I heard about Open Courseware (OCW) a few years ago and I tried to listen to an introductory computer programing lecture offered by an MIT instructor. I was just curious to see what it would be like. Well, I ended up not even finishing the first lecture. Then life got busy and I didn't give it much thought after that.
An article about OCW came up in one of my feeds and remembering the name I thought I'd check it out. It discusses the basics of OCW and some tips on how to set up your own course materials online. If you don't know anything about OCW and find the idea intriguing, this article may be a good place to start.
MIT launched it's first pilot website in 2001 with 50 courses available freely to anyone with Internet access. Now there they host almost 2000 courses and belong to the Open Courseware Consortium which consists of about 200 universities from around the world.
Why would universities want to make their courses available to anyone for free when they make money by enrolling students? Why should we care about OCW? The article's author, Ethan Watrall gives depth to global benefits, institutional benefits, and faculty benefits of OCW, which are put forth by the Open Courseware Consortium.
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