What are the technical requirements for viewing MIT OpenCourseWare course materials?
I have downloaded an MIT OpenCourseWare course, but I can't access the materials. How do I get started?
Is it possible to save the video files to a disk or to my hard drive?
Is the MIT OpenCourseWare site compliant with W3C standards and accessibility requirements?
What information does MIT OpenCourseWare collect from visitors to the site?
What technology is used to publish the MIT OpenCourseWare site?
How does OCW create video and audio lectures?
MIT OpenCourseWare is best viewed in the following browsers. While our site should appear fine in whatever version you might be using, we recommend the most recent versions for the best results. Click on any of the links below for a free update.
Although higher-speed connections are preferable, slower connections such as dialup modems should allow users to view most materials on the sites; however, downloading materials will take a longer period of time.
Some file types within the course material require special software to use; these are identified on the individual course pages. The most common format in use on the MIT OpenCourseWare site are PDF files. We recommend you download and view these files with Adobe Reader or other PDF reader to see the files as intended; viewing the files in a web browser is not recommended.
Zip files contain the same content as the online version. They allow you to review OCW materials on your computer even when you're not online.
Please note that audio, video, and some other special files are not included in the download zip package in order to keep these files a manageable size. You can download these files through links provided in the course. Some audio and video lectures are also available through MIT's iTunes U and YouTube sites.
YouTube
Some of our videos are available on YouTube. Download is not available for these files. To see the complete collection, visit http://youtube.com/mit.
iTunes U
Links to our videos on iTunes U require Apple's free iTunes application. If you have this application, these links will automatically open it. Once you have iTunes open, you can download a single lecture by selecting "Get Movie," or the entire course by selecting "Get Tracks." Once you've downloaded these lectures, iTunes will automatically add it to your library.
Internet Archive
Some OCW videos are available on Internet Archive as both MP4 and Real Media files (and a few other types provided by Internet Archive, such as OGG). To download these, right+click on the link (MP4 or RM) and select "Save Link As." To watch MP4 files, you need QuickTime. Real Media files require Real Player.
Our webpage templates are both valid HTML 4.01 and meet Sec. 508 & WCAG AA Web Accessibility recommendations. Our style guide includes validating and checking the accessibility of HTML as part of the authoring process. Our standards require all images on our web pages to contain ALT attributes. Our data tables contain heavy use of the scope and headers attributes that make it easier to navigate using screenreaders such as JAWS.
To make our PDFs accessible, we replace any Type 3 or bitmapped fonts within the file, and use Adobe's "Make Accessible" plugin before finalizing the document.
Videos with subtitles can be accessed directly through our Courses with Subtitled Audio/Video list.
The information we collect from visitors helps us improve the MIT OpenCourseWare site, and assists us in evaluating the access, use, and impact of MIT OpenCourseWare on the worldwide educational community. MIT OpenCourseWare collects the following information from visitors:
The MIT OpenCourseWare technology solution supports a complex publishing process. This large-scale digital publishing infrastructure consists of planning tools, a content management system (CMS), and the MIT OpenCourseWare content distribution infrastructure.
The planning tools used by the MIT OpenCourseWare team to assist faculty in publishing their course materials include a custom application of FileMaker Pro, and several checklists and documents. For creating and managing content, we use several desktop tools (file conversion tools) as well as the open-source CMS, Plone. Our content delivery infrastructure includes a sophisticated publishing engine, content staging server, and a content delivery network utilizing Akamai's EdgeSuite platform.
For more information on the MIT OpenCourseWare publishing environment or technology, please contact MIT OpenCourseWare.
Video and audio production is one of the most expensive and time-consuming parts of the OCW production process.
To record lectures and other course material, we partner with an MIT media production group. Once this is complete, we review the video content to identify any third-party material (such as music or diagrams that appear in slides) and try to obtain permission from the owner to display the material. In some cases, this is impossible and we have to edit out these sections of the recording.
After a video is edited, we encode it as a H.264 MP4 and link in subtitles.
If you would like to support MIT OpenCourseWare's video production, please consider making a donation.