The process that lead to MIT's OpenCourseWare Initiative

Charles M. Vest, President Emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) asks himself the following questions:

• What is the appropriate use of “educational technology” in teaching, learning, and scholarship?
• What will be the nature of globalization of higher education?
• Will the Internet fundamentally reshape higher education?
• Are residential colleges and universities dinosaurs or the wave of the future?

In a paper published by EDUCAUSE this month (pdf) Charles M. Vest reviews the process that lead MIT to publish on the Web its course materials. The roots of this tradition of wide publication of materials dates back to the post WWII period, when the MIT Rad Lab was dismantled by the U.S. government and scholars and materials were distributed around multiple universities in the U.S, provoking a fruitful spearhead of knowledge across the country. In 1999 the MIT OpenCourseWare initiative was, according the Vest, a new instantiation of that same process.

Vest then reviews different initiatives around the world that are contributing to what he calls the "MetaUniversity".