| Your OpenCourseWare Newsletter | May 2024 |
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| A New Season of Chalk Radio Has Launched |
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| (Image by MIT OpenCourseWare) |
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We have a lot to celebrate at MIT OpenCourseWare, from the launch of Season 5 of the Chalk Radio podcast to the continued celebration of five million subscribers on our YouTube channel with a collection of our five most popular video lectures (and five hidden gems, too).
In addition to our new course publications and resources, we are also celebrating the award-winners of the MacVicar Faculty Fellows Program, a program that recognizes exemplary teaching at MIT, with this list of courses available on MIT OpenCourseWare by those recipients. This means that you, too, can learn from the most acclaimed educators on MIT campus.
Whether you are on or off campus, and regardless of wherever you are in your own learning journey, we encourage you to continue to make use of all that MIT OpenCourseWare has to offer. From listening to podcast episodes that feature MIT faculty’s inspired teaching to exploring new course materials and lecture videos that we post every day, your engagement with life-long learning is why we do what we do. |
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| Prof. Patrick H. Winston's "How to Speak" talk, the most popular video on our YouTube channel, has received over eighteen million views in four years. (Image by Brett Paci. Photo by Azeddine Tahiri. Used with permission.) |
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We continue to celebrate the five million—and growing!—subscribers to MIT OpenCourseWare’s YouTube channel with this Medium article by MIT Open Learning titled “Knowledge is a Click Away with MIT OpenCourseWare.” With over 7,000 videos and more than 440 million views, our team has compiled the top five video lectures and five hidden gems from our YouTube collection.
You can read more about our MIT OpenCourseWare YouTube channel, which is the largest .edu channel on the platform, in this previous MIT News story titled “How free online courses from MIT can ‘transform the future of the world." Watch our five million subscriber video or submit your own video learner story here. Happy watching and happy learning! |
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| Prof. Anne White discusses nuclear science and clean energy to help kick off a new season of Chalk Radio. (Image by MIT OpenCourseWare). |
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| Season 5 of Chalk Radio, MIT OpenCourseWare’s podcast about inspired teaching, is in full swing. In the past four weeks the podcast has featured conversations with Prof. Anne White on fusion reactors and homemade cloud chambers; with Prof. David Hsu on the challenges and opportunities cities present in the fight against climate change; with Prof. David Kaiser on the role physics has played in modern history; and with Dr. Sara Ellison and Nobel laureate Esther Duflo on economics as a collaborative effort to make the world a more equitable place. And the season is just getting started—seven more episodes are currently in the works and will be available on the Chalk Radio website within the next two months! |
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| New Courses and Resources |
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| Dr. Helena Vallicrosa describes the advantages of using R, a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. (Image by MIT OpenCourseWare) |
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6.100L Introduction to CS and Programming Using Python
This course provides an entry-level introduction to computer science and programming, designed for students who have little to no programming experience. The goal of the course is to provide students with an understanding of the role computation can play in solving problems, as well as to help learners (regardless of their background) feel confident in their ability to write simple programs to accomplish useful goals. The lessons and assignments in the course are based on the Python 3 programming language, and the course site is set up with a convenient modular structure to make it easy for self-learners to follow along.
WGS 109 Women and Global Activism in Art, Media, and Politics
Women’s experiences are not the same all over the world, so it’s not surprising that feminism takes different forms and addresses different issues in different contexts. This course explores the links between women’s multiple identities and feminist activism, examining how conflict, religious fundamentalism, and militarization of societies affect women’s lives around the world. It also considers the role of the state in influencing the course and direction of women’s movements, women’s mobilization within and across national boundaries for social and gender justice, and the challenges and dilemmas facing contemporary women’s activism. |
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RES.1-002 Introduction to R and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
This resource presents four videos designed to provide students with the tools and concepts for working with R, a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. The videos in this series cover the basics of R, how to navigate the R interface and deal with different data formats, how to run and interpret linear models with R, and how to use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in R. These practical sessions were developed as part of the course 1.845 Terrestrial Carbon Cycle and Ecosystem Ecology but will be useful for anyone who would like to learn about R and GIS.
RES.16-002 How to CAD Almost Anything
Have you ever wondered how everyday objects are designed? How can we generate a computer model of a mug, a bottle of Diet Coke, or a Saturn V rocket? What about designing the blades of a jet engine? Or making a realistic render of a bowl of fruit? This resource, based on a nine-session workshop, covers the basics of CAD (computer aided design) through fun examples focused on reverse engineering. In contrast to traditional mechanical design courses, this workshop emphasizes the design process itself, understanding how we best make use of our available tools to arrive at a desired result. |
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| Further MIT OpenCourseWare Materials |
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For over thirty years MIT has recognized faculty members who have displayed exceptional dedication in teaching undergraduates. Each year the Institute names a new group of Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellows, based on nominations from fellow faculty members and after review by a panel consisting of the Vice Chancellor, faculty members, and current undergraduates. We always look forward to the annual announcement of a new crop of MacVicar Fellows, partly because it gives us pleasure to see how many of them are familiar faces to MIT OpenCourseWare as people who have worked with us repeatedly to share their course materials online.
The new MacVicar honorees for 2024 are no exception. Three of the four of them have shared their course materials with the world on MIT OpenCourseWare, which you can read about in this Medium article by MIT Open Learning. (We hope the fourth will do the same at some point, of course!) We offer all of this year’s Fellows our thanks and our heartfelt congratulations that their contributions and dedication to undergraduate education have been formally recognized with this fellowship. For information on past years’ MacVicar honorees and the course materials they’ve published on MIT OpenCourseWare, see this series of past blog posts. |
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| You can start more learning journeys |
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Five million and counting—that’s how many people have subscribed to the OpenCourseWare YouTube channel. That’s over five million people who’ve learned from MIT educators for free.
With your support, we can share new and free content across OpenCourseWare’s platforms with millions of more learners. If you’re able, please consider making a gift to OpenCourseWare today. |
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| Newsletter edited by Shira Segal with contributions from Peter Chipman, production assistance from Stephanie Hodges, and resource development by Duyen Nguyen and Yvonne Ng. |
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| We want to hear from you! How can MIT OpenCourseWare help you in your educational endeavors? Write to us at ocw@mit.edu with questions or suggestions. |
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| More free resources from MIT Open Learning are available at: |
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