Monday, June 18, 2001

MIT Wins Grants to Make All Its Course Materials Free Online By JEFFREY R. YOUNG The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has received two grants, totaling $11-million, for its project to post course materials online, including an effort to develop software for online courses that other institutions could use free. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation have approved grants of $5.5-million each over 27 months to support the first phase of the institute's OpenCourseWare project. M.I.T. plans to formally announce the grants today. M.I.T.'s plans for the project have sparked widespread interest at other institutions, and many see it as an important statement that course materials should be considered scholarly publications, not commercial products. "It's much bigger than just M.I.T.," says Sally M. Johnstone, executive director of the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications and a respected figure in the world of distance education. "I think this is potentially a very profound event." The institute has also pledged to commit about $1-million of its own money to the effort, says Steven R. Lerman, a professor of civil and environmental engineering who is part of the team organizing the project. "The first phase we view now as funded," says Mr. Lerman, who adds that the project will begin almost immediately. "We'll be trying to staff this thing starting on July 1." Much of the grant money will go toward hiring a staff of about 25 or 30 people devoted to supporting and maintaining the course Web sites. The institute plans to create 500 course Web sites by the end of the first phase, and it hopes to put materials for an additional 250 courses online every six months after that, until it has Web sites for nearly all of its more than 2,000 courses. During the initial phase, the institute plans to develop course templates that cover a variety of subjects and use various instructional styles. The first 500 courses will include lecture-style courses, seminars, and those with laboratory work. The project is now scheduled to last at least eight years, at a total cost of up to $100-million. From the Mellon Foundation's perspective, officials hope that the work M.I.T. does to make its materials available will benefit other institutions as well. "We hope it's going to inspire other institutions to do some similar things," says Ira Fuchs, vice president for research in information technology at the Mellon Foundation. "We're hoping that this is going to reinforce the concept that ideas are the common property of all of us, and they're not just proprietary products." M.I.T. has not ruled out the possibility, however, of licensing its online course materials to for-profit institutions, which might be interested in putting them in products or courses even though the materials are free online. If a for-profit company wanted to offer a course that primarily used materials from the M.I.T. OpenCourseWare project, for instance, the company would probably be asked to pay a licensing fee, says Mr. Lerman. "It's an open possibility," Mr. Lerman says. "But we would not do that if the condition was that we could no longer make [the material] free and open. We're not going to pull it off the site because someone's going to pay us." Professors will also be able to opt out of the project. So if a professor was concerned that publication of his or her course materials might hinder the publication of a book based on the course, for instance, the professor could choose not to put the course online. Over the past few months, leaders of the project have interviewed M.I.T. faculty members to make sure professors would be willing to participate. "What's coming back from that is the vast major of faculty are interested," says Mr. Lerman. "We are actually very optimistic that there will be high levels of participation in this." Background articles from The Chronicle: Universities Begin Creating a Free, 'Open Source' Course-Management System (5/4/2001) MIT Will Place Course Materials Online (4/20/2001) MIT Weighs the Pros and Cons of Creating a Web Page for Almost All Courses (3/23/2001) Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

U.S. bishops approve guidelines on church approval of Catholic theologians' teachings A growing number of professors are off the tenure track, report says Bush set to nominate Indiana U. professor as head of AmeriCorps parent Possible grade tampering investigated at Tulsa Community College Chinese officials ban foreign scholars from academic conference Ho Chi Minh City seeks to double number of college graduates College filmmaking programs get a new look with digital video M.I.T. wins grants to make all its course materials free online