A Fusion of Fun and Learning at MIT

In John's July Newsletter

IAP: A Fusion of Fun and Learning at MIT

A Texas Hold’em game from a player’s point of view. (Courtesy of Peter Hopper on Flickr. License CC BY-NC.)

Every January, MIT students, faculty, and staff come together and design a special learning experience. Infused with creativity, inventiveness and fun, the four week term, known as Independent Activities Period (IAP), gives rise to some of the most ingenious courses that aren’t all part of the MIT curriculum.

From beekeeping to Japanese archery and computational law to academic resilience storytelling, the variety of workshops and sessions are created and organized by MIT members passionate about their subject area.

On OCW, there are more than 100 IAP courses that are available for you to work through at your own pace. The following are a sample of IAP courses, but you can find all of the IAP courses on OCW.

> Read the complete article

24.979 Topics in Semantics: Negative Polarity Items (New Course) This course is concerned with Negative Polarity Items. While raising familiar foundational questions for linguistic theory, Negative Polarity Items enter into complex and often revealing interactions with a host of other phenomena in grammar. Investigating several such interactions, the course touches on topics such as focus, presupposition, exhaustification, quantification, (in)definiteness, modals and attitudes, comparison and superlatives, and questions.

4.601 Introduction to Art History (New Course) This course investigates the power of art in historical perspective, focusing on Euro-American traditions of art from the fourteenth to the twenty-first century. It examines changing conceptions of the artist, the work of art, and the discipline of art history, exploring the roles images and objects have played over time, how they functioned in various social, economic, and cultural contexts, and whose interests they served or sought to disrupt.

Please support MIT OpenCourseWare

Dear John,

We hope you've reached new academic heights with OCW!

If you enjoy OCW resources and can afford to support OCW, then please consider donating to OCW today.

Make your donation can count even more with a matching gift from your company.

Thank you!

24.917 ConLangs: How to Construct a Language (New Course) This course explores languages that have been deliberately constructed, including Esperanto, Klingon, and Tolkien's Elvish. Students construct their own languages while considering the basic linguistic characteristics of various languages of the world. Through regular assignments, students describe the phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and writing system of their constructed language. The final assignment is a grammatical description of the new language.

1.022 Introduction to Network Models (New Course) This course provides an introduction to complex networks and their structure and function, with examples from engineering, applied mathematics, and social sciences. Topics include spectral graph theory, notions of centrality, random graph models, contagion phenomena, cascades and diffusion, and opinion dynamics.

Views from OCW Supporters

"Because I believe, that this is the way how to advance our world. And OCW is a wonderful project. Especially courses with recitations and exercises."

-Martin, OCW Supporter

> Read more

We'd love to hear from you!

Please share your story about how OCW has made an impact in your life. Whether our resources helped you brush up on your skills, find Open Educational Resources for your classroom, prepare for a course of study, or allowed you to satisfy your curiosity, hearing from learners and educators like you demonstrates the true value of OCW.

Tell us your OCW story

For free resources for high school teachers and students, check out:

More free resources from MIT are available at:

OCW is grateful for the support of:

OCW is part of MIT Open Learning's efforts to transform teaching and learning at MIT and beyond.

You are receiving this email because you supported or signed up to receive news from MIT OpenCourseWare.

Our mailing address is:

MIT OpenCourseWare

77 Massachusetts Avenue, NE49

Cambridge, MA 02139

Add us to your address book

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list