The document summarizes the history and development of MIT Open Education, including OpenCourseWare (OCW) and MITx. It describes how OCW was established 15 years ago to publish openly licensed course materials from MIT's curriculum. MITx was later created to offer online courses with assessment and certificates. While there were initial hopes for collaboration, OCW and MITx have operated more separately due to different goals, platforms, and IP policies. Both have focused on high volume production and are now reconsidering strategies to provide greatest value to users in a changing online learning environment.

1. MIT Open Education
OCW & MITx

2. OpenCourseWare
(sharing)
• 15 Years old
• Comprehensive publication of openly-licensed
materials from the entire MIT curriculum, both
undergraduate and graduate
• 2340 course sites, 50 Supplemental Resources,
990 courses archived in D-Space
• Not online courses—no registration, no
certificates
• Distributed thru 350 mirror sites around the
world, other channels (YouTube, iTunes, Internet
Archive)
• Voluntary faculty participation (~65%)
• Mature publishing organization minimizes
demands on faculty
• Global movement (~280 universities in OCWC)

3. MITx
(teaching)
• 3 years old
• Online courses for learners worldwide with
assessment & certificates
• Online materials available for on-campus
courses
• Interactive exercises, auto-graded problems &
exams, online labs, progress data
• Team supports faculty-led development
projects
• Internal platform for use by MIT residential
courses
• Research and experimentation on the science
of learning
• Grant process to fund faculty led course
teams

4. 2001 OCW announced
"OpenCourseWare looks counter-intuitive in a
market driven world. It goes against the grain of
current material values. But it really is consistent
with what I believe is the best about MIT. It is
innovative. It expresses our belief in the way
education can be advanced – by constantly
widening access to information and by
inspiring others to participate," said MIT
President Vest.
By user:AngMoKio (Own work) [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via
Wikimedia Commons

5. On a Steady Course
2001
Official OCW site launched
2004
OCW adopts CC license
2007
”virtually all” MIT courses are represented on
OCW—1,800 courses!
2011
OCW Scholar Courses Launched. OCW begins to
examine quantity vs quality issue and how to
keep the portfolio of courses up-to-date.
Granville Redmond [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

6. 2011 MITx announced
MIT President Hockfield called this
“a transformative initiative for MIT and for
online learning worldwide.”

7. 2012

8. Red skies at morn…
March 2012
6.002x launched
March 2012
High hopes for collaboration
between OCW and MITx
• Shared/joint services,
• Common architectures
• Shared tools Common
licensing and IP clearance
May 2012
Harvard/MIT announce edX
Stig Nygaard

9. Rough Seas
June 2012
Trying to get MITx and OCW better aligned
to better serve MIT and the public
• Revisiting original ideas
• Not so easy to collaborate
• Different services:
• OCW publishes what happened on
campus.
• MITx creates new learning experiences.
• MITx has much more labor-intensive
production and a completely
different platform.
• IP policy is different — not to be CC.
Shipping in Stormy Seas by Julius Porcellis 1610-1654 Oil on Canvas

10. Getting it done
2012
Leveraged much of the OCW team
• video training and capture
• IP clearance
• project management
• communications
• technical support
Instructors begin working with OCW and MITx
simultaneously and in sequence.
July 2012
edX website launched
Stig Nygaard
By National Maritime Museum from Greenwich, United Kingdom [No restrictions
or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

11. Reorganization and
Building
Nov 2012
New organization launched: ODL
OCW and MITx reporting into ODL
Dec 2012
Planning for MITx staffing, space, and
MITx Fellows program begins — OCW
covers needs in the meantime.
Jan 2013
Initial MITx hires including some people
with OCW experience

12. Separate Ways
Mar 2013
MITx gets moves to separate location
2013
OCW Educator Launched — sharing
instructor reflections on teaching with the
world
2013
Ramp-up of MITx efforts and team,
figuring out working model

13. Not forgotten
Fall 2013
Ongoing discussions about need for
a Residential team focused on digital
learning effectiveness at MIT,
separate from production-oriented
MITx on edX team and very different
from OCW.

14. What?
Jan 2014
OCW and MITx have been very
separate.
• Different buildings
• No clear communication as to
who is doing what
• Both groups extremely busy
producing course sites and online
courses

15. Coming Together
Mar 2014
MITx and OCW relocate into
shared space into 11 Cambridge
Center — MITx continues to find its
path while revisiting OCW
procedures for guidance. MITx
donates video resources to OCW.
2015
Residential Program
Manager hired, residential team
built and Instructional Design team
formed.
By Easa Shamih (Flickr: Team Work) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

16. Looking to the future
2015
MITx spends more time on policy
and procedure with much guidance
from OCW staff.
2016
We begin to attempt to get out of
the day-to-day tasks and consider
the future of MIT Open Education,
together.
Buck

17. Big Picture
We have reached over
203,000,000 people with more
than 5000 MIT Participants.
Regardless of our struggles that is
something to be proud of.
James Cridland

18. Parallels
• Both organizations focused on
volume of production in early phases
to prove viability of the project to
funders and to have enough
experience from which to learn.
• Both organizations reached a point
where this emphasis on volume had
to be reconsidered in an effort to
provide the greatest value to users
Lessons
• Obvious areas for collaborations
(especially video and IP) were
revealed to be too different for joining
forces on a sustained basis
• MITx is still a young organization
seeking to find an optimum path in a
changing environment.
• OCW must also re-assess its
operations in a new landscape of
online learning and technological
change (mobile, interactivity)