17 August 2006 //
Tufts OCW Quarterly Newsletter
July 2006, Vol. 1, Issue 2

Tufts OpenCourseWare is part of a new educational movement where course content is accessible for free to everyone online. Tufts University's initial offerings demonstrate its strength in the life sciences, as well as a multidisciplinary approach, an international perspective, and an underlying ethic of service to our local, national and international communities. Tufts OCW is a publication of Tufts course materials. It does not require any registration, does not offer academic credit and, in most cases, does not provide access to Tufts faculty.

Summer Updates:

Tufts OCW celebrated its one-year anniversary on June 21, 2006! Congratulations to all!

Our first year publishing OpenCourseWare was a tremendous success resulting from a lively cross-school collaboration of faculty, staff, and administration from seven schools along with University Information Technology and Tufts University Sciences Knowledgebase (TUSK). The number of new and returning global users continues to grow as we offer additional benchmark quality course materials in the health sciences (medicine, veterinary medicine, dentistry, nutrition) and international affairs, as well as a growing number of courses from undergraduate arts and sciences, and engineering.

Major Accomplishments This Year:
Posted 22 courses to the Tufts OpenCourseWare site with 9 more scheduled for our quarterly release in September 2006
Streamlined workflow processing to retain rich metadata, assist in copyright review and ensure project sustainability
Created and documented open source code to facilitate content and infrastructure sharing
Developed an evaluation system to examine the quantitative and qualitative user feedback as well as our OCW model
218,551 Tufts OCW website visits from around the world
Participated in many national and international Open Education Resource initiatives and served as a model in content publishing and evaluation
Who Are Tufts OCW Visitors?

Of the nearly 1000 visitors who responded to our user survey, half identified themselves as self-learners, while 43% were faculty members or students at educational institutions ranging from two-year colleges to professional schools. Over half have masters' degrees or higher.

User Response:
Nearly 30% of faculty visited for support in developing/planning a curriculum/course for his/her department or for learning about a subject matter to enhance his/her own personal knowledge and preparing to teach a specific class
Roughly 35% of students visited to enhance their personal knowledge and complement a course they are currently enrolled in
Lecture chapter texts were noted as the most useful content type followed by readings and lecture handouts
Over 80% of users strongly agreed or agreed that they would recommend the website to others and that Tufts OCW will or has helped as a supplement to their existing knowledge about a topic
Some Quotes from Our Users:
"Thank you for making this available (for free!) on the Net. I'm a South African medical student who's struggling with an epidemiology assignment and this information you made available helped me tremendously."
"Your course is very well elaborated and extensive in relation to other courses about Blender three-dimensional modeling and animation open-source software that I have seen... thanks for such excellent work in helping people like me who desire to learn..." (Spanish student)
"It is privilege for me to thank you very much - all of the professors and staff of Tufts University - for all your scientific efforts that are provided by your web site."
"I am an animal care technician in Nova Scotia and take care of amphibians and think your course could be quite helpful to me."
"What you are doing is a great service to mankind."
"I propagate the information about MIT and Tufts as much as possible."
"Prosperity in the world will come thru education policies like yours on every level. Many thanks."
The Future:

Tufts received second-year funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to continue to publish new courses and build new open source tools. We are looking for new Tufts courses to publish and have a faculty information packet ready to send. If you are a Tufts faculty member, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it to start the process.

New Courses:
Four new courses have been launched in the June 2006 release:
Veterinary Respiratory Pathophysiology - Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine
This course introduces students to the structure and function of the respiratory system under normal and pathological conditions.
Medicine II - School of Dental Medicine
This course teaches dental students to evaluate systemic health problems and appropriately apply the knowledge in a future clinical setting.
Physics for Humanists - School of Arts and Sciences
This course covers the facts and concepts of classical and modern physics for the intellectually- and emotionally-curious student not intending to specialize in the natural sciences.
Three-Dimensional Modeling, Animation and Rendering using Blender 3D Software - School of Arts and Sciences
This 3-D design course is intended to offer students an introduction to the world of computer generated 3-D modeling and animation.

Website Traffic:

Traffic to the OCW website remained steady in the second quarter 2006 (April-June 2006). The total number of visits through the first year is 218,551, with an average of 643 visits per weekday and 883 visits per weekend. The most traffic comes from these countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.

OCW International Consortium News:

Four representatives from Tufts attended the Spring 2006 OCW Consortium Meeting in Kyoto, Japan on April 20th and 21st. Podcasts and photos from the meeting are available at http://ocw.kyoto-u.ac.jp/jp/gocw/conference/video.htm

The OCW Consortium Portal is now available at http://ocwconsortium.org. You can see Tufts' representation as well as that of the numerous other member institutions, with profiles of each (if available). The site includes a basic cross-site search to find materials on any subject offered by member institution sites, and information for other institutions or organizations who may be interested in sharing their content or supporting the movement. The site also includes news from around the consortium. Tufts is contributing to the consortium in three areas: sustainability, reach and impact, and growing more OCWs.

Notice to all Tufts Faculty:

OCW is continually looking for new courses to add to the site. If you would like to participate, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Support OCW:

If you would like to support Tufts in this exciting educational initiative, please visit https://www.alumniconnections.com/donate/tufts. When you reach Step 2 "About Your Gift," skip down to the "Other" field and enter "OpenCourseWare Fund" before entering the amount of your gift. Or you may call 800-737-7035 from anywhere in North America or 617-627-2643 from anywhere outside North America to make a gift via credit card. You may mail a donation (check payable to "Trustees of Tufts College") to:

Tufts University
P.O. Box 3306
Boston, MA 02241-3306
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