SHIGERU MIYAGAWA: I was
asked to serve on a faculty
committee back in year 2000
by then president Chuck Vest.
And the charge to
our committee was
to come up with a new strategy
for e-learning for MIT.
Everyone else was doing
e-learning, MIT wasn't.
And so the president
felt that we
should come up with a new
and bold idea for MIT.
Of course, year 2000 was still
the era of the .com days,
and so the assumption going
in was that we would create
an MIT.com and enter into
some kind of venture.
Maybe take up the materials that
faculty created and sell them.
That was one idea.
But as we got into
the discussion,
there were maybe
seven or eight us,
it got smaller as
the months went by.
It became apparent us
that the idea of MIT.com
was not the right idea.
There are a number
of reasons for it.
We interviewed about
60 organizations
that were doing e-learning,
and from those interviews
the one thing that we learned
was that this is really
a tough area to do business in.
That was one
question that we had.
We did try to build
business models.
We had Booz Allen Hamilton
people helping us.
And we worked very
hard at creating
a number of business models.
We did lots of surveys
to get credible data.
And the business
models that we were
able to create, the
most credible one had
us starting year one, and about
year five we'd break even.
Which is not unusual
for a venture,
but the problem with
that business model
was that after year five,
it was sort of flattened.
There's not this sort of
hockey stick uptick in revenue.
And we thought if we're
going to do something,
we wanted to see at least
the potential of having
a major source of revenue
that could help MIT.
It didn't seem to be there.
The most important
reason though,
was that we interviewed about 60
faculty members who had already
put up their materials
on the web on their own.
And we wanted to see what
their motivation was.
If we're going to
do MIT.com we need
to understand the
faculty's motivation.
And so we interviewed
every one of them.
And without exception,
they told us one,
they were doing this to try
to improve their classroom
teaching.
Two, they were not
getting compensated.
And three, that they
were sacrificing
their own time,
research time, time
with their family to do this.
So this is where you find MIT
faculty's real commitment,
real commitment to teaching.
And that's what we found.
And when we discussed
this in the committee,
it was October of
the year 2000, this
was the last meeting
before we had
to start writing a
report to President Vest.
We said, you know,
it doesn't seem
right we would take teaching
materials from these faculty
members who are committed
to teaching, and taking that
and turning it into business.
And so that was pretty much
the final thing we needed here
to say no MIT.com.
But we had to report
to the president
and give him some bold idea for
MIT in the e-learning space.
And particularly based on what
the 60 faculty members told us
about the MIT faculty's very
deep, very deep commitment
to teaching.
We said, why don't we
create a system that's
exactly the opposite?
Exactly the opposite of
what we started with,
and what the rest of
the world was doing,
and say we're going
to just give it away.
Just give it away so that
anyone, anywhere in the world
can take advantage of
MIT faculty's commitment
to education.
That's how we started
with OpenCourseWare.
If you look at
OpenCourseWare and see
why it's been so
successful, and why it has
resonated with the faculty.
I remember just a few days after
MIT announced OpenCourseWare
it was front page article
in New York Times,
a young faculty
member came up to me
and said that the
day MIT announced
OpenCourseWare was the proudest
day of his career at MIT.
Why did he say that?
Why did it resonate so
much with the faculty?
The reason, I believe, is
because OpenCourseWare is not
just OpenCourseWare
separate from MIT.
OpenCourseWare is
very much a mission
that MIT has as an institution.
If you look at the MIT mission,
not the OCW mission, MIT
mission on the web,
it says that MIT
is committed to
generating, disseminating,
and preserving knowledge.
And to bring this
knowledge to bear
on all of the great
challenges of the world.
MIT has traditionally fulfilled
that requirement, that mission,
with basic research.
But now with OpenCourseWare, we
can also fulfill that mission
with our teaching, by
disseminating and preserving
our teaching materials.
