Carnegie Mellon University's Open Learning Initiative (OLI) is creating a portfolio of freely available self-contained courses built collaboratively by cognitive scientists, human computer interaction experts, and seasoned faculty.  The OLI project goals are to develop Web-based learning environments that effectively use modern, cognitive tutoring pedagogy.  The courses are designed to stand alone or to improve and support the best instructor-led learning.  As part of the cognitive tutoring strategies, they embed assessment capacity to increase student and teacher understanding of how well students are learning. 

Carnegie Mellon will produce and deploy courses in causal and statistical reasoning, chemistry, economics, logic and statistics. The full courses, which are composed from modules and include experiments, lectures, group study "rooms," and assessment engines, will be openly available on the Web at no charge to all.  To support ongoing development and improvement of the course, institutional users, such as faculty at colleges and universities, may, for a small service fee, purchase class management tools that complement the freely available online course.  Class management tools will make possible automatic grading of workbooks and tests, tracking of class/student progress, and technical assistance.  Carnegie Mellon's service-for-fee business model is intended to support the infrastructure for conducting evaluation, iterative course improvement, and subsequent course development. The hope is that this will ensure widespread use, sustainability, and quality beyond Hewlett funding.

For more information, please visit the Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative website.