A New Model for Open Sharing: Massachusetts Institute of Technology's OpenCourseWare Initiative Makes a Difference: e200

Abstract

[...]what if that same young instructor was given free and open access to a syllabus, complete lecture notes, and problem sets and solutions from two members of the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)? Utilizing the Internet, MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) has opened MIT's curriculum and educational materials to a global audience of teachers and learners--an instructor at a new engineering university in Ghana, a precocious highschool biology student in suburban Chicago, a political scientist in Poland, a literature professor in upstate New York--who are all now able to use the same materials that MIT's professors rely on to teach their full-time students.

Citation: Margulies AH (2004) A New Model for Open Sharing: Massachusetts Institute of Technology's OpenCourseWare Initiative Makes a Difference. PLoS Biol 2(8): e200. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0020200

Published: August 17, 2004

Copyright: © 2004 Anne H. Margulies. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abbreviations: MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; MIT OCW, MIT OpenCourseWare

Imagine a fledgling biology instructor at a university in the developing world. Heading into her first semester of teaching, she is armed with nothing but her college degree, some old notebooks, and--if she is lucky--a late-edition textbook. Forging a curriculum that is both current and engaging for her students could be a daunting challenge.

But what if that same young instructor was given free and open access to a syllabus, complete lecture notes, and problem sets and solutions from two members of the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)? And not just any faculty members, but David Page--the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship in 1986, a Searle Scholar's Award in 1989, and the Amory Prize for advances in reproductive biology from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997--and Chris Kaiser, who won a 1999 fellowship from MIT that recognizes his teaching excellence?

This is the premise of MIT's OpenCourseWare project.

Utilizing the Internet, MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) has opened MIT's curriculum and educational materials to a global audience of teachers and learners--an instructor at a new engineering university in Ghana, a precocious highschool biology student in suburban Chicago, a political scientist in Poland, a literature professor in upstate New York--who are all now able to use the same materials that MIT's professors rely on to teach their full-time students.

The Makings of a Movement

Ten years from now, we expect that MIT OCW will have become firmly planted in MIT's educational landscape. But MIT OCW was just a leap of faith when the concept was originally proposed by a group of faculty four years ago. In the fall of 1999, Provost Robert A. Brown asked the faculty committee to provide strategic guidance on how the institute should position itself in the e-learning environment. At first, many members of the group assumed that their work would lead to an "MIT.com" venture. But after a year of analysis, market research, and development of business scenarios, the committee concluded that a revenue-generating distance-education model was not desirable for MIT.

The committee went back to the drawing board and, convinced that open software and open systems were the wave of the future, came to a very simple conclusion: that MIT should use the Internet to give its teaching materials away.

Brown and MIT President Charles Vest instantly recognized the simplicity and brilliance of the idea. "It seemed to me that it would be a way to advance education, by constantly widening access to our information and inspiring other institutions to do the same with theirs," Vest said.

While the 701 courses currently available represent just a third of the ultimate goal of 2,000 courses by the year 2008, MIT OCW has already had an impact on MIT's campus. We have published teaching materials from almost half of MIT's 950 faculty members, and a significant portion of the faculty have told us that they are already using materials available on MIT OCW--the lecture notes, syllabi, problem sets, and exams of their colleagues--to prepare for their classes, do research, and help their students.

But the real payoff of what we hope will become the "opencourseware movement" will be its effect on educators and learners around the world. Our goal is to create a model that other universities can follow and improve upon. Ultimately, the trend toward open knowledge will help bring people of all backgrounds together and promote improved educational systems across the globe.

Measuring Success

Since April 2001, we have received more than 20,000 e-mail messages from around the world endorsing the vision and potential benefits of sharing knowledge freely. A typical message came from Andrew Wilson in the United Kingdom in October 2003: There can be no greater hope for humankind than the belief that wisdom generated through increased learning will ultimately lead to a better world. With OCW, MIT has taken an ethical stand against the belief that knowledge should only be accessible to those who can pay for it or are in proximity to it."

Just after its "official launch" in fall 2003, MIT began a rigorous data collection process to find out who is accessing MIT OCW, why and how they use it, and what difference the initiative makes. The results of this first baseline evaluation confirm what we have heard anecdotally through those e-mails: that educators, students, and self-learners around the world are using our course materials, and that, overwhelmingly, they find the materials useful in meeting their own learning and teaching goals.

Who Is Accessing MIT OCW?

On average, MIT OCW clocks over 11,000 visits per day, with nearly a quarter-million unique visitors per month. About 45% of these visitors are from the United States and Canada. Outside North America, the top countries of origin are China, the United Kingdom, Germany, India, and Brazil. About 52% of visitors identify themselves as "self-learners," 31% as "students" enrolled in a formal course of study, and 13% as "educators." We view educators as a particularly important target audience because it is through them that MIT course materials can touch the greatest number of people and have the most profound impact on education around the world.

Why and how are they using it?

MIT OCW asked visitors their primary purpose in using MIT course materials. Of educators who responded, about 57% answered that they use it for course or curriculum development, 33% to enhance their subject matter understanding or support research, and 7% for student advising. Elements of MIT materials have been adapted for classroom use by 47% of educators who answered our survey, while 41% report they are considering it.

Critical Mass

Among the 33 academic disciplines available are 15 courses from the MIT Department of Biology (see Figure 1), 63 from the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and 13 from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

[Figure omitted, see PDF]

Figure 1. Sample MIT OCW Course Homepage for Graduate Biochemistry Course

(Image of DNA courtesy of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.)

Educators, students, and self-learners from a wide variety of fields will find materials they can use in their teaching and learning activities. And as the opencourseware concept spreads to other colleges and universities, we expect that access to the work of faculty from diverse disciplines and institutions will increase, by an order of magnitude, the benefits to educators and learners who (whether for reasons of geography, cost, or culture) would not otherwise have access to such materials.

History has proved that education and discovery are best advanced when knowledge is shared openly. Our agenda must evolve to shape the future, and to respond to new challenges and opportunities.

At MIT, we believe the idea of opencourseware is one such opportunity, which we must seize during the next decade.

For more information about MIT OCW, please contact Jon Paul Potts, MIT OCW Communications Manager, at E-mail: [email protected] or 617-452-3621.

References

Aristotle (1965) Historia Animalium. 1. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 239 p. In Peck AL, translator

Beck CW, Christen B, Slack JM (2003) Molecular pathways needed for regeneration of spinal cord and muscle in a vertebrate. Dev Cell 5: 429-439

Bodemer CW, Everett NB (1959) Localization of newly synthesized proteins in regenerating newt limbs as determined by radioautographic localization of injected methionine-S35. Dev Biol 1: 327-342

Borgens RB (1982) Mice regrow the tips of their foretoes. Science 217: 747-750

Chalkley DT (1954) A quantitative histological analysis of forelimb regeneration in Triturus viridescens. J Morphol 94: 21-70

Chen S, Zhang Q, Wu X, Schultz PG, Ding S (2004) Dedifferentiation of lineage-committed cells by a small molecule. J Am Chem Soc 126: 410-411

Douglas BS (1972) Conservative management of guillotine amputation of the finger in children. Aust Paediatr J 8: 86-89

Han M, Yang X, Farrington JE, Muneoka K (2003) Digit regeneration is regulated by Msx1 and BMP4 in fetal mice. Development 130: 5123-5132

Hay ED, Fischman DA (1961) Origin of the blastema in regenerating limbs of the newt Triturus viridescens. An autoradiographic study using tritiated thymidine to follow cell proliferation and migration. Dev Biol 3: 26-59

Hu G, Lee H, Price SM, Shen MM, Abate-Shen C (2001) Msx homeobox genes inhibit differentiation through upregulation of cyclin D1. Development 128: 2373-2384

Illingworth CM (1974) Trapped fingers and amputated finger tips in children. J Pediatr Surg 9: 853-858

Johnson SL, Weston JA (1995) Temperature-sensitive mutations that cause stage-specific defects in Zebrafish fin regeneration. Genetics 141: 1583-1595

Kumar A, Velloso C, Imokawa Y, Brockes J (2004) The regenerative plasticity of isolated urodele myofibers and its dependence on Msx1. PLoS Biol 2: e218. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0020218

Kumar A, Velloso CP, Imokawa Y, Brockes JP (2000) Plasticity of retrovirus-labelled myotubes in the newt limb regeneration blastema. Dev Biol 218: 125-136

Lenhoff SG, Lenhoff HM (1986) Hydra and the birth of experimental biology--1744: Abraham Trembley's memoirs concerning the natural history of a type of freshwater polyp with arms shaped like horns. Pacific Grove (California): Boxwood Press. 192 p

Lo DC, Allen F, Brockes JP (1993) Reversal of muscle differentiation during urodele limb regeneration. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 90: 7230-7234

Newmark PA, Reddien PW, Cebria F, Sanchez Alvarado A (2003) Ingestion of bacterially expressed double-stranded RNA inhibits gene expression in planarians. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 100: Suppl 111861-11865

Newth DR (1958) New (and better?) parts from old. In: Johnson ML, Abercrombie M, Fogg GE, editors. New Biology. Harmondsworth (United Kingdom): Penguin Books. pp. 47-62

Odelberg SJ, Kollhoff A, Keating MT (2000) Dedifferentiation of mammalian myotubes induced by msx1. Cell 103: 1099-1109

Pallas PS (1766) Miscellanea zoologica, quibus novae imprimis atque obscurae animalium species describuntur et observationibus iconibusque illustrantur. Hagae Comitum (Holland): Petrum van Cleef. 224 p

Poss KD, Wilson LG, Keating MT (2002a) Heart regeneration in zebrafish. Science 298: 2188-2190

Poss KD, Nechiporuk A, Hillam AM, Johnson SL, Keating MT (2002b) Mps1 defines a proximal blastemal proliferative compartment essential for zebrafish fin regeneration. Development 129: 5141-5149

Raya A, Koth CM, Buscher D, Kawakami Y, Itoh T, et al. (2003) Activation of Notch signaling pathway precedes heart regeneration in zebrafish. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 100: Suppl 111889-11895

Réaumur RAF (1712) Sur les diverses reproductions qui se font dans les écrevisses, les omars, les crabes, etc. et entr'autres sur celles de leurs jambes et de leurs écailles. Mém Acad Roy Sci 223-245

Rosania GR, Chang YT, Perez O, Sutherlin D, Dong H, et al. (2000) Myoseverin, a microtubule-binding molecule with novel cellular effects. Nat Biotechnol 18: 304-308

Sanchez Alvarado A, Newmark PA (1999) Double-stranded RNA specifically disrupts gene expression during planarian regeneration. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 96: 5049-5054

Simon HG, Nelson C, Goff D, Laufer E, Morgan BA, et al. (1995) Differential expression of myogenic regulatory genes and Msx-1 during dedifferentiation and redifferentiation of regenerating amphibian limbs. Dev Dyn 202: 1-12

Singer M, Weckesser EC, Geraudie J, Maier CE, Singer J (1987) Open finger tip healing and replacement after distal amputation in Rhesus monkey with comparison to limb regeneration in lower vertebrates. Anat Embryol (Berl) 177: 29-36

Song K, Wang Y, Sassoon D (1992) Expression of Hox-7.1 in myoblasts inhibits terminal differentiation and induces cell transformation. Nature 360: 477-481

Spallanzani L (1769) An Essay on Animal Reproductions. London: T. Becket. 86 p. In Maty M, translator. Translation of: Prodromo di un opera da imprimersi sopra la riproduzioni animali (Italian)

Wallace H, Maden M, Wallace BM (1974) Participation of cartilage grafts in amphibian limb regeneration. J Embryol Exp Morphol 32: 391-404