The Tufts OpenCourseWare (OCW) project, is a web-based publication of educational material from a number of Tufts University courses, providing open sharing of free, searchable, high-quality course content to educators, students, and self-learners throughout the global community. The Tufts OCW initiative encourages the publication and free exchange of course materials on the World Wide Web. First launched in June 2005, Tufts OCW provides materials with strong representation from Tufts’ health sciences schools, some of which are equivalent to textbooks in depth. All materials on the Tufts OCW site are accessible at any time, free of charge. As Tufts OCW is not a distance learning program, no registration, applications, prerequisites, or fees are required and no credit is granted. [1]
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OpenCourseWare was launched by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1999 as an initiative with the goals of providing free, searchable access to MIT’s course material for the general public and expanding the reach of the OCW concept. In 2004, Tufts was invited to join MIT in its OpenCourseWare initiative. Tufts' expertise in the health sciences and international policy complemented MIT’s strengths in engineering and science, and Tufts’ track record of creating an extensive body of digital materials and tools to support health sciences education made Tufts a ready partner. Tufts OCW launched in June 2005 as a University-wide initiative, with six courses from three of its four health sciences schools. Tufts’ partnership with MIT and other early participants in the OCW movement has evolved into the OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCWC), an organization with more than 200 member universities and associated institutions from around the world dedicated to advancing education and empowering learners through OCW. [1]
Tufts OCW can be considered within the broader context of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement. OER can include open content, tools, or infrastructure. Tufts has been engaging in OER work for more than a decade, with the majority of efforts related to the development of the Tufts University Sciences Knowledgebase (TUSK). TUSK is an integrated digital repository and curriculum knowledge management and delivery system used by Tufts’ health sciences schools and programs, and health sciences institutions in India, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, and the United States. TUSK’s use of the National Library of Medicine’s Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) as the controlled vocabulary for its content management (metadata, searching, etc.) enables the creation and delivery of integrated, developmental curricula by individuals or teams of faculty across the health sciences. In 2002, UNESCO organized the ‘‘Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries,’’ which was attended by representatives of universities from both developed and developing countries. At this conference, the term ‘‘open education resource’’ was more clearly defined as ‘‘the open provision of educational resources, enabled by information and communication technologies, for consultation, use, and adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial purposes’’. [2][3]
In addition to TUSK, a number of other Tufts OER initiatives can be accessed from the Tufts OCW site including:
Tufts OCW is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons (CC) license, which protects the copyright holder’s works while encouraging certain uses of the works. Tufts OCW has chosen the following CC license options: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. Most content published on the Tufts OCW site is licensed under the Creative Commons license which allows reuse and the creation of derivative works as long as the terms of the CC license are met. [1]