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OpenCourseWare (OCW) is university material that is available for all to see and use, analogous to open source software; they are materials openly licensed for redistribution and derivation, often under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license^[1].

OpenCourseWare began with MIT OpenCourseWare, an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to put all of the educational materials from MIT's undergraduate- and graduate-level courses online, free and openly available to anyone, anywhere, by the year 2007. MIT OpenCourseWare can be considered a large-scale, web-based publication of MIT course materials. The project was announced in 2001.

The main challenge in implementing this initiative has not been faculty resistance, but rather, the logistical challenges presented by determining ownership and obtaining publication permission for the massive amount of intellectual property items that are embedded in the course materials of MIT's faculty, in addition to the time and technical effort required to convert the educational materials to an online format.

Copyright in OCW material generally remains with the institution, members of its faculty, or its students.

In 2005, MIT OpenCourseWare and other leading OCW projects formed the OpenCourseWare Consortium, which seeks to extend the reach and impact of OpenCourseWare materials, foster new OpenCourseWare content, and develop sustainable models for OpenCourseWare publication.

Contents 1 See also 2 Notes 3 External links 3.1 OpenCourseWare directories and search sites

• Connexions - an open-content library of course materials developed by Rice University
• Click-a-Teacher - free opencouseware development site
• MIT Faculty in video lectures
  • Prof. Gilbert Strang
  • Prof. Walter Lewin
  • Prof. Arthur Mattuck
  • Prof. Sylvia Ceyer
  • Prof. Anant Agarwal

1. ^ MIT OpenCourseWare Legal Notices

• BBC news story: Learn for free online
• Wired: MIT Everywhere
• Opencourseware How To designed to share the experience, key decisions, and lessons learned that led to the implementation of MIT's OpenCourseWare project.
• Open Courseware Consortium
• Wharton OpenCourseWare -Knowledge Project - aimed to offer free access to business course materials for students, teachers, and self-learners.
• Center for Open and Sustainable Learning
• eduCommons - OpenCourseWare management system
• Starting an OCW - How to start up an OCW at your institute

• OpenCourseWare Finder
• OpenContentOnline - Search engine for OpenCourseWare
• Open Courseware Directory - Covers most academic subjects, from the universities and colleges of the world
• OpenCourseWare Consortium.