Learn from World-Class Universities and Get Smarter for Free

The Creative Commons movement founder director Hal Abelson is also credited with influencing the creation of the OpenCourseWare concept, which grants the free use of university materials online to the general population. OpenCourseWare began in 2001 as an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to offer an innovative and more democratic way to share knowledge with the world.
The goal was to have all 1,800 courses, from undergraduate and graduate-level materials, freely available online by 2007.

In 2005, MIT OpenCourseWare and other leading learning institutions formed the OpenCourseWare Consortium, which seeks to extend the reach and impact of learning opportunities, foster new OpenCourseWares, and develop sustainable models for course publication. Currently the idea has grown to be a collaboration of more than 100 participating organizations. Other universities that have joined so far include Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Tufts University, among many others.

OpenCourseWare is growing rapidly, and the site attracts over 1.2 million visitors per month from all over the world. Approximately over half are self-learners, a lot of them at companies, and many are people who just want to expand their knowledge about particular subjects. Understandably, OpenCourseWare doesn't offer access to professors, or awards you a degree, but it provides many of the other benefits available to paying students. Participating universities post all course materials online from syllabuses to reading materials and exams. In some cases even video Web casts of lectures are available. OpenCourseWare materials are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

A challenge to learn something new is a worthwhile endeavor that can make any of us better. Knowledge is power and filling critical knowledge gaps can be a rewarding experience and pay off in spades. If you have been looking for an opportunity to sharpen the ax and upgrade some of your professional skills for free, now is a good time to pay a visit to the OpenCourseWare Consortium site.

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