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– MIT will endeavor to put all its course content, undergraduate and graduate, into a web-based format

– The OCW website will be open and available to the world – MIT will commit to OCW as a permanent, sustainable activity

– Coherent Searchable repository of MIT Courdse Content– Standards-based Model for Publishing Course Coontent.

The Concept

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Thank you for establishing this initiative. I rarely read the New York Times

and literally get moved to tears by a possibility. What I saw from your

initiative is the possibility of a major global upgrade of education –

professors in the US and around the whole world, including those in little

Uganda where I am from, will be inspired and motivated to be on par with

MIT standards. The students will demand it because they will have access

to high-end quality education, giving them opportunities for a better life and

better access to other opportunities. This is global, and I would like to

thank you for your generosity, for your commitment to education and not

just to quality content but to designing an environment that fosters curiosity

and joy in learning.

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Goals

• Demonstrate a model for university dissemination of knowledge in the Internet age

• Contribute to improving the quality and standard of education at all levels nationally and worldwide

• Set an example for other leading educational institutions worldwide

• Create a major, shared campus-wide intellectual resource

• Initial two years funded by an $11M grant from the Mellon and Hewlett foundations

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•The Values to MIT and Society:The Values to MIT and Society:

•MIT takes intellectual, educational and moral leadership by

– committing to integrate educational-technology deeply into on-campus education

– demonstrating a model for university dissemination of knowledge in the Internet age..

– contributing to improving the quality and standard of education at all levels nationally and worldwide.

– contributing to bridging the national and worldwide “digital divide”.

Alignment with MIT’s mission:

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OpenCourseware is consistent with MIT’s core values and educational mission:

– Continuous evolution of on-campus educational content: open access across campus to materials.

– Recognition that the substantive value of education is in customization and packaging, faculty involvement and certification, and setting up of learning communities. These are MIT’s core strengths.

Alignment with MIT’s mission:

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OpenCourseware is consistent with MIT’s core values and educational mission:

• Digital distribution increasingly commoditizes content, which helps sharpen our focus on the substantive values of residential education: personal attention from faculty and participation in learning and research communities.

• “Giving it away” helps defuse complex intellectual property issues of ownership and control that can otherwise distract the university from its mission to disseminate knowledge.

Alignment with MIT’s mission:

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What We’ve Learned

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• Opened MIT OCW pilot to the public on September 30, 2002 (currently 50 courses)

• Process

– Developed unified process with MIT academic computing groups to leverage resources and meet faculty needs

– Designed detailed course publication process

– Designed intellectual property (IP) strategy and developed “IP Guide for Faculty”

– Adopted Creative Commons license to make OCW materials available to users

– Developed course publication pipeline strategy and met with all 33 of MIT’s department/section heads

• Technology

– Implemented pilot phase technology strategy and architecture

– Designed and completed detailed specs for content management system (CMS)

– Developed initial metadata tagging strategy

• Organization

– Designed organization and filled 18 of 20 positions

• Planning, Measurement, and Communication

– Complete audit of MIT course Web sites

– Developed evaluation and measurement plan

– Created internal and external communication plan

What We’ve Learned

Key Accomplishments to Date

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What We’ve Learned

Key Decisions (1)

Goal 1–Publication Production: Establish and execute efficient, high quality publication processes

• Make faculty participation in OCW voluntary.

• Outsource production work to increase efficiency and optimize staffing levels, while retaining planning, management, coordination, and faculty contact responsibilities.

• Publish smaller-than-expected initial pilot in September 2002 (32 courses) to meet timing expectations and benefit from “go live” learning experience.

• Eliminate parallel internal OCW site (live course delivery for MIT teaching purposes) to refocus resources on external publication mission.

• Implement a "unified strategy" to make OCW publication a seamless-as-possible extension of the normal course preparation process to minimize burden on faculty.

• Develop department-based approach for production goal-setting and faculty recruitment.

• Complete audit of MIT course Web sites and electronic content.

• Develop an intellectual property strategy to streamline the clearance process and eliminate restricted materials and royalty payments.

• Adopt a Creative Commons model license for offering MIT course materials to users worldwide.

• Pilot an agreement with Universia.net to create a first set of Spanish and Portuguese translations of materials for selected courses.

Mar ’02

Jun ’02

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Jan ’03

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Goal 2–Organization: Build and sustain a responsive, professional organization

• Create a distributed organization that engages department-based staff in partnership with OCW staff to optimize interaction with faculty and make the process transparent.

Mar ’02

Goal 3–Technology: Create an effective technology infrastructure

• Engage “edge service” network provider for optimum content distribution with minimum response times and improved security.

Jul ’02

• Outsource technology design, implementation, and support for content management system and ancillary support systems.

Sep ’02

• Implement content management system to support the OCW production process. Dec ’02

Goal 4–Planning and Evaluation: Measure usage & evaluate impact of OCW and factor findings into future plans

• Design and develop an effective measurement plan and reporting process. April ’03

Goal 5–Communications: Disseminate information about OCW and capture feedback• Publicize initial pilot with low-key “soft launch.” Aug ’02

• Develop a hybrid launch strategy for September 2003 that rolls out new courses in manageable batches yet preserves the launch as a newsworthy event for public relations purposes.

Jan ’03

What We’ve Learned

Key Decisions (2)

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• Focus on faculty authors To encourage faculty voluntary participation, we must make it easy for them to contribute without extra burden, and ensure that there is clear benefit for them in return.

Ideally, publication of electronic course materials should be a natural, tail-end extension of the normal course development and teaching process. A separate content collection and authoring process for the publication effort adds too much extra work for faculty.

The publication process is complex, yet the complexity needs to be transparent to contributors and users alike. Therefore the process must be mediated by a high-caliber, flexible core team. Moreover, to spread the work and to ensure that faculty are optimally engaged, distribute content collection and production responsibilities among the core MIT OCW team and knowledgeable departmental staff who are close to the faculty.

Encourage and adopt standards for learning objects to make them easier to exchange among disparate systems. A thoughtful tagging scheme enables easier searching and access to materials.

Clear goals must be articulated and understood. These goals should then drive all processes, especially an evaluation plan that tracks metrics designed to measure attainment of those goals.

Keep a record of what works and what does not, and communicate this in a thoughtful way to constituencies. At the same time, encourage feedback and have effective mechanisms to capture it and translate it into improvement of MIT OCW.

• Streamlined process

• Build an effective, distributed organization

• Embrace standards

• Measure and evaluate

• Facilitate two-way communication

What We’ve Learned

Emerging Principles