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RSS feedsThe entire catalogue of information from 1,800 courses at the prestigious
Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) will be available free online by
the end of the year. Once uploaded, it will represent one of the internet’s most
important resources.
By providing free access to course material such as lecture notes, assignment details, podcasts and videocasts, MIT’s Open CourseWare programme will transform the e-learning landscape.
MIT initiated the programme in 2001 and material from 1,550 MIT courses is already available. Anne Margulies, executive director of Open CourseWare, said that in January alone, the site had had 1.5 million visits, and the figure rose to two million if visits to language translated sites were included. Overseas visitors– from China and India in particular – dominate usage traffic, with 60% of visits originating outside the US.
Margulies said that MIT had seen little potential for making money from putting materials online and had decided to give them away. She said that about half of the Open CourseWare users were teaching themselves with the materials, 35% were students at other institutions, and 15% were teachers.
“MIT is eager for the material to be re-used, as long as it is for noncommercial purposes, and whoever re-uses it gives proper citation to the original MIT author as well as to MIT,” Margulies said.
An international consortium of open courseware providers has been formed ( http://www.ocwconsortium.org/ ). It has 120 members, half of whom are already providing open courseware.
