The OpenCourseWare Consortium, with 300 institutional and organizational members, is joining edX to offer open educational resources of its members to the world in MOOC format. OCW Consortium members have collectively produced over 20,000 courses, all licensed for re-use and modification. The partnership with edX will develop these resources into openly licensed MOOCs, which will make these high quality educational materials available for use and modification by learners and institutions worldwide, presenting new opportunities for collaboration, scaling educational opportunity and cost effective curriculum development.

“The OCW Consortium believes that providing people access to the education they desire is an important contribution to solving global challenges,” said Mary Lou Forward, executive director. “The partnership with edX provides us an exciting new forum to share the outstanding courses our member institutions have already developed.”

“The OCW Consortium is one of the leading global voices for open education,” said Larry Cooperman, president of the OCW Consortium board of directors. “The common goals of the OCW Consortium and of edX will result in benefits to learners and institutions around the world by offering MOOCs with materials that can be adapted to fit different situations, languages and contexts.”

Edx is a not-for-profit enterprise founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2012 to offer online courses using innovative technology. Along with the OCW Consortium, additional educational institutions and prestigious scientific and cultural organizations are joining edX under a new membership structure. These new members include Osaka University, the Inter-American Development Bank, Colgate University and The Smithsonian Institution.