OpenCourseWare

OpenCourseWare or OCW is a term related to course materials created from the universities, which are then shared freely as a guide for worldwide study over the internet.

The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 200 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. See http://www.ocwconsortium.org/members/consortium-members.html for a full list of participants.

This new initiative began at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2001, with the announcement of MIT OpenCourseWare. At the beginning it offered 50 courses in English, Spanish and Portuguese. The following year the number of courses increased, reaching 500 courses; nowadays it offers more than 1900 courses related to more than 33 academic disciplines in several languages.

Partners

This initiative has several partners who are translating OCW course materials into Spanish, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Thai.

Partners include:

• Universia: a consortium of more than 800 colleges in Spain, Portugal, and Latin America. The translated courses have links on their OCW homepages directly to the Universia-translated version.
• China Open Resources for Education (CORE): a consortium of leading universities in China that have translated OCW courses into Simplified Chinese.
• Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System (OOPS): a volunteer-based organization that has translated OCW courses into Traditional Chinese.
• Chulalongkorn University: considered one of Thailand's oldest and most prestigious universities. The translated courses have links on their OCW homepages directly to the Chulalongkorn-translated version in Thai.
• Shahid Beheshti University: established in 1959 as the National University of Iran. The translated courses have links on their OCW homepage directly to the Shahid Beheshti-translated version in Persian.

There are many other consortium members, such as:

• African Virtual University, http://www.avu.org/home.asp
• ParisTech "Graduate School", http://graduateschool.paristech.org/?langue=EN
• Japan OCW Consortium, http://www.jocw.jp/
• United Nations University, http://www.ocw.unu.edu/
• The WiderNet Project eGranary Digital Library, http://www.widernet.org/digitalLibrary/

Institutions participating in the Consortium:

• commit to publish at least 10 courses under the institution’s name in an opencourseware format.
• commit resources as available in support of Consortium goals.

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