MIT OpenCourseWare: Teaching the world for free

By any measure, MIT's OpenCourseWare initiative, which seeks to "open source" education by making course ware from premier institutions available online to all for free, is a success.

But recently published data for OpenCourseWare suggests that it's an even bigger success than I had supposed. Consider:

• More than 53.7 million individuals have now visited OpenCourseWare's site/affiliated sites;
• OpenCourseWare servers have now delivered over 3.1 billion files ("hits") since launch;
• 8.5 million zip files of full course content have been downloaded from the site;
• 2.1 million OpenCourseWare videos have been downloaded from iTunes, with its videos viewed more than 2.5 million times on YouTube.

Wow. These are almost mind-boggling numbers, and they don't simply represent the local state college student who didn't get admitted to MIT. MIT uses OpenCourseWare to reach out to high school students, international students, and more.

It's a deeply impressive effort, one that seems to be getting the distribution that it deserves.

[FundiMkuu]

"MIT's OpenCourseWare initiative, Yes, but there are loads of other universities already on iTunes, UK slowly coming in. This is the most worth endevour and justification for internet existance.<br />Unfortunately, French universities are loosing yet another opportunity to popularise French.<br />For my son attending French School in Tanzania the only choice is to brush up his English. Sad.<br /><br />Ivan

[linuxworld007]

Hi Matt,<br /><br />Strange that You did not mention about :<br /><br />http://ocw.novell.com/<br /><br />Novell Training Services <br /><br />Novell OpenCourseWare is a collection of educational materials developed by Novell Training Services for authorized courses and other customer training purposes. By making these materials available to the public, we hope to extend to all people worldwide the opportunity to access these high quality learning materials.

[filagot]

hi i want to learn about electrical engineering with sound and video.

[chuteok]

What I wish is to find somewhere to learn about Pre Columbian {ie: Mayan, Inca Toltec , Olmec etc} history. Whare is the best place to learn for free as an Adult on a pension and it being a fav since I was aged 14?? <br />Any ideas gang <br />Chris

[OMSITARAM]

Respected sir, <br /> as i am from india i am very much pleased to have the oprtunity to learn online. <br /> I am in a state university which is wellknown in our country for international label <br /> education. <br /> I want to know more about mechanical engineearing,how can i get it.