History
The OpenCourseWare movement started in 1999 when the University of Tübingen in Germany published videos of lectures online for its timms initiative. The OCW movement only took off, however, with the launch of MIT OpenCourseWare at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in October 2002. The movement was soon reinforced by the launch of similar projects at Yale, the University of Michigan, and the University of California Berkeley.
MIT's reasoning behind OCW was to "enhance human learning worldwide by the availability of a web of knowledge". MIT also stated that it would allow students (including, but not limited to its own) to become better prepared for classes so that they may be more engaged during a class. Since then, a number of universities have created OCW projects modeled after MIT's, some of which have been funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Read more about this topic: Open Course Ware
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