OCW is to make course materials used in the host institution's courses freely and openly available to others for non-commercial educational purposes. Through OCW, the publisher grants the right to anyone to use the materials, either "as is," or in a modified form. There is no restriction on how a user can modify the materials for the user's purpose. Materials may be edited, translated, combined with someone else's materials, reformatted, or changed in any other way. However, most OCW projects share three requirements that an OCW user must meet to use the materials:

• Non-commercial: Use of OCW materials is open to all except for profit-making entities who charge a fee for access to educational materials.
• Attribution: Any and all use or reuse of the material, including use of derivative works (new materials that incorporate or draw on the original materials), must be attributed to the publishing institution and, if a faculty member's name is associated with the material, to that person as well.
• Share alike (aka "copy left"): Any publication or distribution of original or derivative works, including production of electronic or printed class materials or placement of materials on a Web site, must offer the works freely and openly to others under the same terms that the OCW-publishing institution first made the works available to the user.

How does OCW differ from other types of Web-based education, including distance learning?

An OCW project differs from other Web-based education offerings in that it is free and open, and because it takes an institutional approach to online course publication. 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. An OCW project is not meant to replace degree-granting higher education or for-credit courses. Rather, the goal is to provide the content that supports an education. Many individual faculty members at universities around the world already use the Web extensively to make standard course materials available to their students. Some colleges and universities now require a Web site for every class. But, to a large extent, these Web sites are designed for, and access is only provided to, the students enrolled at these institutions. OCW projects are institutional efforts of a much broader magnitude, as the goal is to provide the course materials free and open to the educators and learners around the world.

What is the long-term vision of The OpenCourseWare Movement?

The early-adopter institutions in The OpenCourseWare Movement are building new electronic publishing models for educational materials enabled by Internet technologies. While the published content from the first OCW projects are already providing value to users, over the next five to 10 years published content, technology, and processes will become increasingly more robust. Between now and we expect that a diverse array of institutions, offering content from a variety of different disciplines and across the spectrum of higher education, will publish their courses and begin to share best practices in open educational publishing.