Page:A Basic Guide to Open Educational Resources.pdf/76



Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has perhaps the most well-known institutional OCW project, and is responsible for pulling many colleges from all over the world into the OER movement. In 1999, Provost Robert A. Brown asked a committee of MIT faculty, students, and administrators to provide strategic guidance on how MIT could advance knowledge and education to students in science, technology, and other scholarship areas. This mission was to literally fulfil MIT's mission statement about how to best serve 'the nation and the world in the 21st century.' Based on that premise, MIT's OCW began to provide users with open access to class syllabi, lecture notes, course calendars, problem sets and solutions, examinations, reading lists, and even a selection of video lectures in 2003.

MIT Open Courseware (http://ocw.mit.edu) currently makes available 1,900 courses on the Internet at no cost for non-commercial purposes. Importantly, MIT reports that it is finding clear evidence that this process of sharing materials has led to significant increases in shared use of content within its own institution, with departments increasingly sourcing materials from each other rather than developing their own from scratch.

Figure 5: MIT OpenCourseWare Initiative

Another well-known institutional source of HE OER is OpenLearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk). The Open University is one of the world's most successful distance education universities. Through academic research, pedagogic innovation and collaborative partnership it seeks to be a world leader in the design, content and delivery of supported open and distance learning. The OpenLearn website gives free access to Open University course materials. Users can find hundreds of 70