MIT OpenCourseWare

What MIT OpenCourseWare is

MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's free library of course materials. The site describes itself as "a web based publication of virtually all MIT course content" and adds that "OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity." Its home page promise is short: "Free lecture notes, exams, and videos from MIT. No registration required."

OCW serves two readers. A learner studying on their own gets the actual materials MIT used to teach a course; an educator gets material to reuse in their own teaching, and the home page gives each a door: "Are you new to OCW? Get Started" and "Looking for teaching materials? Educators Start Here". OCW is part of MIT Open Learning, the institute's online learning unit, which lists OCW as "Free open-licensed educational materials from thousands of MIT courses." The site points to a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license for its material.

What a learner gets

Course materials

Each OCW course is a published set of materials from an MIT class rather than a hosted online class: lecture notes, exams and videos are the three things the home page names. Courses are labeled by level, from undergraduate to graduate, and some resource sites are marked non-credit. Each course page names its instructors and topics.

The featured courses give a sense of range. In science and math there are Classical Mechanics, taught by Prof. Deepto Chakrabarty, Dr. Peter Dourmashkin and Dr. Michelle Tomasik; Fundamentals of Biology with Prof. Eric Lander, Prof. Robert Weinberg and Prof. Tyler Jacks; Single Variable Calculus with Prof. David Jerison; and Nonlinear Dynamics I: Chaos. Engineering and energy are represented by Introduction to Solid-State Chemistry with Prof. Jeffrey Grossman, Introduction to Sustainable Energy, and the graduate course Land, Water, Food, and Climate. The humanities and social sciences show up too: American History Since 1865, a literature course on comedy, and Science Activism: Gender, Race, and Power. A graduate course by Prof. Rebecca Saxe sits under health and medicine, and a non-credit resource on the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing covers computer science and artificial intelligence.

New additions widen it further. Recent courses include Writing and Reading the Essay, Microeconomic Theory and Public Policy with Prof. David Autor, Experiential Ethics, Introduction to Phonology, Blockchain and the Design of Financial Systems, Social Problems of Nuclear Energy, Oceans and Us, and two signal processing resources, one of them by Prof. Alan V. Oppenheim and Prof. Ronald Schafer. Some entries are resources rather than classes, such as an Election Resource Hub from the MIT Election Data + Science Lab, a Lead User Innovation Handbook, and a computational tutorial on generative image and video models.

Collections

For learners who want a starting point rather than a single course, the "Discover Collections" section groups material by theme: Africana Studies, Energy, Entrepreneurship, Environment & Sustainability, Introductory Programming, Introductory Science and Math, the MBA First-Semester Core, the MIT Open Learning Library, OCW Scholar and Transportation. The introductory programming and science and math collections are the natural entry points for a beginner, while the MBA first-semester core gives a business learner a structured set of courses to follow.

Offline and mobile

"MIT OpenCourseWare To Go" packages materials for offline learning on mobile devices, under the line "Explore. Download. Learn." That matters for learners with unreliable internet: a course can be downloaded and studied without a connection.

Search and help

A search box covers "courses, materials, & teaching resources", and the main menu links About OCW, Help & FAQs and Contact Us. OCW also runs Chalk Radio, "a podcast about inspired teaching at MIT"; a recent episode features MIT programmer Ana Bell on growth mindset and coding.

What learners say

OCW's home page carries a long run of learner stories, each written up by MIT Open Learning. A high school graduate in Lima, Peru used the free materials in an experiment with real-world impact. A researcher at the South Pole uses OCW to share physics content with fellow Antarctic "winterovers". A teenager in Australia built a VR prototype after OCW classes that gave her "a solid foundation of knowledge and problem-solving abilities", having discovered the site at 14. A retired professor from Syria has used OCW for his research and teaching for decades, and for a doctoral candidate in atomic physics in Egypt, the story says, OCW was "a steadfast companion through countless study sessions". A US high school student's interest in urban planning grew through OCW: in the site's words, "MIT OpenCourseWare, part of MIT Open Learning, helped him develop knowledge and deepen his passion". The stories show the spread of readers OCW reaches, from teenagers to working researchers.

Cost and funding

Everything on OCW is free, and no account is needed to use it. The site is supported by gifts: a "Give Now" button sits in the main menu, and the home page asks visitors to "help MIT OpenCourseWare share knowledge with the world" with a donation. In September 2026 OCW announced that it had won a 2026 Open Education Award for Excellence.

Where OCW sits in MIT Open Learning

OCW publishes course materials; it is one of several MIT Open Learning offerings. The Open Learning site lists MITx Courses ("Online courses from MIT faculty"), MITx MicroMasters programs ("Online professional and academic credentials to advance your career or fast-track a Master's degree"), MIT xPRO for professional development, MIT Horizon for workforce AI education, and MIT Learn, described as "MIT's AI-enabled lifelong learning destination." The OCW home page links to MIT Learn as "a whole new front door to the Institute". A learner who wants graded work or a credential uses those programs; OCW is where the underlying course materials are free to read, watch and download. For MIT faculty, Open Learning invites instructors to "publish your course materials with OpenCourseWare."

Who it suits

OCW suits self-directed learners who want to study real MIT courses at their own pace, from first-year physics, biology and calculus to graduate material in energy, medicine and economics. College students use it alongside their own courses, as one of the site's stories describes, and the downloadable offline packs make it practical where connectivity is poor. Teachers and lecturers have their own entry point and openly licensed material to draw on.

It fits less well for a learner who needs deadlines, graded assignments or an instructor to answer questions, since OCW presents materials rather than a running class. For that, or for a credential, the MITx courses and MicroMasters programs elsewhere in MIT Open Learning are the route.