OpenCourseWare Grows Up

Since MIT launched OpenCourseWare in 2001, this project has grown not too fast but firmly. MIT plans to publish course materials of all its courses online, including syllabi, lecture notes, quizzes, and so on, for everyone to use freely, yes, freely. More than 900 of MIT’s 1800 courses have been published so far. If you would like to know more about OCW, you may read The Chronicle’s article ‘Open Courseware’ Idea Spreads.

Obviously the project needs money, and fortunately, it’s supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. With the foundation’s support, many other institutions join MIT now, although many of them plan to release selected courses instead of all, like MIT. In addition, some institutions have their own features. For example, Yale University announced last year to have the lecture videos of selected courses online.

The other institutions working on the OCW project are: Carnegie Mellon University, Foothill-DeAnza Community College District, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Open University of the UK, Tufts University, U. of California at Irvine, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Utah State University.

OCW can be a great resource to UHV instructors and students who work on online courses.