Open Online Learning Environment utilizing OER content

In Japan, many major universities are members of the OpenCourseWare Consortium Japan (JOCW) and provide about 3,000 courses in total. Those are very worthy courses for Japanese self-learners, and globally more than 25,000 courses have been distributed mostly in English from various institutions of OCW Consortium members, however those courses seem not to be appropriate for main Japanese self-learners because of lack of language skill. If OER contents, like OCW could be distributed in combination with language support partial or full translation, those contents might be very helpful for Japanese learners. We have established a Non-profit organization named Asuka Academy to promote the distribution of various OER contents with translation into Japanese. At first we have launched the pilot project that intends to distribute MIT OCW courses through LMS in combination with learning support function not only translation but also learner’s community for exchanging opinions among learners mainly from Japan. In Japan, it is said that natural science tends to be avoided by students because of lack of fascinating educational materials in Japanese. Very nice natural science courses like MIT OCW courses might solve this problem and lead to the in crease of the number of students who like science and technology fields. In this paper we describe our project aim and plan.