Dr. Vijay M S Kumar

Dr. Vijay Kumar was the Principal Investigator of O.K.I (Open Knowledge Initiative), an MIT-led collaborative project to develop an open architecture for enterprise educational applications.

He is a member of the Faculty Advisory Committee of MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW). He has served as the Executive officer for MIT's Council on Educational Technology and as a member of the steering committee for I-Campus, the MIT-Microsoft Alliance initiative for educational technology.

He was co-PI of an NSF supported MIT initiative for capacity building in STEM education in Haiti through educational technology and open resources.

He was also co-PI of a US Department of Education project, “Fly-By-Wire” directed towards assisting teachers in scalably addressing the learning needs of differently prepared and motivated students.

Kumar's research as well as his advisory engagements are directed toward strategy, planning and implementing technological innovations to advance educational equity and quality, globally. These include:

(*) World Health Organization - WHO Academy Learning Strategy Advisor.
(*) Smithsonian (Advisor for Digital Futures).
(*) India National Knowledge Commission, (honorary advisor 2006- 2009).
(*) UNESCO (developing strategies for open educational resources, open technology and policy)
(*) Open University of Catalonia (Educational Innovation)
(*) Al Ghurair Foundation for Education, UAE, MIT partnership for strengthening education in the MENA region,including displaced learners
(*) Singapore University of Technology and Design (IT)
(*) Qatar Foundation International(educational technology and innovation)
(*) Massachusetts STEM Council's Network Operations Board.

His experience also includes programs for K-12 curriculum and teacher professional development and planning through innovative uses of technology.

Dr. Kumar co-led CLIx, a Tata-MIT initiative to advance educational quality and access through technology in underserved Indian schools. The initiative received the UNESCO 2017 King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize for the Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Education.

He is Co-PI for the Woodrow Wilson-MIT collaborative initiative for professional development of teachers through contemporary learning science and technology for challenge based education.

Kumar has been actively involved in efforts, such as the Kaleidoscope project and Curriki, as well as those supported by the Hewlett and Gates Foundations to advance the use of Open Educational Resources for improving educational access and quality.