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NARRATOR: In the year 2000, an MIT faculty committee
on lifelong learning proposed a program
that was as straightforward as it was revolutionary.
DICK K.P. YUE: The idea is simple,
just to publish our teaching material, our course content,
online on the internet and make it widely available to everyone
who could use it, for free.
NARRATOR: OpenCourseWare, OCW, is MIT's web-based initiative
that offers open access to the core teaching
materials, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, and exams,
from 1,800 courses, free of charge,
for educators and learners worldwide.
SHIGERU MIYAGAWA: The idea that we came up with,
OpenCourseWare, was really a revolutionary idea,
particularly at the time, because in 1999, it
was the heyday of the dotcom era,
and everyone was thinking of a for-profit model.
Although we considered it, we felt that
for MIT, the right thing to do--
the right model-- is to give away the teaching materials.
THOMAS MAGNANTI: Some faculty thought
it was the dumbest idea ever that MIT were giving away
all our intellectual property to the world for free,
and no one would use their textbooks anymore,
no one would come to the classes anymore, et cetera, et cetera.
And other people thought it was the best social good
they'd ever heard of.
NARRATOR: Through the generous support of the William
and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, and the Ab Initio Corporation,
MIT has published materials from virtually all MIT undergraduate
and graduate courses on the OCW site,
representing 33 academic disciplines.
In addition to the core teaching materials,
the site includes animations, simulations,
and more than 1,000 hours of classroom instruction on video.
SHIGERU MIYAGAWA: It's important to keep in mind that we are not
offering MIT education through OpenCourseWare.
So for example, you don't register for credits,
and you don't get a degree.
A true MIT education is something
where students come on campus, they live here,
and they learn with fellow students and with the faculty.
NARRATOR: More than 90% of the MIT faculty
and hundreds of other MIT community members
voluntarily share their knowledge and teaching
materials on OCW, demonstrating the Institute's widely held
commitment to openness.
DANIEL HASTINGS: A core value of MIT for a long time
has been public service.
We should be in the business of disseminating this knowledge
to help the world.
In a sense, that's what books do, right?
So this is, if you want, is the modern equivalent of that.
NARRATOR: In the four years since the site's launch,
OpenCourseWare materials have been
accessed by 35 million individuals from more than 220
countries and territories worldwide.
Rogelio Morales, a PhD candidate at the Central University
of Venezuela, is a metallurgical engineer
and a licensed commercial diver.
For Morales, OCW is a valuable resource for new information
that improves underwater inspections and testing.
ROGELIO MORALES: I often download information
from different topics and give it to our professors.
Sometimes, we discuss the information.
Other times, they use the slides from the OCW site in class.
It's a great resource.
ANNE MCCANTS: I want to be part of OCW
because I believe in the spirit of the thing.
I think the concept is dead-on right,
and we don't feel proprietary about it.
We want you to know what it is.
We want you to be able to tap into it at some level,
even if it's a fairly static level.
And that's reason enough to do it, as far as I'm concerned.
NARRATOR: At the University of San Carlos, Guatemala's center
of higher education for more than 300 years,
Professor Waleska Aldana Segura teaches a course
for physics instructors.
WALESKA ALDANA SEGURA: When you try to teach certain subjects,
and you don't have labs or equipment or any kind
of visualization, the students end up
lacking the expertise necessary for their future success
as physics professors.
The fact that MIT provides their materials without cost
is simply extraordinary.
WALTER LEWIN: I think the most wonderful thing about this
is that MIT was, in a way, almost--
to most people outside MIT, like the Forbidden City.
They had no idea what happened inside.
And with OCW, the bridge was lowered.
They now see MIT in a completely different way.
NARRATOR: Triatno Yudo Harjoko, head
of the architectural department at the University of Indonesia
at Depok, was amazed that a university as renowned as MIT
would give access to virtually all
of its educational information.
Harjoko believes that there is great value
in MIT's free and open sharing.
TRIATNO YUDO HARJOKO: It's not simply the information that's
valuable, but also the glimpse OCW
offers into how MIT has structured its teaching
and research.
NARRATOR: The reach of OpenCourseWare
goes far beyond the site itself.
Other organizations have now translated nearly 600 OCW
courses into other languages, including Chinese, Spanish,
Portuguese, and Thai.
These translations have been accessed by 14 million visitors
to date.
There are also more than 100 mirror sites, locally hosted
versions of the OCW site, in low bandwidth areas.
The majority are located in Sub-Saharan Africa.
CLINTON BLACKBURN: I traveled to Africa,
and I found that the people there
were very receptive to OCW and the mission of OCW,
which is to spread knowledge around the world.
Many of the universities in Africa, they don't have books,
or the budgets are just really low
compared to the United States.
And so whatever little help they can get with setting up
curricula or just more information about a subject,
it really helps.
DICK K.P. YUE: Another area that many of us
had an aspiration for was that OpenCourseWare would not be
just something that MIT does.
But by setting an example and a model,
it would become something that many other institutions would
also do, not just in the areas that we
are good at, like science or engineering or management,
but in all kinds of fields of knowledge.
And today, there are over 150 universities
around the world who are doing their own OpenCourseWare.
And I think the dream that, in fact, OpenCourseWare
would be truly a very, very broad-based movement that
will impact knowledge, information, and education
worldwide, I think it's coming to fruition even
as we speak now.
NARRATOR: OpenCourseWare has grown from a bold experiment
to a global movement.
With a complete MIT curriculum now available on the site,
OpenCourseWare has reached an important milestone
but is only at the beginning of the journey.
MIT will continue to enhance and update OCW materials,
develop new programs and features,
and collaborate with others seeking
to share their own knowledge, helping
to create a truly global network of open educational resources.
DICK K.P. YUE: I came from a family--
in fact, we were refugees in Hong Kong--
somewhat sort of financially restricted,
with very few options.
And when I grew up, I remember my father, valuing education,
would bring home old, second- third-hand volumes of MIT
books.
I remember flipping these books and seeing the dome--
the picture of the dome on the front cover and just
aspiring one day to go to MIT.
And the fact that today I'm a professor at MIT,
and so forth, is a testimony to the fact
that MIT has an impact way beyond its immediate borders.
And I think that's at the heart, in some sense,
of the idea of OpenCourseWare, that an institution like MIT
has responsibility, has an opportunity to impact students
way beyond our immediate walls in Cambridge.
NARRATOR: MIT OpenCourseWare, unlocking knowledge,
empowering minds.
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