http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/04/technology/04MIT.html?ex=987386578&ei=1&en=077d52b01c55685c Auditing Classes at M.I.T., on the Web and Free By CAREY GOLDBERG CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 3 — Other universities may be striving to market their courses to the Internet masses in hopes of dot-com wealth. But the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has chosen the opposite path: to post virtually all its course materials on the Web, free to everybody. M.I.T. plans on Wednesday to announce a 10-year initiative, apparently the biggest of its kind, that intends to create public Web sites for almost all of its 2,000 courses and to post materials like lecture notes, problem sets, syllabuses, exams, simulations, even video lectures. Professors' participation will be voluntary, but the university is committing itself to post sites for all its courses, at a cost of up to $100 million. Visitors will not earn college credits. The giveaway idea, President Charles M. Vest of M.I.T. said, came in a "traditional Eureka moment" as the institute — like nearly every other university — brainstormed and soul-searched about how best to take advantage of the Internet. Called OpenCourseWare, the initiative found broad resonance among the faculty members, said Steven Lerman, the faculty chairman. "Selling content for profit, or trying in some ways to commercialize one of the core intellectual activities of the university," Professor Lerman said, "seemed less attractive to people at a deep level than finding ways to disseminate it as broadly as possible." <snip>