[Oer-community] Is MIT thinking of putting its OCW material behind a pay wall?

Sun Oct 10 21:42:59 MDT 2010

Dear Mary Lou and all

Thank you for being explicit about the pay wall issue. It won't be
expected from MIT to do it. Education is becoming more and more of a
business in many ways and the trend is gradually increasing Education
should be part of the public expenditure and if it is not possible for
the public sector, private sector education should not be seen as any
other corporate sector like software, transport, telecom ect. Many
corporate sectors thrive for profit only to be giant, and indirectly
want to rule or influence ruling, ignoring socio-economic aspects, which
ultimately creates social inequity and disharmony. They then came to a
new term CSR and they try to compensate through CSR. But private sector
education should be the opposite. They should work for social equity and
thus thrive for social harmony and profit for survival only if public
sector fails to support education.   

Talat 

________________________________

From: oer-community-bounces at athabascau.ca
[mailto:oer-community-bounces at athabascau.ca] On Behalf Of Mary Lou
Forward
Sent: Sunday, October 10, 2010 6:51 PM
To: Fred Beshears
Cc: oer-community at athabascau.ca
Subject: Re: [Oer-community] Is MIT thinking of putting its OCW material
behind a pay wall?

Dear Fred and all,

MIT is not planning to put their OpenCourseWare site behind a paywall.
Below is their statement, which can also be found on their website at
http://ocw.mit.edu/about/media-coverage/press-releases/:

Erroneous reports of possible OCW paywall appear in news media

OCW paywall not under consideration.

A handful of recent news articles have reported that MIT is considering
placing its MIT OpenCourseWare program behind a paywall. These articles
stemmed from remarks about e-learning that were made by an MIT
administrator at a recent educational conference. The articles were
based on a misinterpretation of the administrator's remarks.

The content on MIT OpenCourseWare will continue to be free and available
online, as it has always been.  Like other universities, MIT is
constantly exploring new educational opportunities-including the
possibility of e-learning opportunities-but MIT has no plans to charge
for access to MIT OpenCourseWare content.

About OpenCourseWare

An OpenCourseWare is a free and open digital publication of high quality
university-level educational materials - often including syllabi,
lecture notes, assignments, and exams - organized as courses. While
OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiatives typically do not provide a degree,
credit, or certification, or access to instructors, the materials are
made available under open licenses for use and adaptation by educators
and learners around the world. 

About MIT OpenCourseWare

MIT OpenCourseWare makes the materials used in the teaching of
substantially all of MIT's undergraduate and graduate courses-more than
2,000 in all-available on the Web, free of charge, to any user in the
world. OCW receives an average of 1.5 million web site visits per month
from more than 215 countries and territories worldwide. To date, more
than 65 million visitors have accessed the free MIT educational
materials on the site or in translation.

-- 
Mary Lou Forward
OpenCourseWare Consortium
www.ocwconsortium.org <http://www.ocwconsortium.org/> 

On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 1:49 PM, Fred Beshears <fredbeshears at gmail.com>
wrote:

Greetings,

Here's something that caught my eye in the NY Times.

According to a recent item in the NY Times, MIT is thinking of putting
it's Open CourseWare materials behind a paywall (see blurb and link
below). 

All the more reason for getting behind Dick Durbin's Open College
Textbook act, which calls for government funding to support the creation
and maintenance of electronic textbooks that would be in the public
domain (see http://durbin.senate.gov/showRelease.cfm?releaseId=318279).

Back in 2007, I testified before a House sub-committee that was looking
into the cost of textbooks. I believe that committee's report gave
Durbin the incentive to put forward the bill. Unfortunately, I believe
the textbook lobby has been able to scuttle attempts to move the bill
forward. In any event, here's one of my blog posts that covers most of
what I presented to the sub-committee.

The Economic Case for Creative Commons Textbooks

http://innovationmemes.blogspot.com/2010/09/case-for-creative-commons-te
xtbooks.html

Best,

Fred Beshears

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/education/27iht-educBriefs27.html?ref=
education

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has announced that it is
considering charging for access to online lectures and class notes,
which are currently available free on the Web. 

Speaking at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/o/org
anization_for_economic_cooperation_and_development/index.html?inline=nyt
-org> 's Institutional Management in Higher Education conference in
Paris this month, Lori Breslow, director of M.I.T.'s Teaching and
Learning Laboratory, said that free access "may not be the best economic
model, so we are now looking seriously at new e-learning opportunities."

Long a leader in the Open Course Ware movement, which provides free and
open access to high-quality educational materials, M.I.T. has come under
increasing financial pressure because of the fall in the value of its
endowment. 

From a high of $10.1 billion in 2008, M.I.T.'s endowment has shrunk to
$7.6 billion. According to University World News, an online newsletter,
putting courses behind a paywall is one of a number of measures designed
to deliver $150 million in cuts over the 2009-12 period. - D.D.
GUTTENPLAN 

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