Mario A Núñez's Library tagged open_access rea →  View Popular

In 2007, Utah became the first state in the United States to provide public money to fund an OCW. The Utah State legislature gave seven state schools money to produce courses for the Utah OpenCourseWare Alliance (Utah OpenCourseWare

Other institutions are sharing their OER content, though not calling what they do OpenCourseWare. Examples of other types of OERs include the iTunes audio lecture series from the University of California at Berkley. Another is the Connexions project at Rice University, which posts educational content online, though not always in course format.

Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright — all rights reserved — and the public domain — no rights reserved:”

In most cases, the only restrictions are that the original producer be given attribution, that the work may not be used for commercial purposes, and that adaptations of the work be shared with the community.

he Open University of the UK (see http://open.ac.uk) recently announced a competition to encourage users to remix content available on their site. And the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning (see http://cosl.usu.edu) and the Connexions project at Rice University (see http://cnx.org/) have developed technologies that leverage open licenses and encourage users to build and share custom collections of open materials. The materials produced for OpenCourseWare collections are meant to be used and re-used by self-learners, students, and faculty alike.

The Open University of the UK (see http://open.ac.uk) recently announced a competition to encourage users to remix content available on their site

Information should be shared, because it is the right thing to do.

In a recent survey (MIT, 2006) MIT found 35 percent of Fall 2005 entering freshmen aware of MIT OCW prior to attending MIT indicated the site was a significant or very significant influence on their choice of school. Seventy-one percent of all MIT students (undergraduate and graduate) made use of MIT OCW in their research and studies. Ninety-six percent of MIT students using the MIT OCW site reported it has had a positive or extremely positive impact on their student experience.

Finally, 40 percent of MIT faculty using MIT OCW reported that the site is a helpful tool in revising/ updating courses, and 38 percent use the site for advising students. MIT's OCW increased the interest of potential students to apply for MIT, and helped students at their school in both advising, and course work.

Aside from helping administration and students, OpenCourseWare is also beneficial to faculty members. Faculty members can share their work, their research findings, and their course structure with others in their field. Other faculty members can use and re-use their material, building upon the work others have begun. One example of this is Brett Shelton, a faculty member at Utah State University. Dr. Shelton developed an OCW course on instructional games. The course consisted of his content, as well as content generated by his students in the class. Dr. Shelton's OCW course appears fourth on a Google search for the phrase 'instructional games'. This has allowed others to know of Dr. Shelton's interest and expertise in instructional games.

For the first time, we can now begin to convert a 60-year-old declaration into a reality.