Talking about open education resources the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) just has to be mentioned. MIT announced the MIT OpenCourseWare in the New York Times in April 2001 and the MIT OpenCourseWare website was opened in September 2009. The courses on the website increased from 50 in 2003 to 2000 in 2010. Specialized courses from astronomy, physics, maths to literature, music and theater courses can be browsed on the website by anyone interested. For more information about the MIT OpenCourseWare website please visit http://ocw.mit.edu/about/site-statistics/ .

Another renowned open learning educational institution is the Open University, a distance learning institution, which was established in 1969 with the support of the UK government. Both have made a significant contribution to open education resources.

Lucifer Chu, who became well-known for translating the Lord of the Rings into Chinese, used NT$10 million of the NT$27 million royalties he earned from the book to establish the Fantasy Art & Cultural Foundation (www.fantasy.tw). In addition to introducing the public to the magical world of fantasy literature and holding activities, at the end of 2004 the foundation signed a cooperation agreement with MIT that formally established a cooperative relationship. He also joined OOPS (the Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System) and recruited volunteer translators to translate the courses, mainly in English at the time, into Chinese so that more people in the Chinese-speaking world have access to knowledge, achieving the main aims of spreading and sharing knowledge. Fantasy is still recruiting volunteer translators today.

Taiwan’s National Chiao Tung University began planning the establishment of opencourseware in 2006 and formally released open courses in June 2007. In 2006 NCTU had six audio-visual courses and nine non-audio visual ones, while today it has 71 courses in all, 54 of which are audio-visual courses.

Department of Electrophyics physics professor Li Wei-yi once related his experiences of using an NCTU opencourseware audio-visual physics course in regular teaching. Every two week there would be one hour of actual class review or a small exam to ensure that the students were making progress. Research shows that student receptability towards the opencourseware course and academic performance far outstripped expectations. Professor Li thinks that the review every two weeks was the key because this shows the students taking the course that the teacher was paying attention to online teaching, which increased their learning motivation.

The European Foundation for Quality in eLearning (EFQUEL) held its annual forum in Lisbon, Portugal September 8-10 2010. The theme was How can open education make a contribution to social integration and promote economic prosperity? The sub-topics discussed by attendees also revolved around  open education.  The e-Learning Quality Certification Center, which sent a delegation to attend,  will report on the forum’s proceedings on its website.

Reference material:
1. MIT OpenCourseWare website
2. Chinese discourse on MIT OpenCourseWare
3. NCTU OCW