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SHIGERU MIYAGAWA: I was
asked to serve on a faculty

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committee back in year 2000
by then president Chuck Vest.

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And the charge to
our committee was

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to come up with a new strategy
for e-learning for MIT.

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Everyone else was doing
e-learning, MIT wasn't.

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And so the president
felt that we

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should come up with a new
and bold idea for MIT.

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Of course, year 2000 was still
the era of the .com days,

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and so the assumption going
in was that we would create

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an MIT.com and enter into
some kind of venture.

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Maybe take up the materials that
faculty created and sell them.

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That was one idea.

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But as we got into
the discussion,

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there were maybe
seven or eight us,

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it got smaller as
the months went by.

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It became apparent us
that the idea of MIT.com

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was not the right idea.

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There are a number
of reasons for it.

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We interviewed about
60 organizations

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that were doing e-learning,
and from those interviews

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the one thing that we learned
was that this is really

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a tough area to do business in.

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That was one
question that we had.

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We did try to build
business models.

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We had Booz Allen Hamilton
people helping us.

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And we worked very
hard at creating

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a number of business models.

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We did lots of surveys
to get credible data.

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And the business
models that we were

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able to create, the
most credible one had

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us starting year one, and about
year five we'd break even.

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Which is not unusual
for a venture,

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but the problem with
that business model

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was that after year five,
it was sort of flattened.

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There's not this sort of
hockey stick uptick in revenue.

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And we thought if we're
going to do something,

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we wanted to see at least
the potential of having

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a major source of revenue
that could help MIT.

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It didn't seem to be there.

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The most important
reason though,

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was that we interviewed about 60
faculty members who had already

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put up their materials
on the web on their own.

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And we wanted to see what
their motivation was.

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If we're going to
do MIT.com we need

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to understand the
faculty's motivation.

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And so we interviewed
every one of them.

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And without exception,
they told us one,

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they were doing this to try
to improve their classroom

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teaching.

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Two, they were not
getting compensated.

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And three, that they
were sacrificing

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their own time,
research time, time

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with their family to do this.

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So this is where you find MIT
faculty's real commitment,

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real commitment to teaching.

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And that's what we found.

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And when we discussed
this in the committee,

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it was October of
the year 2000, this

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was the last meeting
before we had

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to start writing a
report to President Vest.

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We said, you know,
it doesn't seem

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right we would take teaching
materials from these faculty

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members who are committed
to teaching, and taking that

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and turning it into business.

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And so that was pretty much
the final thing we needed here

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to say no MIT.com.

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But we had to report
to the president

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and give him some bold idea for
MIT in the e-learning space.

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And particularly based on what
the 60 faculty members told us

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about the MIT faculty's very
deep, very deep commitment

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to teaching.

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We said, why don't we
create a system that's

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exactly the opposite?

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Exactly the opposite of
what we started with,

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and what the rest of
the world was doing,

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and say we're going
to just give it away.

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Just give it away so that
anyone, anywhere in the world

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can take advantage of
MIT faculty's commitment

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to education.

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That's how we started
with OpenCourseWare.

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If you look at
OpenCourseWare and see

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why it's been so
successful, and why it has

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resonated with the faculty.

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I remember just a few days after
MIT announced OpenCourseWare

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it was front page article
in New York Times,

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a young faculty
member came up to me

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and said that the
day MIT announced

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OpenCourseWare was the proudest
day of his career at MIT.

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Why did he say that?

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Why did it resonate so
much with the faculty?

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The reason, I believe, is
because OpenCourseWare is not

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just OpenCourseWare
separate from MIT.

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OpenCourseWare is
very much a mission

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that MIT has as an institution.

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If you look at the MIT mission,
not the OCW mission, MIT

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mission on the web,
it says that MIT

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is committed to
generating, disseminating,

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and preserving knowledge.

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And to bring this
knowledge to bear

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on all of the great
challenges of the world.

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MIT has traditionally fulfilled
that requirement, that mission,

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with basic research.

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But now with OpenCourseWare, we
can also fulfill that mission

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with our teaching, by
disseminating and preserving

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our teaching materials.