STANFORD U: OPEN LEARNING INITIATIVEThe Open Learning Initiative (OLI) was founded in 2002 at Carnegie Mellon University. In September 2013, OLI Founding Director, Candace Thille, joined the faculty at Stanford University, and, along with several OLI staff, founded OLI at Stanford. The core mission of OLI has not changed but our capacity to fulfill that mission has been greatly expanded.
The hallmark of OLI courses is that their design is based on current research in human learning and they serve as laboratories for ongoing learning research. At Stanford the research base has expanded beyond cognitive science to include many other areas of research in the psychological, social, computer and statistical sciences.