The mission of the OCW Consortium is to serve both the individuals who use OCW and the institutions that make OCW possible. The Consortium provides a gateway to OCW projects and courses for the entire OCW community, fostering the success of the OCW movement and articulating its benefits. Through its public-relations efforts, the Consortium educates general audiences about the movement, directing potential users to resources that best suit their needs. For members, the Consortium marshals broad expertise regarding the ongoing development of open education projects and connects its members with an even broader network of OER practitioners. In other words, the OCW Consortium is an ideal meeting place for people wanting to make structured contributions to the development of open education worldwide.
As the movement grows, the OCW Consortium will continue to expand its service offerings. A recently expanded staff allows the Consortium to provide a fiscally and institutionally stable conduit for project support in developing regions or destabilized environments, to foster innovative OCW projects in high schools as well as community and technical colleges and to help our members address emergent issues like sustainability and support for research.
While the OCW Consortium does provide many benefits members and non-members alike, our members enjoy the particularly strong support from the Consortium's network of experts, including:
Consultation: Priority Access to resources such as the OCW Toolkit, Experts Forum, and Webinars for development of projects and project personnel.
Collaboration: Administrative support and meeting space for Working Groups and Communities of Interest.
Collective Visibility: International recognition and exposure through the Consortium’s website and through shared media exposure, both of which can direct and increase traffic to your OCW site and your organization.
Sustainability: Joint international effort to insure that the open sharing of educational resources has a productive future.