Image by OEGlobal CC-BY

Connecting Back to the Roots of OEGlobal at MIT

On the banks of Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts you will find a stately university campus that is of some significance to the field of Open Education.

Of course, we are talking about the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the above mentioned significance is much more than “some.” 

The 2001 launch of MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) where course content of all MIT courses was shared openly under Creative Commons Licenses was a key catalyst in the worldwide spread of the Open Education movement. As of August 2022, over 7000 classroom lectures have been shared to the OCW YouTube Channel followed by over 4 million subscribers. Explore a few samples of OCW’s “Hidden Gems.”

The interest of other institutions to follow MIT’s groundbreaking move of openly sharing their course materials led to the 2008 creation of Open Courseware Consortium (OCWC), now known as Open Education Global (that’s us!). That connection is visible in the right side of the footer of the MIT OCW web site. MIT is a long time sustaining member of OEGlobal and we appreciate that this connection has been sustained to the present.

Thus, in December 2022  when new OEGlobal Executive Director Andreiá Inamorato had meetings planned in Boston, she had good reason to pay a visit to that Cambridge campus of what we might consider OEG “Member Zero”.

Andreia reports a very constructive meeting with three representatives of the 164 member team from MIT Open Learning.

Meeting at MIT Open Learning (left to right): Curt Newton (MIT), Sarah Hansen (MIT), Andreia Inamorato, (OEGlobal) and Christopher Capozzola (MIT).

As a recognized leader of innovation in many disciplines, MIT has especially demonstrated continued investment in ‘Open’ over the years, by placing it at the heart of major initiatives that reach far beyond. MIT Open Learning is the hub for several educational initiatives, such as MIT Open CourseWare, MITx, MicroMasters, and MIT Open Learning Library.

Some of MIT Open Learning’s innovative programs live under the MIT Open platform, including Chalk Radio, an OpenCourseWare podcast about inspired teaching, the Lemelson-MIT Program Let’s Invent, the MIT Alumnai for Climate Action platform, as well as MIT Bootcamp, Teach Remote to support remote teaching, and Justin Reich’s investigation into the art and craft of teaching through Teach Lab, plus much more. 

One example of an OEGlobal/MIT connection already established is via OEGlobal’s  Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER) in a shared goal to advocate for and support the development of inclusive, antiracist, and diverse OER to enhance educational equity. Recognizing the leadership of community colleges in equitable access to education, the MIT team has reached out to CCCOER to identify community colleges interested in adapting and enhancing Open Educational Resources (OER) from OCW to use with their students. CCCOER co-leads the Open for Antiracism Program, a faculty development program aiming to transform teaching and learning to be antiracist through the use of OER and open pedagogy.

In her visit with the MIT Open Learning team, Andreia reports that a number of new ideas for MIT/OEGlobal collaboration were discussed. You can expect to learn more in the coming months through our communication channels. Plus we are scheduling an upcoming OEG Voices podcast where we can learn more about the current projects and interests of MIT Open Learning and how to create mutually beneficial opportunities with the OEGlobal community.

We expect many readers have experienced the value of MIT’s contributions to Open Education.  Do you want to learn more about or engage with MIT Open Learning initiatives? Share your perspectives and ask questions with ongoing conversations in the OEG Connect community.


Featured Image: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, skyline across the Charles River is Boston, Mass. public domain Tichnor Brothers postcard image from Wikimedia Commons.


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OEG Voices – Latest Podcasts

OE Global Voices

Welcome to the home of podcasts produced by Open Education Global. These shows bring you insight and connection to the application of open education practices from around the world. Listen at podcast.oeglobal.org

OEG Voices 081: Bea de los Arcos on We Like Sharing

Who would not want to be part of something called “We Like Sharing” especially when encouraged by the enthusiastic voice of Bea de los Arcos? This clever idea for a photo competition from TUDelft held annually since 2021 is less about prizes and more about generating an understanding of openness through the sharing of photographs, and at the same time, creating a rich visual collection of images representing openness… shared openly.

We Like Sharing has planned each year to coincide with Open Education Week and was also recognized in 2023 with an OE Award For Excellence in the Wildcard category. This conversation was recorded in late January 2025 in hopes of generating more interest, but was hardly necessary given the quality of this year’s 150+ submissions and the winners selected by public vote.

As usual there are more interesting, and anticipated, ideas and understandings that come from our OEGlobal Voices conversations. Listen to learn not only about We Like Sharing, but also Bea’s path from the seaside of Galicia, Spain to the innovative university in the city in the Netherlands painted by Vermeer, and maybe even a hint of bagpipes.

Listen to our conversation, get inspired to go outside with your camera and find interesting details to photograph… and hopefully share.

In This Episode

FYI: For the sake of experimentation and the spirit of transparency, this set of show notes alone was generated by the AI “Underlord” in the Descript editor we use to produce OEGlobal Voices.

In this episode, Alan Levine talks with Bea de los Arcos about her inspiring project, “We Like Sharing.” They discuss how the initiative encourages Creative Commons licensing, open sharing of photographs, and the value of appreciating and documenting beauty in everyday moments. They also explore Bea’s personal journey, her love for walking, and the importance of community in open education.

  • Introduction and Background
  • Bea’s Personal Journey and Influences
  • Living and Working in Delft
  • Overview of the Extension School
  • Inspiration Behind ‘We Like Sharing’
  • The Evolution of ‘We Like Sharing’
  • Impact and Stories of Reuse
  • Ideas for Encouraging Participation
  • Bea’s Personal Interests and Hobbies
  • Conclusion and Final Thoughts

(end of AI generated show notes)

Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 81

I love this photograph, it was one of the winners from last year. And it is a white wall and there are lots of hearts painted in different colors on the door.

It’s a wall and a door and lots of hearts.

So for some reason I love that photograph because there’s so much love in just the one wall. It’s actually called “Love on a Wall.” And that was picked up in Flickr by the algorithm In Explore. It attracted lots of views. so that allows me to go back to the [photographer] in this case, that person wants to remain anonymous. But it allows me to go to this person and say, “Hey, this is what’s happening for your photograph.” And of course they get super excited, “Wow!”

I know [many photos] have been reused because I see them on presentations by colleagues. So [they] pick the photograph, put it on a slide, and that’s a beautiful example of reuse.

But in this case, it was more interesting because one of those little hearts on the wall, so not the whole photograph, was used on the cover of a little booklet from the University of Leeds, a little booklet, called, “With Love from Your Supervisor.” It’s about giving advice to o PhD students about how to go about research. The cover is a little person holding the book and all these hearts. That’s love from your supervisor and that heart is one of the hearts in “Love on a Wall”. So I thought it was just amazing.

Bea de los Arcos on reuse of a We Like Sharing photo

A white wall and a door painted with scores of colourful hearts. ”Open is sharing love anywhere, any time, for everyone.”
Love on a wall flickr photo by Pelerecho shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license. This photo was a winner in the 2024 We Like Sharing photo competition.
Credits for cover art of With Love from a Dissertation Supervisor.
Cover art of With Love from a Dissertation Supervisor. (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), 3D Art and design, Odysseas Frank, OD-3D artstation portfolio
Hearts on cover: Detail from “Love on a wall” photo by Pelerecho, released under
CC BY, part of the “We like sharing” collection, TU Delft, University of Technology,
The Netherlands, OEWeek24 Photo Competition entry number 81,
https://flic.kr/p/2pBDByZ

We encourage you to visit the full collection of over 1500 openly licensed images curated over the five years of We Like Sharing Open Photo Competition. Each image’s caption includes description text suitable for an alt image description and cut and paste text for full attribution to the photographer who shared it. If you reuse any images, please consider leaving a comment in flickr or contacting Bea, so she can communicate this back to the photographer.

We full expect to see We Like Sharing back in 2026 for Open Education Week. This is a very replicable activity and we have previously discussed with Bea in OEG Connect about what it takes to organize a spin off version.

It comes to you. One of the photographs that I took was when I was waiting for the tram and I just looked down. There was a campaign in Delft at the time around violence against women. [Someone] had this stamped on the pavement this hand and a message “stop violence against women.”

So, I was thinking, wow, become a bit more curious about what it is that is happening around you. Don’t look at your phone with your apps or your messages. No, just look. Look away from your phone– maybe that’s what it is. — look away from your phone. What can you see?

Bea de los Arcos on looking at the world around you

An open hand painted on the pavement beside the words 'Stop geweld tegen vrouwen', 'stop violence against women' in Dutch.
Stop flickr photo by B. de los Arcos is shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)

Our open licensed music for this episode is a track calledPhoto Album by Crowander shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.. Like most of our podcast music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).

Finally, this was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast, part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our showsWe have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descriptbut our posts remain human authored except where indicated otherwise.