MIT OpenCourseWare Case Study

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MIT OpenCourseWareCase Study

• -Charging 1 Per One .ZIP Download

Jesus Alvarez Theresa Eugenio Jiho Lee
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Introduction

• MIT OCW was Proposed in 1999
• Equal access of information / Digital Divide
• Currently over twelve hundred courses
• 34 million hits 4TB bandwidth monthly

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The funding problem

• By the end of the year of 2008, funding from MIT
  will stop
• Need to be self sustainable

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A proposal of a possible solution -charging
.ZIP downloads
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.ZIP Download in OCW

• Currently, pilot program which users may download
  a .ZIP file containing all of the HTML pages and
  files associated with a particular course.
• As of Dec. 2005, 25 courses out of about 1,200
  courses offer downloadable .ZIP files for free.
• Proposal of charging certain amount of money, say
  1, to people as a convenience charge for
  downloading the whole course material in .ZIP
  file
• Separate files will still be free.

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Two questions

• How would charging affect the reputation and the
  usage of OCW?
• What would be the impact on developing countries?

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The iTunes Model

• Wildly successful
• over 500 million songs to date
• 130 million songs per year
• Differences between iTunes and OCW
• legality issues
• user attitude
• global availability

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Regional Analysis

• North America/Western Europe/East Asia
• South Asia/Latin America/Eastern Europe
• Pacific/Sub-saharan Africa/Central Asia/Caribbean

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Total OCW Usage
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.ZIP Download Use / Total Content Transfer
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North America, East Asia, and Western Europe

• 2/3 of the world content transformation number.
  2/3 ZIP download number
• The ZIP download number is proportional to the
  OCW content transformation number.
• ZIP download number divided by the content
  transformation number in these regions is smaller
  than the world average.
• Feasibility of ZIP fee will not be as big as
  other regions.

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Latin America, South Asia,Eastern Europe, MENA

• Usage statistics
• 24 of total OCW usage
• 30 of ZIP downloads
• Feasibility of ZIP fee
• region of highest consideration
• economic and connectivity issues

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Pacific, Sub-Saharan Africa, central Asia,
Caribbean

• Only 4 of total usage
• Not statistically important
• Main problem is getting OCW known
• Feasibility of ZIP fee
• This is still a low income zone
• Even if the total is smaller the percent is near
  the other areas

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Conclusion

• As seen in iTunes case study, total usage of OCW
  wont be affected too much.
• Latin America, South Asia,Eastern Europe, MENA
  regions will be affected most when .ZIP fee is
  implemented.

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Problem of the proposal

• When the convenience charge is set as certain
  amount of money, it can be affordable to some but
  can be very expensive for others.

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Alternative solutions

• charge money for high speed download such as
  100kbps,
• charging can be specifically targeted to people
  who dont have problem to overcome internet
  access limitations or costs.
• advertisements/corporate sponsorship