CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 1 - Shahid Beheshti University (SBU) has launched a site (http://mit-ocw.sbu.ac.ir/) containing Persian translations of 28 MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) courses, becomeng the fifth OCW translation affiliate. The initial publication includes Persian versions of MIT architecture, electrical engineering, computer science, management and philosophy courses. Several dozen more translations are forthcoming. As with all OCW translation affiliates, SBU has produced the translations with its own resources.
MIT OpenCourseWare materials are published under a Creative Commons license that permits users to download, modify and redistribute content for non-commercial purposes, provided they cite MIT relevant faculty as the source of the content and any derivatives—including translations—are made available under an identical license. This license permits any site user to make and publish translations. OCW translation affiliates, whose translations are linked to from the OCW site, have undergone a quality assurance review by the OCW staff.
Shahid Beheshti University joins Universia (Spanish, Portuguese),China Open Resources for Education (Simplified Chinese), Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System (Traditional Chinese), and Chulalongkorn University (Thai) as MIT OpenCourseWare translation affiliates. Together these organizations have created more than 600 translations of OCW courses. These translations have received more than 27 million visits to date, accounting for roughly 40% of worldwide access to MIT OpenCourseWare content.
Shahid Beheshti University (SBU), established in 1959 as the National University of Iran, started its academic life in 1960 with only 174 students in two faculties: Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning and Faculty of Banking and Economics. The first Master's course at SBU was offered in the Faculty of Architecture in 1961, while the first Ph.D. program was introduced in the Faculty of Economics in 1991. Today there are more than 70 programs at Master's and over 30 courses at Ph.D. levels Development of new facilities in the main campus paved the way for increased academic activities, so that by 1978 several other faculties became active at SBU, e.g. Faculties of Literature and Foreign Languages, Basic Sciences, Law, Earth Sciences, Statistics and Informatics and Education and Psychology.
MIT OpenCourseWare, available online at http://ocw.mit.edu, makes the MIT Faculty's course materials used in the teaching of almost all of MIT's undergraduate and graduate subjects available on the Web, free of charge, to any user anywhere in the world. MIT OpenCourseWare can be considered a large-scale, Web-based publication of educational materials. Educators in the U.S. and the developing world utilize the materials for curriculum development, while students and self-learners around the globe draw upon the materials for self-study or supplementary use. With virtually the entire MIT curriculum now available, MIT OpenCourseWare is delivering on the promise of open sharing of knowledge.
