At its 2014 global conference in Ljubjlana, Slovenia, the OpenCourseWare Consortium announced the results of a ballot proposition to change its name. By a wide majority, the membership of the university-based organization changed its name to the Open Education Consortium. The reasons for the name change go beyond mere rebranding. As the open education environment has grown and matured since the Consortium was founded. Since early on, the Consortium had to fight overcome confusion over the differences between what UNESCO named “open educational resources” and the MIT-initiated OpenCourseWare. But, now, given the changes in digital learning, in which software blends with open content, it was more necessary than ever to have as broad a mandate as possible.
Will we change the name of the OpenCourseWare project at UCI to Open Education? Perhaps, but there are a number of logistics that complicate that, so for the time being, expect to see the OpenCourseWare moniker continue.