OCW gives MIT faculty a highly efficient and effective way to openly share course materials and learning methods with the world.

I would like to encourage other educators to share their materials from their courses. I really love the OCW mission of sharing everything that we have from an educational standpoint so that more people can use those materials how they want, and students can directly browse through class material or learn things that pique their interests.”-- Professor Erik Demaine

Publishing on MIT OCW is Easy and Rewarding

OCW publication can accommodate a wide range of course content and teaching styles, from large lectures to discussion-driven seminars to hands-on project-based learning. OCW staff handles all of the details, leaving just a few tasks for faculty members:

  • Consent for us to proceed with agreed-upon content,

  • Answer occasional questions as we build the draft course site, and

  • Review and approve the draft course site prior to publication.

We promote  OCW courses to the millions of visitors coming to OCW each month and to hundreds of thousands of newsletter subscribers and social media followers. If the course includes video or audio recordings, we will distribute them to YouTube and Internet Archive. We will also distribute the course to global mirror sites to make it available in regions with limited internet bandwidth.

As courses evolve, we encourage faculty to help us keep a current and vibrant reflection on OCW of their teaching, whether through refreshing a few existing elements or creating an entirely new version with substantial updates.

To begin, please contact us at ocw@mit.edu or 617-324-0010.

Three Stages of OCW Publication Workflow

Plan

OCW publication begins with a conversation about the course.

For basic OCW publication, this conversation can take place after the term ends. But if faculty members are interested in OCW content services, such as video-recorded lectures, conversations should begin at least one month prior to the start of the term. Earlier is even better.

During this stage, we’ll identify the course content that will be viable and most useful to an online audience. We’ll discuss the best ways to represent the teaching, and any concerns about sharing your materials under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike license. We may consider also asking students to share some of their exemplary coursework or complementary notes. Faculty have final say in what’s shared with the world through OCW.

We encourage all faculty to share their perspectives on the teaching methods used in their course by participating in our OCW Educator program. This adds supplemental “Instructor Insights” content to the OCW course, built from a written or in-person interview with our staff.

Build

We begin to build the OCW site by collecting course materials and assembling supplemental content. We will format the materials to ensure maximum usability and accessibility around the world.

If the course includes copyrighted material from other sources, we will attempt to clear rights so that it can be retained in the course. Faculty are strongly encouraged to include citations for such 3rd-party material in their files, as it accelerates our publication process. Any videos will be edited for clarity and continuity and captioned for accessibility. And while we’re building the course, faculty have the opportunity to be interviewed for the optional Instructor Insights section.

Review

Faculty have the chance to review the draft OCW course, address any issues we’ve flagged for their attention, and identify edits they would like us to make before publication. Once those edits are complete, the course will be published.