| Your OpenCourseWare Newsletter | September 2023 |
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| Expanding Access to Learning |
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| Maria Carucci, left, and Nauchi Kwan with the new MIT banners inside Lobby 7 on installation day last fall. Photo by Jake Belcher. |
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| The beginning of the academic year is always an energizing time for us here at MIT, but this fall we are especially excited to publish our OpenCourseWare Impact Report and to announce new team member Shira Segal as our very first collaborations and engagement manager. We also want you to meet the team behind our Chalk Radio podcast, and we have new course publications to share with you as well.
This past year, we welcomed 5.1 million mobile visitors on the OpenCourseWare website and reached 52.1 million course views on our YouTube channel. Driven by the belief that access to knowledge can change people’s lives, we are strengthening our collaborations every day to increase educational equity. All this work helps us connect with learners like you and the thriving open education ecosystem that OpenCourseWare helped initiate over twenty years ago. Join us in our efforts to expand access to learning! |
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| Credit: Photo by Jussi Puikkonen/KNAW |
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OpenCourseWare was founded more than twenty years ago as an expression of MIT’s commitment to improving people’s lives by expanding access to knowledge. Where do we stand now? See our annual impact report for a snapshot of what we’ve been up to in the past academic year, beginning with a special video message from OpenCourseWare Director Curt Newton about our recent projects and accomplishments.
Some highlights include welcoming 5.1 million mobile visitors, strengthening collaborations to increase educational equity, and reaching 52.1 million course views on YouTube. Here you can also read testimonials from learners and educators about how OpenCourseWare’s free and open resources have shaped their learning journeys, their lives, and their communities. Let’s continue to shape OpenCourseWare’s positive impact together this coming 2023-2024 academic year! |
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| Credit: Photo by Stephanie Hodges / MIT OpenCourseWare |
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We’re proud to introduce Shira Segal, MIT OpenCourseWare’s very first collaborations and engagement manager! Shira, who joined our team earlier this year, has a dedication to making quality education available to all—a dedication that aligns perfectly with our mission. In her role at OpenCourseWare, she helps us connect with the thriving open education ecosystem that has grown up in the twenty-plus years since MIT announced its project of freely sharing its course materials with the world.
Read more about Shira in this Open Matters blog post, which describes her past academic and creative activities and outlines what she’s done in her first months on the job, what projects she’s currently working on, and what she’ll be up to in months to come. |
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| Credit: Image by MIT OpenCourseWare |
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| If you’ve listened to any episode from the first four seasons of the Chalk Radio podcast from MIT OpenCourseWare, you’ve heard podcast host Sarah Hansen as she interviews MIT educators about their cutting-edge research and innovative teaching. Now's your chance to learn about the team members who work with Sarah to produce the podcast and whose names you have heard in the closing credits. This Open Matters blog post offers a glimpse into how the podcast episodes come into being, and closes with a list of fun facts about the production team. Get to know us as we prepare season five for you! |
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| New Courses and Resources |
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| Image courtesy of Raúl Radovitsky. |
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| Science, Math, Technology, and Engineering |
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STS.042J Einstein, Oppenheimer, Feynman: Physics in the 20th Century: This course explores the changing roles of physics and physicists during the 20th century, covering topics from relativity and quantum mechanics to high-energy physics and cosmology. Here you can examine the development of modern physics and the role of physicists within shifting institutional, cultural, and political contexts, such as Imperial Britain, Nazi Germany, and the US during World War II and the Cold War. To guide you through this material, you’ll find lecture videos and notes that accompany a rich reading list of articles as well as detailed instructions for the assigned essays.
16.001 Unified Engineering: Materials and Structures: What are the fundamental principles and methods surrounding the materials and structures for aerospace engineering? How can engineering analysis and design concepts be applied to aerospace systems? For instance, how does the stress-strain behavior of materials operate, and how would you go about analyzing beam bending buckling or torsion? Furthermore, what happens in cases of material and structural failure, such as instances of plasticity, fracture, or fatigue, and what are the physical causes of these failures? Prof. Raúl Radovitsky’s detailed lecture notes, problem sets with solutions, and quizzes will guide you through this material, and for a deeper dive look for comprehensive outlines of this course's two labs. |
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| 11.255 Negotiation and Dispute Resolution in the Public Sector: This graduate-level seminar introduces students to the art and science of negotiation and consensus building. Across the course materials – including lecture slides, instructions for negotiation exercises, and a detailed list of final exam questions – students of this topic are encouraged to build a personal theory of practice and are provided methods to strengthen their negotiating capabilities. You don’t have to be a planner, policy maker, developer, or social equity advocate to benefit from this course that outlines better ways to resolve public policy disagreements. Learn more about the ways in which principles of fairness, efficiency, stability, and wisdom can guide us. |
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15.053x Optimization Methods in Business Analytics: This truncated course on optimization modeling from the Sloan School of Management is available in the MIT Open Learning Library (for free either as a guest or by enrolling if you would like to keep track of your progress and receive feedback through interactive content and exercises). If you are interested in further material beyond the theoretical aspects of linear and basic Julia programming, see the full version of this course on OpenCourseWare: 15.053 Optimization Methods in Management Science.
15.481x Adaptive Markets: Financial Market Dynamics and Human Behavior: Can rationality and irrationality co-exist? Drawing on psychology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, this course from the Sloan School of Management proposes a new framework for understanding financial market dynamics, called the Adaptive Markets Hypothesis. Available in the MIT Open Learning Library, you can access this course material for free, either as a guest or by enrolling if you would like to keep track of your progress and receive feedback through interactive content and exercises. Explore an alternative solution to the debate between modern financial theory and behavioral economics with this course material. |
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| Credit: Image courtesy of Cynthia Breazeal. License: CC BY-SA. |
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| MIT Dean of Digital Learning Cynthia Breazeal was recently recognized by Forbes as one of the STEM pioneers on their “50 Over 50: Innovation” list for 2023, which celebrates the achievements, innovations, and leadership of women over the age of 50. In naming Prof. Breazeal to the list, Forbes cited her efforts to promote AI literacy, including her founding of the RAISE initiative on Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education, as well as her groundbreaking work with her Personal Robots research group at MIT’s Media Lab. We at OpenCourseWare celebrate this well-earned recognition and offer her our heartfelt congratulations! |
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| Credit: Image courtesy of Olivier de Weck |
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| Dedicated users of MIT OpenCourseWare may already be familiar with Professor Olivier de Weck, who teaches in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and has graciously allowed us to share materials from many of his courses on our site—courtesy of Prof. de Weck, visitors to OpenCourseWare can learn engineering design and prototyping, fundamentals of systems engineering, and system design optimization, among other topics. In this recent article by MIT Open Learning on Medium, Prof. de Weck provides in-depth insights into the challenges of project management, sharing some of the key takeaways from his project management MIT xPRO course. |
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| Credit: Photo by Aimee Hare, J-PAL employee |
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| From our MIT Open Learning colleagues at MITx, registration is now open for the MicroMasters Program in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy (DEDP), which includes core courses like Microeconomics and Data Analysis for Social Scientists that are free to audit. This MicroMasters program was created by MIT’s Department of Economics and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) to equip learners with both practical skills and theoretical knowledge to address pressing global challenges. |
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| Support New Learning Possibilities with OCW |
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Wherever you are in your educational journeys, we’re here to support you with free access to MIT’s teaching and learning resources.
You can help us share the latest from MIT’s curriculum with even more people—learners and educators just like you—around the world. If you’re able, please consider supporting OpenCourseWare with a gift today.
Thank you for being an important part of the OpenCourseWare community. |
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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 are available at: |
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