"OpenCourseWare (OCW) are course lessons created at universities and published gratis via the Internet. The OpenCourseWare movement started in 1999 when the University of Tübingen in Germany published videos of lectures online for its timms initiative.[1] The OCW movement only took off, however, with the launch of MIT OpenCourseWare at MIT in October 2002. The movement has been 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."[2] MIT also believes that it would allow students 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[2]

According to the website of the OCW Consortium, an OCW project:

• is a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses.

• is available for use and adaptation under an open license, such as a Creative Commons license.

• does not typically provide certification or access to faculty..."[

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCourseWare

OCW University of Tübingen 1999.