Individual awards announced previously; course awards to be announced at Consortium annual conference May 8-10.
CAMBRIDGE, MA, April 30 , 2013 — The OpenCourseWare Consortium has announced the 2013 winners of Site Awards for OpenCourseWare Excellence (ACE).
Notre Dame OpenCourseWare was named as the recipient of the Landmark Award for OpenCourseWare Excellence. The University of Notre Dame was one of the founding members of the OpenCourseWare Consortium and launched their OCW site in 2006. The site currently has more than 50 courses in 24 subject areas, and in 2012 the site received visits from 300,000 individuals in 211 countries and territories around the world.
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya OCW will receive the Outstanding New Site Award for OpenCourseWare Excellence. Sharing material from more than 200 UPC courses, the UPC OCW platform is also integrated with different information systems of the university: Prisma, which supports certain management processes, including curriculum, students and academic records, registration and assessment; Gauss provides information about users, site work; and finally the library catalog provides information on the books of the recommended bibliography.
Peer 2 Peer University has been named as the recipient of the Technical Innovation Award for OpenCourseWare Excellence for the creation of an e-mail tool, called the MOOC Maker, for offering Massive Open Online Courses using OpenCourseWare and other Open Educational Resources. Originally developed and used for a courses called The Mechanical MOOC – A Gentle Introduction to Python, which enrolled 8,000 learners in the fall of 2012 and early 2013, the MOOC Maker has subsequently been used to structure a course through the MIT Media Lab called Learning Creative Learning, which enrolled 24,000 learners.
The Awards for OpenCourseWare Excellence provide annual recognition to outstanding individuals, courseware and OpenCourseWare sites in the OCW Consortium community. The awards are presented each year at the global OpenCourseWare Consortium’s annual conference, to be held this year May 8-10 in Bali, Indonesia. Individual award recipients are selected by the Consortium’s Board of Directors; site and course awards are selected by an awards committee populated from the Consortium membership.
“These three sites are outstanding examples of the creativity, dedication and generosity that are hallmarks of the OCWC community,” said OCW Consortium Executive Director Mary Lou Forward. “We are thrilled to recognize their efforts and help draw attention to their contributions to the global body of open educational resources.”
About the University of Notre Dame
Founded in 1842, the University of Notre Dame is the United States’ preeminent Catholic university and is rated among the top 25 of all U.S. institutions of higher learning. Notre Dame is organized into four undergraduate colleges — Arts and Letters, Science, Engineering, and the Mendoza College of Business — the School of Architecture, the Law School, the Graduate School, 10 major research institutes, more than 40 centers and special programs, and the University library system. Located adjacent to the city of South Bend, approximately 90 miles east of Chicago, it is highly residential, with 80 percent of students living on campus, and also is known for the quality of its physical plant and the beauty of its campus, including the Golden Dome of the Main Building, the world’s most recognized university landmark.
About Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – BarcelonaTech (UPC) is a public institution dedicated to higher education and research, specialised in the fields of engineering, architecture and science. In a highly creative context, the UPC’s research, teaching and management projects are based on the principles of freedom, justice, democracy, solidarity, cooperation, sustainability, efficiency, transparency and social responsibility. They also reflect the University’s commitment to the environment and to change. With a focus on intellectual rigor, critical thinking, a transversal approach to knowledge, educational innovation and entrepreneurship, the UPC produces competent professionals with the skills they need to tackle present and future challenges.
About Peer 2 Peer University
Peer 2 Peer University (we mostly just say P2PU) is a grassroots open education project that organizes learning outside of institutional walls and gives learners recognition for their achievements. P2PU creates a model for lifelong learning alongside traditional formal higher education. Leveraging the internet and educational materials openly available online, P2PU enables high-quality low-cost education opportunities. Learning for the people, by the people. About almost anything.
About OpenCourseWare
An OpenCourseWare is a free and open digital publication of high quality university-level educational materials – often including syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, and exams – organized as courses. While OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiatives typically do not provide a degree, credit, or certification, or access to instructors, the materials are made available under open licenses for use and adaptation by educators and learners around the world.
About the OpenCourseWare Consortium
The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 250 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. The mission of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is to advance formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.
Activities of the OpenCourseWare Consortium are supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, member dues, and contributions from sustaining members including: African Virtual University, China Open Resources for Education, Delft University of Technology, Japan OpenCourseWare Consortium, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Korea OpenCourseWare Consortium, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NetEase Information Technology, Open Universiteit, Taiwan OpenCourseWare Consortium, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Tufts University, Universia, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, University of California, Irvine, University of Michigan, and University of the Western Cape.
Contact:
Stephen Carson
ChairOpenCourseWare Consortium Awards Committee
617-253-1250
scarson@ocwconsortium.org
http://ocwconsortium.org