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OpenCourseWare Update

[With this article on OpenCourseWare we begin a regular feature of updates to faculty by OCW Communications Manager Jon Paul Potts]

Three months into the Institute's bold MIT OpenCourseWare initiative, and early results indicate that the vision articulated on the front page of The New York Times in April 2001 – to make MIT course materials available on the Web, free of charge, to any user anywhere in the world – is an achievable and noble aim.

"The level of interest in OCW around the globe has been extraordinary, and innumerable people have referred to it as a tremendous contribution to the sharing of knowledge," said Professor Steven R. Lerman, the 1999-2001 MIT faculty chair and chairman of the MIT OCW Faculty Advisory Committee. "All of this positive response has enhanced MIT's image as a global leader in higher education. We are seen in the world community as fulfilling a vision of the Internet as a global communications medium that allows sharing of ideas about teaching and learning."

Through Dec. 12, 2002, statistics gathered from the MIT OCW Website show that:

• There are users from 202 nations and city-states around the world, and all seven continents;
  
  
• We have had 432,000 unique visitors to http://ocw.mit.edu;
  
  
• An average of 10+ page views per visitor, per visit, meaning users are digging deep into the faculty's published course materials;
  
  
• We have received 4,100 e-mails through the MIT OCW Feedback Form, the majority of the messages congratulatory and grateful for MIT's leadership.

These results indicate that the long-term impact of this initiative will be significant, both around the globe and right here in Cambridge.

"More and more students arrive at MIT with an expectation that the materials for their courses will be Web-accessible, and most faculty want to find ways to meet that expectation," Lerman said. "OCW provides many of us with a clear path for creating and enhancing our internal Websites, with the added benefit of then being able to make most of that internal content available to the world."

With 50 subjects published by the end of 2002, the MIT OCW team is now focused on September 2003 and the publication of course materials from 500 more MIT subjects. By any standard, this is an ambitious goal, and MIT OCW Executive Director Anne H. Margulies has enlisted the MIT faculty to help achieve it. Over the course of the last two months, Margulies and members of the MIT OCW staff have met with the Institute's deans, department heads, and faculty committees, securing commitments from individual faculty interested in participating in the next wave of published subjects.

"We are working proactively with department heads to support the curriculum and Web publishing goals of the departments, while we try and reduce the burden on faculty who want to utilize the Web to enhance their teaching," Margulies said. "OCW is an initiative that grew organically out of a faculty committee, and we know we will not succeed without faculty support."

If you are interested in participating in the MIT OCW pilot, or have any questions about MIT OCW, please contact Jon Paul Potts, MIT OCW Communications Manager, at jpotts@mit.edu or 617-452-3621.