2.3.13 MIT OpenCourseWare 

Lead 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

Origin 

U.S.A 

Background 

The idea behind MIT OCW is to make MIT course materials that are used in the teaching of almost all 

undergraduate and graduate subjects available on the Web, free of charge, to any user anywhere in the 

world.  

MIT OCW is an unprecedented institutional effort of a much broader magnitude, as the goal is to provide the 

course materials free and open to the world. With 900 course Web sites now offered by MIT OCW, nothing of 

this scale has ever been attempted before. 

URL 

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html 

Aims and 

Objectives 

The underlying premise and purpose of MIT OCW is to make course materials used in MIT courses freely and 

openly available to others for non commercial educational purposes. Through MIT OCW, MIT grants the right 

to anyone to use the materials, either "as is," or in a modified form. There is no restriction on how a user can 

modify the materials for the user s purpose. Materials may be edited, translated, combined with someone 

else s materials, reformatted, or changed in any other way. However, there are three requirements that an 

MIT OCW user must meet to use the materials: 

1. 

Non commercial: Use of MIT OCW materials is open to all except for profit making entities who 

charge a fee for access to educational materials. 

2. 

Attribution: Any and all use or reuse of the material, including use of derivative works (new 

materials that incorporate or draw on the original materials), must be attributed to MIT and, if a 

faculty member s name is associated with the material, to that person as well. 

3. 

Share alike (aka "copyleft"): Any publication or distribution of original or derivative works, including 

production of electronic or printed class materials or placement of materials on a Web site, must 

offer the works freely and openly to others under the same terms that MIT OCW first made the 

works available to the user. 

Faculty retain ownership of most materials prepared for MIT OCW, following the MIT policy on textbook 

authorship. MIT retains ownership only when significant use has been made of the Institute s resources. If 

student course work is placed on the MIT OCW site, then copyright in the work remains with the student 

Metadata 

IMS, IEEE LOM 

Standards 

Content 

unable to find information at time of writing 

Packaging 

Page 43 of 84