History

Even before the computer was developed, researchers at public universities were working on educating citizens through informal education programs.

At the beginning of the 20th century, 4-H clubs were created to teach young people the latest technological advances in agriculture and home economics. The success that the youth had in using "new" methods of farming and home economics, developed on the parents adopting the same practices.

Since the 4-H club idea was spreading across the country, Congress passed the Smith-Lever Act that created the Cooperative Extension Service in the United States Department of Agriculture. The Cooperative Extension Service is recognised as a partnership between the USDA, land grant universities in each state, and counties throughout the United States. Due to the work of the Cooperative Extension Services and 4-H, people throughout the United States have easy and inexpensive (mostly free) access to the latest research without having to visit a college campus or attend college courses.

The educational programs and resources offered by 4-H and the Cooperative Extension Service, give the citizens the chance to meet people around them and offer the opportunity to learn whatever they want on their own schedules. The thing is that in order to meet the changing needs of citizens and the use of new technology, the Cooperative Extension Service has created an extension that provides research based on a wide variety of topics to people through the Internet.

The ability to share resources online at a little cost can make easier open education compared to the distribution of hard copies. An example of this is the opencourseware program, established in 2002 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This program was followed by more than 200 universities and organizations. MOOC is a more recent form of online course development getting more attention since the incident of 2011, which was followed by a number of non-certificate-granting programs.