CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sep. 30 - Opening Up Education , a book released today by MIT Press and edited by Toru Iiyoshi and MIT Senior Associate Dean M. S Vijay Kumar, examines how open technology improves the quality of education. A collection of essays from across the Open Educational Resources community, the publication also includes contributions from MIT OpenCourseWare and the OpenCourseWare Consortium thought leaders.
A project of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the book features an essay coauthored by MIT Vice Chancellor and Dean for Graduate Education Steven Lerman, MIT Professor Shigeru Miyagawa and former MIT OpenCourseWare Executive Director Anne Margulies that explores the culture of sharing that has made the success of OCW possible at MIT. OCW advisory board member John Seely Brown wrote the book's foreward.
Opening Up Education also includes contributions from many prominent members of the OCW Consortium community. Andy Lane of the Open University UK's OpenLearn project, Richard Baraniuk of the Connexions project, former director of Utah State University’s Center for Open and Sustainable Learning David Wiley and many others bring their experience and perspective to this unique collection. Toru Iiyoshi, one of the book's editors, is a consulting scholar and was previously a senior scholar with The Carnegie Foundation.
Catherine Casserly and Marshall Smith, the architects of the Open Educational Resources program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation provide their perspectives on the potential of openly shared educational materials and technologies. The Hewlett Foundation was an important funder of the early stages of the MIT OpenCourseWare project.
In keeping with the spirit of the subject, the book itself is not only available in print but also freely available in digital form through the MIT Press Web site. The digital version is even licensed for redistribution using a Creative Commons license.
