| Your OpenCourseWare Newsletter | November 2024 |
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| Celebrating Independent Learners around the World |
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| Image: Katherine Ouellette. |
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| The Open Learners podcast continues! In this special season of Chalk Radio, we turn to the stories of independent learners around the world whose use of MIT OpenCourseWare has transformed their lives. Tune in to new episodes by co-hosts Emmanuel Kasigazi and Michael Pilgreen to hear the inspiring stories of Jae-Min from South Korea, Nader from Jordan and Lotfullah from Afghanistan, who each discuss what open education has done for them. You can also learn more about this special season and its co-hosts in this Medium article by MIT Open Learning. Then, visit the MIT OpenCourseWare website and YouTube channel to continue your own learning journey. Thank you for being part of our worldwide community of learners! |
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| Teen Uses Pharmacology Learned through MIT OpenCourseWare to Extract and Study Medicinal Properties of Plants |
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| Photo courtesy of Tomás Orellana. |
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| Inspired by traditional medicine, 17-year-old Chilean student Tomás Orellana is on a mission to identify plants that can help treat students’ health issues. With skills acquired from an MIT OpenCourseWare course on pharmacology, he led 16 of his fellow students in a group project to study the properties of a range of medicinal plants, to discover which of them would be effective remedies for common ailments among high-schoolers. “I dream of becoming a university academic to have an even greater impact on current affairs in my country and internationally,” Tomás says. Learn more in this MIT News story, or check out this MIT OpenCourseWare YouTube short in which Tomás discusses the medicinal plant project in his own words, with captions in Spanish and dubbed English audio. |
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| New Courses and Resources |
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| Two figures from the lecture notes for 18.238 Geometry and Quantum Field Theory show (a) a twisted-fat graph and (b) a Feynman diagram. (Figures courtesy of Prof. Pavel Etingof.) |
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18.238 Geometry and Quantum Field Theory
The development of quantum field theory and string theory has generated fruitful interaction between physics and mathematics, incorporating into physics such mathematical concepts as algebraic topology, algebraic geometry, representation theory, combinatorics, and number theory. As a result, physicists have been quick to learn basic mathematics. On the other hand, many mathematicians have been slower to learn the concepts of physics, intimidated by the different manner of presentation of mathematics in physical texts. The main goal of this course, which is geared toward mathematicians, is to present the basic ideas of quantum field theory in a completely rigorous and mathematical way. This course includes full lecture notes and detailed homework exercises!
14.271 Industrial Organization I
This graduate-level course, on how competitive forces influence companies’ operational decisions, offers an introduction to the basic building blocks of industrial organization and to a variety of analytical and modeling techniques. The course is designed especially to prepare economics PhD students to conduct thesis research in the area, but it will be of interest to a wider audience; the engaging full lecture videos cover a range of theoretical models and real-life applications, addressing topics such as airline fare class structures, Thanksgiving sales at supermarkets, and the reasons why sellers on eBay sometimes offer identical products at widely varying prices.
24.150J Liberalism, Toleration, and Freedom of Speech
A commitment to free speech and toleration is a defining feature of modern liberal democracies. But this commitment is a relatively recent phenomenon, and it continues to be contentious on both the political left and the political right. To better understand the values of free speech and toleration, this undergraduate-level course explores the historical context in which those values emerged and the philosophical arguments that have been made for and against them. Topics covered include the issues of hate speech and pornography, the value of pursuing social justice, and the debate regarding free speech on contemporary college and university campuses. |
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6.1810 Operating System Engineering
If you’ve previously taken a course like 6.004 Computation Structures, you may be interested in this undergraduate-level resource (linked from MIT OpenCourseWare) on the design and implementation of operating systems and how they’re used as a foundation for systems programming. Topics covered include virtual memory; file systems; threads; context switches; kernels; interrupts; system calls; and interprocess communication, coordination, and interaction between software and hardware. A relatively simple multi-processor operating system, xv6, is used to illustrate these topics, with individual lab assignments that involve extending the xv6 operating system, for example to support virtual memory features and networking.
RES STS.001 Project on Embodied Education
The MIT Project on Embodied Education aims to close the gap between the growing body of research on movement and the learning process and the pedagogical strategies that educators use, finding ways to integrate physical activity and academic instruction at all levels—for example, teaching elementary school math through yoga, middle school physics through martial arts, high school science through swimming, and college history through dance. The project website (linked from MIT OpenCourseWare) offers a guide to the science behind this pedagogical approach, pointers to assessments of its effectiveness, and free lesson plans and ideas for educators at all levels. |
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| Further MIT OpenCourseWare Materials |
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| Image: Katherine Ouellette. |
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| MIT economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson recently received the 2024 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, in recognition of their work analyzing the ways in which differences in political institutions, particularly among formerly colonized nations, have affected those nations’ subsequent economic growth. To honor Acemoglu and Johnson’s achievement, we’ve updated this Medium article by MIT Open Learning on MIT’s Nobel laureates whose free educational materials are available for anyone to access on MIT OpenCourseWare, MITx, and MIT MicroMasters, all of which are part of MIT Open Learning. Join us in celebrating—and learning from—the laureates! |
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| Save the Date—GivingTuesday Is on December 3rd! |
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| Image by MIT Open Learning. |
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| Newsletter edited by Shira Segal and Peter Chipman with 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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