| Abstract |
This study is aimed to explore the development, features, and impact of Taiwan OpenCourseWare (OCW). It first reviewed the origin of MIT OCW and other Asia-Pacific countries’ OCW consortiums, including China, Japan, and Vietnam. Secondly, this study introduced the development of National Chiao Tung University’s (NCTU) OCW, Taiwan OCW Consortium (TOCWC), and compared them with those of Asia- Pacific countries. Finally, this study interviewed teachers and students of NCTU as well as off-campus users about their perceptions and experiences of NCTU’s OCW. The results indicated that Asia Pacific countries’ OCWs were influenced by MIT’s, and the distinct feature of Taiwan’s OCW is that many courses are imbedded with videobased contents. This study also investigated the considerations of OCW publication by individual universities in TOCWC, and found that the audience, university specialties, and willingness of participation from professors are the top considerations. The study further interviewed NCTU OCW’s users and concluded that (1) teachers could improve their teaching skills and were glad to receive feedback from off-campus users; (2) oncampus students perceived OCW to resolve their time problems as a good helper for their learning; (3) off-campus users appreciated the removal of geographical barrier and the access to high-quality free online education resources.
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