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What is OCW?
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OCW stands for OpenCourseWare. It is an activity aimed at the creation of lectures to be officially provided by universities and other institutions of higher education and related information (educational materials) available online free of charge to all teachers, students and self-learners across the world. This project was originally started in 2001 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, with the aim of contribute to society in the field of intellect.
- OCW is an open and free publication of formal course materials through the Internet.
- The basic aim of this project is to allow universities and other institutions that serve as bases for the accumulation of knowledge to make further contributions to society through making their lectures, a typical form of systemized accumulated knowledge, openly available to anyone.
 Source: "What's OCW" section of the JOCW website
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We invited Shigeru Miyagawa from MIT to the Distance Learning Center Symposium on July 26, 2007, to deliver a keynote lecture on OCW on the theme "Globalization of Education and OpenCourseWare." This lecture is available from the website below. |
Report on the Distance Learning Center Symposium 2007 |
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Spread of OCW
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The OCW movement, started by MIT, has spread to Asia, Europe and other parts of the world, and has now reached a stage where independent developments are beginning to take place in all countries and regions. In fact, proactive initiatives for PUBLICATION OF KNOWLEDGE are being carried out not only by the OCW Consortium, made up of more than 100 universities and other institutions of higher education across the world, but also by national and regional consortiums of universities and higher educational institutions, such as Paris Tech, a French consortium made up of 11 colleges in Paris, and Vietnam OpenCourseWare, which is working to promote OCW at the national level in Vietnam.
The OCW movement is very active also in Japan. The Japan Opencourseware Consortium (JOCW), which was founded in April 2006 with nine universities and one other institution, has grown into an organization with 20 member educational institutions as of September 2008, after the joining of three universities in September 2006, and four universities and two other institutions in October 2006. The JOCW is among the highest-profile national OCW consortiums in the world.
< OCW-related consortiums across the world > |
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Waseda University's OCW initiative
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Waseda University participates in the JOCW as a managing institution. (The nine managing institutions are Hokkaido University, Keio University, Kyoto University, Kyushu University, Nagoya University, Osaka University, Tokyo Institute of Technology, University of Tokyo and Waseda University in alphabetical order.) The Distance Learning Center acts as a secretariat for the OCW activity of Waseda University.
As of November 2007, educational materials from 42 courses are available online from the OCW page of the Waseda University's website. The page has about 20,000 hits per month.
The most distinctive feature of the OCW initiative of Waseda University is that it is linked with the syllabus system of the University. This enables individual instructors to publicize educational materials from their courses themselves, while allowing website visitors to view educational materials together with the syllabuses.
< OCW-related consortiums across the world > |
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