While OCW doesn’t grant credit, certificates, or degrees for learning with our material, we know that understanding how the MIT curriculum is structured can be very helpful in using OCW.
Most of the material shared on MIT OpenCourseWare comes directly from the MIT curriculum, from courses taken by enrolled students. On OCW, you’re often seeing the very same content used by enrolled MIT students as they work toward their degrees.
For example, some of OCW’s most popular material comes from courses that satisfy MIT’s undergraduate degree General Institute Requirements (GIRs) for the Science Core—six foundational courses across biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics. Each of these requirements can be satisfied by related but varied treatments to match one’s particular interests and level of preparation. There is more than one way to learn these key concepts, and so, on OCW you’ll find some of the varied treatments offered at MIT.
Visit Education at MIT for an overview of MIT’s five schools and the Schwarzmann College of Computing, the unique qualities of teaching & learning at MIT, other resources for K12, and professional and executive education that complement what you’ll find on OCW.
To explore the MIT curriculum in more detail, including MIT’s undergraduate, graduate, and interdisciplinary programs and lists of courses taken for different degrees, see the MIT Course Catalog.