| Your OpenCourseWare Newsletter | January 2024 |
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| Learning Together in the New Year |
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| Students in the lab at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. (Photo by Christopher Harting). |
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A treasure trove of new course publications and free online materials is now available on our MIT OpenCourseWare site and YouTube channel, from Professor Gilbert Strang’s updated and expanded video series titled A Vision of Linear Algebra to the rich assortment of videos seminars in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Computational Tutorial Series.
We also have new courses on microbes and infectious diseases, the American political system, and advanced Japanese, the last of which links to the Kanji video lectures of an affiliated class. Finally, we’ve collected a list of unexpected courses from MIT OpenCourseWare to kick-start your learning in the new year. Thank you for being part of our worldwide learning community! |
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| New Courses and Resources |
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| Tractography provides a visual representation of the nerve tracts in the brain. In this case, the visualization represents a healthy human subject. (Image by Matteo Frigo on Flickr. License: CC BY.) |
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| Humanities and Social Sciences |
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21G.S55 Japanese V
Textbook Japanese tends to be standardized, presenting only the standard Tokyo dialect and omitting colloquialisms and dialectical variations. In contrast, authentic materials like newspapers, popular fiction, and film show Japanese as it is actually used. Here you can access materials from an experimental version of 21G.505 Japanese V that employs both in-person and synchronous remote instruction to help students progress simultaneously in four skills—listening, speaking, reading, and writing—by immersing them in Japanese culture through authentic everyday Japanese media. Other than the syllabus and Instructor Insights interview, note that the materials on the course site, including lessons, study guides, and grammar notes, are primarily in Japanese.
17.262 Congress and the American Political System II
This course, designed to prepare graduate students for professional research on the US Congress in particular and legislatures more generally, focuses on the competing theoretical lenses through which legislatures have been studied. In particular, it compares different models of legislative behavior, applying those models to floor decision-making, committee behavior, political parties, relations with other branches of the Federal government, and elections. Especially valuable for MIT OpenCourseWare users are the three pages of reading lists—a weekly list of required readings, a weekly list of additional recommended readings, and a bonus list of influential books and articles for background on legislative studies. |
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| Science, Technology, Engineering, Math |
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7.341 Microbes at War: The Mechanisms that Drive Infectious Diseases
How can a tick bite cause a meat allergy? Does cranberry juice do anything to help cure a urinary tract infection? This advanced undergraduate seminar dives into the molecular world of microbes. Using primary research literature to explore the interactions between pathogens and their hosts, the course examines the factors that pathogens use to colonize a host and how the host’s response can affect the outcome of the infection. Here you can access a list of weekly readings, lecture summaries, descriptions of assignments, and a handy reference guide to the terminology and concepts employed in the course.
18.706 Noncommutative Algebra
The commutative principle of multiplication, which students typically learn in middle school, states that for any given A and B, A times B is equal to B times A. But for some more complex algebraic phenomena, such as the product of matrices in linear algebra, commutativity breaks down, a fact that has implications for various disciplines ranging from quantum physics to number theory. In this course site, which includes full lecture notes by Prof. Roman Bezrukavnikov as well as three sets of bonus notes from related lectures by other MIT mathematicians, you can explore the ramifications of noncommutativity in depth. |
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| Professor Strang introduces his new vision of how to teach linear algebra. (Image by MIT OCW) License: CC BY.) |
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RES.18-010 A Vision of Linear Algebra
This new collection by revered mathematics professor Gilbert Strang brings together six previously released videos from 2020, presenting ideas and suggestions about the recommended order of topics in teaching and learning linear algebra; one video released in 2021 on how to compute the nullspace of any matrix A; and a new one-hour video, Five Factorizations of a Matrix, providing an overall look at linear algebra by highlighting five different ways of factoring a matrix. Fans of Prof. Strang’s approach to teaching will also appreciate the Related Resources page, which provides a detailed overview of his publications on MIT OpenCourseWare and beyond.
RES.9-008 Brain and Cognitive Sciences Computational Tutorial Series
Interested in the computational underpinnings of thought? Since 2015, MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences has hosted a seminar series in which graduate students and postdocs present tutorials on computational topics relevant to research on intelligence in neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. The goal of the series is to bring researchers in brain and cognitive sciences closer to the researchers who are creating computational methods. In this resource, we offer links by which users can access lecture videos from some thirty-seven of the seminar tutorials, along with lecture slides, code and datasets for exercises, background references, and other supplementary material. |
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| Further MIT OpenCourseWare Courses |
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| Professor Grossman in front of the class next to a model of a crystalline structure. (Courtesy of Lillie Piquette / School of Engineering. Used with permission.) |
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| What are you looking to learn in the new year? From The Beatles and Beethoven to learning a new language or upping your skills at poker, we’ve compiled a list of 13 unexpected courses from MIT OpenCourseWare to kickstart 2024. We’re especially excited about the new Climate Justice Instructional Toolkit and the Tools for Robust Science materials, as well as some unique MIT OpenCourseWare courses like Heavy Metal 101 and Girls Who Build Cameras. Read more in this Medium article by MIT Open Learning, and let’s make this a year of learning together! |
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| MIT OpenCourseWare Needs Your Support |
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| We’re proud to share courses like Prof. Nancy Kanwisher’s with you and your fellow learners all year long. If you’ve enjoyed learning with MIT OpenCourseWare, please consider making a gift today to help sustain our efforts to open up MIT’s curriculum to the world. |
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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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