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KRISHNA RAJAGOPAL: Hi, there.
As we were doing the last time I spoke with you,
the OCW team and I continue to work from our homes
and produce OpenCourseWare remotely in light
of the ongoing pandemic.
My very best wishes to all of you and yours.
Be well and stay well wherever you are.
Throughout this prolonged season of challenges and uncertainty,
we continue to find inspiration in the persistence of OCW
learners and their dedication to learning.
We are heartened to be of service during this time.
Now going six months strong from home,
the team is committed to maintaining
the quality of OCW for you and all the many of you
who are turning to OCW at this time.
Use of OCW remains strong with a substantial increase
in daily site visits compared to last year.
With so much happening online these days,
the importance of video and reaching learners is profound.
That's why we're so excited to have recently surpassed
2.6 million subscribers to the OCW YouTube channel.
We're also thrilled to share that the first season of Chalk
Radio is now available in full.
This season of the podcast brought critical and timely
conversations about remote teaching during the pandemic,
about the relationship between language, identity, culture,
and power, and about the benefits
and potential of teaching with OER.
We invite you to listen if you haven't already.
And all of you should stay tuned for the second season debuting
later this month.
Next year, OpenCourseWare will celebrate its 20th anniversary.
As we approach this milestone, we
are reflecting on what OCW means to the world
today, a world that looks and learns very differently than we
could have imagined back in 2001.
What has not changed is MIT's commitment to the simple,
but bold idea that openly sharing educational resources
created by MIT's teachers for MIT's students
for anyone to use can change lives, expand minds,
enhance careers, and help to make a better
world for all of us.
And the stakes are high.
As we see every day, with an ongoing global public health
crisis, with a painful nationwide reckoning
with the systemic advantages and disadvantages that have shaped
so much of our lives, and with the daunting reality
of our rapidly changing climate, in all these ways and more,
our fates are interconnected.
In the face of all of this embracing
our lifelong curiosity, our need to learn and adapt
has never been more important or more personal.
We believe that free access to knowledge
and open educational resources like OCW
can be powerful tools in helping us to understand
these deeply complex issues.
You can read more about the role of open educational resources
in creating a more just world and a new piece on our website
from OCW director, Curt Newton.
The primary way we are preparing to mark OCW's 20th anniversary
is by reimagining the OCW platform to better realize
MIT's unchanging commitment to sharing
its teaching in the service of learners like you
for the next 20 years.
The NextGen OCW platform will further
improve global educational equity and access
by allowing millions more learners around the world
to learn from OCW.
Currently in the prototype phase,
new features include a seamless user experience optimized
across all your devices, from smartphones
to mobile to desktops, so you can learn with OCW wherever
you are.
An enhanced search experience to make
course content across the full broad sweep of OCW
and our new Open Learning Library easier to find.
And a vastly streamlined process for authoring
OCW content on our side that will make it
much easier and quicker for MIT's teachers
to share perspectives and pedagogies,
educational technologies, and tools of today and tomorrow
with all of you around the world keeping
OCW current, vibrant, and full of energy.
Recently, one of my colleagues, who
was trying to capture the magic of MIT in a phrase,
said that students and teachers here are vibrating with energy.
NextGen OCW will share some of that magic, some
of that energy, some of those vibrations,
with millions of learners like you for years to come.
We look forward to sharing our and your new platform with you
next year and hope you will join us
in celebrating 20 years of OpenCourseWare,
the power of Open, everyone who helped us get here,
and the millions of you who have learned with us.
Whether you're a student, an educator, a lifelong learner,
or just discovering OCW for the very first time,
we're so glad you're here.
Thank you for being a part of OCW.