The Next Generation of MIT OpenCourseWare is Here!

OCW’s fresh interface is a mobile-optimized, streamlined content discovery experience with improved search function

MIT’s “NextGen OCW” means new and improved experiences for learners — more support for educators — energizing new collaborations with open education colleagues around the world — and a greater capacity to share even more current and vibrant MIT content in the years to come. NextGen OCW means both a new platform and new programs.

The OCW website now has a fresh interface and many enhancements. It is mobile-optimized, opening entirely new learning opportunities for the growing global community that relies on phones for internet access. A streamlined content discovery experience, centered on an improved search function, ensures that everyone can find and use the materials that best meet their needs. The new website is built for evolution, with more enhancements already in the works.

Growing Global Impact of Open Sharing

Since its launch 20 years ago, MIT OCW has delivered unprecedented access to knowledge, helping spur a global transformation through Open Educational Resources (OER). MIT OCW has reached over 500 million learners through its website, its videos, and via educators blending OCW materials into the learning experiences of their own students. On the MIT campus and in communities and institutions around the world, an ethos of open sharing has taken root, grown and multiplied.

The whole idea of open sharing is infectious in the best possible way. And once you get hooked, it’s hard to stop…It’s the desire for what you learned and what you can teach to impact humanity for the better.
— MIT Professor Mike Short

It’s none too soon. Two years after the Covid-19 pandemic forced a rapid pivot to learning online, there’s new appreciation for the value of open knowledge in carrying us through disruptions of all sorts, and growing recognition of the power of open knowledge to fuel more equitable progress on big challenges.

Fortunately, years of investment in MIT OCW have created a strong and solid foundation. MIT OCW’s collection of Creative Commons licensed materials from the MIT classroom, spanning more than 2,500 courses across the entire MIT curriculum, has unparalleled breadth and depth. The OCW website gets about 2 million visits per month, with ⅔ of these visits from outside North America.

Videos on OCW’s YouTube channel have become a powerful gateway to learning, with over 3.7 million subscribers (the most of any .edu provider) and about 5 million video views per month. And MIT faculty are sharing stories about their teaching approaches, through the Chalk Radio podcast and Instructor Insights interviews on many OCW courses, opening dialogues with other educators around the world.

Backing up the new OCW website, a much-improved technology suite and streamlined content production methods will enable OCW to share an increasingly vibrant and current reflection of MIT teaching and learning. MIT faculty will be able to update their OCW material much more smoothly, efficiently and frequently, allowing them to share evolving perspectives and teaching methods as well as the latest on timely topics, like social and ethical responsibilities of computing . And more content created by MIT students will highlight their voices and agency in the learning process.

Educational Equity Through Collaboration

The past two decades of unparalleled access to knowledge have transformed learning for both students and lifelong learners. But given long-standing systemic disparities and practical barriers to learning faced by so many, access alone is not enough. Building educational equity must be our goal, recognizing and valuing the different ways of knowing, diverse life experiences, varied prerequisite skills, and personal goals of every learner.

The freedom to adapt and remix OER content like OCW is a powerful contributor to building equity and inclusion, as it supports learning experiences designed and led by the educators and students who know their community. In its NextGen program, OCW is committed to supporting and collaborating with such leadership across the OER ecosystem — schools, teachers, students, other content creators, and support networks — making learning more inclusive and culturally-relevant for everyone.

“ Having excellent professors right on your palm gave me a rush for learning, learning new things, things that I always wanted to learn but never had the resources to…OCW has completely transformed my daily life [as it] introduced me to an online education community that is far wider and deeper than I expected.”
— Anish Kumar, high school student in India

Learn anything, anywhere, anytime.

That’s been the goal all along with OCW, and the new OCW platform and programs are giving the world even better ways to work together toward that goal. As it launches into its third decade, MIT OpenCourseWare is just getting started.

Originally published at https://www.ocw-openmatters.org on April 7, 2022.