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MIT World http://web.mit.edu/mitworld was born at the Center for Advanced Educational Services (CAES) two years ago, after three years of planning and development work. The motivation was simple: public seminars and lectures comprise an important part of the richness of a campus-based university experience. Yet too few of us, even on campus (!), can see these lectures live – due to scheduling constraints for those on campus and due to travel and logistical constraints for others. MIT alumni in particular were asking for some meaningful way to "stay connected" to MIT. With the growing acceptance of the Web as a means for informing, at CAES we started a process of examining how we could get the best of MIT's public lectures and seminars onto the Web. Finally, with the support of the MIT Alumni Association, the Industrial Liaison Program, the Provost's Office, and the Lord Foundation of Massachusetts, MIT World is a reality. If you haven't visited MIT World, try it, you'll like it!
MIT World is a free, open streaming media Website of the most significant public events at MIT. It features the most recent speakers and guests from across the campus and around the world. By tailoring the content selection to the "scientific attentive" and the "thinking public" it has grown to reflect a great deal about MIT and the world of ideas that are generated, discussed, and analyzed every day on campus. Ironically, it also has captured a body of work that reflects the post-9/11 realities that affect our world, and will perhaps have historical significance to future generations. It is fast becoming an essential intellectual offering, central to MIT's mission, with a total (as of March 31, 2003) of 111 videos, growing at a rate of six to eight new videos per month. We are aware of no other comparable university-based service.
To sample the rich content of MIT World, simply go to the Website and make sure you have the REAL Player(tm) downloaded on your computer's hard drive. Then, selecting and viewing is simply "point and click." If we are stretched for time, one of our favorite ways to experience MIT World is simply to listen to the streaming lecture while doing e-mail or some other computer-based task.
Scope
The videos on MIT World come from more than 33 individual sources at MIT, representing all five schools, and a wide range of labs, departments, centers, and programs. The site currently features 12 Nobel Laureates – Robert Horvitz, Wolfgang Ketterle, Kofi Annan, Franco Modigliani, Paul A. Samuelson, Robert M. Solow, Charles Townes, David Baltimore, John Hume, Seamus Heaney, Mario Molina, and Eric Chivian.
The speakers on MIT World represent a broad range of academic disciplines. Physicists (Wolfgang Ketterle, Walter Lewin) are featured along with biologists (Eric Lander), bio-engineers (Robert Langer), economists (Lester Thurow, Olivier Blanchard), the CEOs of major U.S. companies (Lou Gerstner of IBM, Carly Fiorina of Hewlett-Packard, Henri Temeer of Genzyme, Michael Dell of Dell Computers, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com), experts in current world affairs (Kofi Annan, Scott Ritter, Lewis Branscomb), writers (Stephen Pinker, Anita Desai, Sylvia Nasar), poets (Seamus Heaney), and inventors (Doug Engelbart, Steve Wozniak, Raymond Kurzweil). See the "Top Ten" most popular videos in the accompanying table.
Audience Growth
Without much "marketing," the number of visitors to the MIT World Website has grown significantly over the past year. From March 2002 to March 2003:
Other audience information:
Integration/Communication
MIT World is a regular part of several high profile communications and outreach efforts at MIT including:
Mail/Feedback
MIT World has received approximately 1,500 requests to be added to the e-mail list serve. Alumni and other visitors regularly offer general comments about their viewing preferences. 30% of the mail comes from self-identified alumni. The mailing list has grown from 250 in May 2002 to more than 1,500 today.
Constituents/Internal
MIT World is uniquely positioned to serve a wide range of constituents. First, the producers of the events themselves are served by dramatically increasing the reach of each event, so that more people are able the view it. The lecture remains readily available in the archive. For example, the MIT Libraries and MIT Press Bookstore spent $600 to videotape the Steven Pinker authors@MIT event. In 14 weeks, that lecture has been seen more than 3,000 times. From the point of view of the sponsoring organization, that's a "cost per viewer" of only 20 cents. Adding typical speaker's cost of travel and lodging to that of videotaping, without the multiplying effect of MIT World, a typical seminar at MIT costs in the range of $20 to $50 per live audience member who sees the lecture. Adding MIT World to the "content distribution model" can reduce the average cost per viewer to less than a dollar.
Audiences connected to MIT who are served include, but are not limited to: MIT Alumni, Industrial Liaison Program members, faculty, students, and staff at MIT (with particular value to those at Lincoln Lab), the Educational Council, MIT Parents Group, the Admissions Office, participants in MIT-related programs such as the Singapore-MIT Alliance, the Cambridge-MIT Alliance, and visitors to MIT's OpenCourseWare Website.
Constituents/External
MIT World is fast becoming required or recommended viewing at other institutions. E-mail from staff at Honeywell indicates that Honeywell Corporation has placed MIT World on its employee intranet "technology learning site" under "free seminars." MIT World's Web stats service reveals four examples of other universities assigning MIT World lectures. These include: Washington University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Maryland, and Saginaw Valley State University
MIT World is also a partner in the WGBH Forum Network. This forum, run by the nation's premier public broadcaster, hosts videos from educational and cultural institutions from the greater Boston area. MIT World has provided a small number of its videos to the WGBH Forum Network site. Visitors to WGBH's site are directed to MIT World to see more videos from MIT.
Beyond MIT and its alumni, the general public is a major audience. The intellectually curious public looks to MIT as a source for original ideas about a wide range of issues that affect the world today.
MIT World Gets a Facelift!
Just as the MIT home page has recently been dramatically redesigned, so too is the ever-growing MIT World site undergoing major renovations – leading to a significant upgrade in capabilities and "friendliness." The new features will include:
These services will result in the following changes:
The new site is expected to go live in June 2003, after a period of testing. Look for it!
Conclusion
As the audience grows rapidly and the use of the videos steadily increases, the momentum behind MIT World is significant. Each video added to the site has its own constituency. While overall comments received about MIT World have been very positive, many users also draw conclusions about what this effort says about MIT itself. The site reflects the MIT identity well, and extends the message of "openness" on campus as well as around the world. The new Website's design takes into consideration the consistent feedback received from the audience, whose overriding requests are for more videos, and for smart tools to find them
MIT World is uniquely positioned to provide an informal learning experience to an audience of lifelong learners, and build an open learning environment for those who are interested in the world of ideas generated at MIT.
Acknowledgements
In the production process, MIT World utilizes the excellent services of three MIT units: MIT Video Productions (MVP), Digital Technologies and Streaming Operations (DTSO) and MIT IS/Web Communications Services (WCS). The first two units are parts of AMPS, Academic Media Production Services.
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