Executive Director of MIT OpenCourseWare at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cecilia d’Oliveira is responsible for leading OCW, the highly successful initiative that has published virtually the entire MIT undergraduate and graduate curricula online. Reporting to the Office of the Provost, and with the assistance of a distinguished 18-member
external advisory committee, d’Oliveira guides the development of programmatic initiatives, institutional partnerships and external support for OCW.
D’Oliveira said among her key goals as executive director is to make OCW as useful as possible for the MIT community while building on MIT’s worldwide leadership in the field of open education.
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Having served as technology director for OCW since 2002, d'Oliveira has been responsible for planning and support of the initiative's technical infrastructure, including software, hardware, networks and technical standards used in production and delivery of MIT course materials to users around the world.
Prior to her work with OCW, d'Oliveira co-founded and served as vice president of operations for SupplyWorks, a service provider for Internet-based manufacturing e-procurement. Before that, she spent more than 13 years in a variety of technology leadership positions at MIT, including director of information technology support and director of distributed computing & network services.
Launched in the spring of 2001 with more than $30 million in gifts and foundation grants, OCW publishes the educational materials from all MIT undergraduate and graduate courses on the web for worldwide use, free and open to anyone. D'Oliveira noted that OCW is possible because of the voluntary contributions of educational materials from MIT faculty, teaching staff and students; every week, new courses and updated course materials are added to the site.
Over the past six years, OCW has become one of MIT's most important global outreach activities, with more than a million visitors each month --- more than two million if one includes the affiliated sites around the world that host OCW mirrors and translationsTechnologies.
Photo courtesy of Patrick Gilloolly / MIT
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A Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies at Harvard University, Chris Dede’s fundamental interest is the expanded human capabilities for knowledge creation, sharing, and mastery that emerging technologies enable. His teaching models the use of information technology to distribute and orchestrate learning across space, time, and multiple interactive media. His research spans emerging technologies for learning, infusing technology into large-scale educational improvement initiatives, policy formulation and analysis, and leadership in educational innovation.
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He is currently conducting funded studies to develop and assess learning environments based on modeling and visualization, online teacher professional development, wireless mobile devices for ubiquitous computing, and multiuser virtual environments. Dede also is active in policy initiatives, including creating a widely used State Policy Framework for Assessing Educational Technology Implementation and studying the potential of developing a scalability index for educational innovations.
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Senior Partner and Founder of November Learning, Alan November is an international leader in education technology. He began his career as an oceanography teacher and dorm counselor at an island reform school for boys in Boston Harbor. He has been director of an alternative high school, computer coordinator, technology consultant, and university lecturer. He has helped schools, governments and industry leaders improve the quality of education through technology.
Audiences enjoy Alan’s humor and wit as he pushes the boundaries of how to improve teaching and learning. His areas of expertise include planning across curriculum, staff development, new school design, community building and leadership development. He has delivered keynotes and workshops in all fifty states, across Canada, and throughout the UK, Europe, Asia and Central America.
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Alan was named one of the nation’s fifteen most influential thinkers of the decade by Classroom Computer Learning Magazine. In 2001, he was listed one of eight educators to provide leadership into the future by the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse. In 2007 he was selected to speak at the Cisco Public Services Summit during the Nobel Prize Festivities in Stockholm, Sweden. His writing includes numerous articles and best-selling book, Empowering Students with Technology. Alan was co-founder of the Stanford Institute for Educational Leadership Through Technology and is most proud of being selected as one of the original five national Christa McAuliffe Educators.
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