Goals: Efficient Delivery of Materials, Reinforce Class Material, Increased Faculty-Student Interaction, Increased Efficiency of Teaching Staff, New approach to curriculum, Encourage Experimentation
Modes: Software Tools, Project Based Learning, Collaborative Learning, Simulation, Interactive Learning
A client-server, Web-based environment to teach algorithmic concepts in computer science - and conceivably in other disciplines where teaching makes use of computational simulations. The system is written in Java and provides students with an interactive environment in which they can experiment with algorithm implementations, ultimately submitting them for grading.
Goals: New approach to curriculum
Modes: Collaborative Learning, Interactive Learning
Rethinking CS101 is a project to develop a curriculum for the first course in computer science based around the idea of computation as interaction. MIT subject 6.030 is for students with no prior programming experience, and is an implementation of this project.
Goals: Increased Understanding of Content, and reinforce Class Material through practice
Modes: Simulation
This software is not Web-based, but rather is a simulation layered on top of Matlab. It allows students to explore the following:
To start the application on Athena, go to the Courseware Menu and select
6 EECS --> 6.003 Systems and Signals --> 6.003 Matlab
Goals: Increased Understanding of Content, Reinforce Class Material
Modes: Tutorial
This illustrated textbook, with online quizzes and workbook, is regularly used in the undergraduate and graduate engineering geology subjects 1.32 and 1.38.
Goals: Project based learning; promote use and understanding of tools
Modes: Visualization Tool
This is a 3-dimensional subsurface profiler which allows the user to create, view, and manipulate the subsurface geology in three dimensions. It runs on Athena and can be started by typing the following commands at the Athena prompt:
add 1.38
NOMAD
Goals: Project based learning; promote use and understanding of tools
Modes: Simulation
This applications was developed to estimate cost and time of constructing a tunnel or other underground facility. The most important feature of the DAT software is the possibility to consider uncertainties, for example those caused by geologic uncertainties and variations of the construction process. It allows the user to provide geologic conditions and tunnel construction methods for particular geologies, and on this basis cost and time for completing a tunnel are calculated. It is used for term projects in the subject Underground Construction, 1.381. It runs on Athena and can be started by typing the following commands at the Athena prompt:
add 1.dev
cd /mit/1.dev/simsuper/Muck
SIMSUPER
Goals: Promote Interactive Learning and provide richer, coherent set of resources for learning
Modes:Ineractive Tutorial
The Electronic Companion to Bucciarelli's textbook "Engineering Mechanics for Structures" contains interactive exercises, interesting and/or useful web links, and computer tools for structural analysis and design - all embedded in, and launched from. a (growing) collection of pdf files. It requires Adobe Acrobat Reader and the cT Run-Time Program - both of which are available from the Web page.
Goals: Efficient Delivery of Materials, Reinforce Class Material, Increased Understanding of Content, Responding to Different Learning Styles, Develop Intuition for Concepts
Modes: Simulations, Tools, Collection of Data/Objects
Web based versions of Athena software developed in the late 80s and early 90s, including online course text, daily lecture notes, online databases, and several simulations.
Goals: Engage students in Design activity; Promote understanding of Collaborative Design
Modes: Simulation
Goals: Augment written homework in an introductory science or math cours; Respond to different learning styles and pace.
Modes: Tutorial
Cybertutor, being developed by Professor David Pritchard of the Physics Department, is an attempt to replace and/or augment written homework in an introductory science or math course. Like a Socratic tutor, Cybertutor presents each student with a problem, provides hints or simpler subproblems at the student's request, grades the student's responses immediately, and tells the student if the answer has particular recognizable deficiencies. It strives to equal the range of question types used by a human tutor. In addition to simple multiple choice and numerical answers to questions, special Java applets analyze analytic expressions, word strings, student-drawn (with a mouse) vectors, and student-drawn curves.
Goals: Promote understanding of Content, Address Different Leaning Styles, Reinforce Class Material, New Approach to Curriculum, Develop Intuition for Concepts
Modes: Simulation
Electromagnetism is difficult to teach because we have little or no intuition about electromagnetic phenomena. Because of the difficulties inherent in explaining the nature of vector fields, the teaching of electromagnetism lends itself to significant improvements in exposition using new technology. Electromagnetic field phenomena in particular lend themselves to effective explanation through graphical animation/simulation.
Goals: Increased Understanding of Content, Addressing different Leaning Styles
Modes: Tutorial
PIVOT provides a 24-hour-a-day opportunity for students to conduct "virtual office hours" with Professor Walter Lewin on their computer desktops, via the technology of streaming digital video delivered over the Internet.
Goals:Introduce data-base searching using web-based resources; Promote Research Orientation
Modes: Tutorial, Professional Tool
BLAST allows students to submit an unknown sequence of DNA to the protein database; the database can then suggest the function and mechanism of action of the query sequence. This tutorial explains and leads the student through the complex procedure of using this professional tool from beginning to end.
Goals: Increased Understanding of Content; Address different Leaning Styles
Modes: Tutorial
This hypertextbook is designed to supplement the course materials of 7.01 (MIT Introductory Biology) and give students tools to learn introductory molecular biology
Goals:Promote Research Orientation;
Modes: Interactive,Collaborative Learning, Professional Tools
In this journal, undergraduate students at MIT experience the joy of publishing their experiments and related thoughts.
Goals: Use of Professional Tools Addressg Different Learning Styles, Modular Delivery of Curriculum
Modes: Tutorial, Modeling and Simulation
Geosystems studied in this new curriculum include geological, oceanographic, and atmospheric dynamical systems, of many spatial scales, on the Earth as well as other planets. Examples include, petroleum reservoirs, active fault systems, groundwater systems, climate and global change, the ozone hole, and the dynamics of the solar system. Computational modeling is a key activity in understanding the behavior of such systems and related applications, such as climate change, environmental pollution problems, and natural resource production.
Goals: Address Different Learning Styles, Develop Intuition for Concepts; Make Math transparent and not an obstacle to learning Chemistry concepts,
Modes: Simulation
The motivation for these simulations, built using Matlab, is that the professor lecturing on Kinetics and Thermodynamics found that he was spending a large amount of class time teaching differential equations at the expense of time that could have been used to teach concepts related to the chemistry itself. By using these simulations, he was able to let students vary parameters such as initial concentrations and reaction rates with ease. In this way, students explored the entire space of possibilities and gained a deeper understanding of the material.
To start the application on Athena, enter the following sequence of instructions at the Athena prompt:
add 5.60 cd /mit/5.60/kinetics add matlab matlab -version 4.2
Goals: Provide access to a rich set of resources for improved understanding
Modes: Tutorial
Students use Rasmol, a menu-driven molecular visualization program, to open Protein DataBase files. Demos in class take students through elements of secondary structure and then show them a whole protein and point out its structural elements. Also shown is how trypsin, a digestive enzyme, works chemically.
Goals: Provide comprehensive set of resources and cultural context for language learning using the Internet.
Modes: Tutorial
JPNET seeks to build a clearinghouse for tools, services and information for Japanese Language and Culture educators and students world-wide.
Goals: Immersive Environment to promote active, collaborative learning;New approach to curriculum
Modes: interactive hypermedia; Collaborative learning
Berliner sehen is a hypermedia documentary for German Studies that relies on an extensive collection of shared archives and the Internet to form a collaborative learning environment for beginning to advanced-level students. Focusing on Berlin, this documentary features live-recorded video and authentic historical documents that depict the cultural,social, and political life of the city.
Goals: Immersive Environment to promote active, collaborative learning;New approach to curriculum
Modes: Interactive hypermedia; Collaborative learning
The objective of this program is to create an environment which, through the double process of immersion and interaction, is as close to the natural one as possible: where language takes back its primary function, as a tool for communication, and where the language learning process becomes experiential. The specific goal is to develop the users' understanding of authentic spoken French by motivating them to understand what they see, hear and read. It is an interactive fiction, filmed in Paris, which puts learners in the middle of a story, of which they become the central character. The story branches out in different ways, depending upon what students do, which in turn depends on what they understand. In the process of involving students in a story, "A la rencontre de Philippe" also involves them in the language learning process.
Goals: Immersive Environment to promote active, collaborative learning;New approach to curriculum
Modes: Interactive hypermedia; Collaborative learning
No Recuerdo is an interactive video project designed to provide intermediate college students of Spanish with a simulated immersion experience in South America, integrating linguistic and cultural aspects. The objectives are improved listening comprehension, vocabulary acquisition, cultural awareness, and writing skills. Combining documentary and fictional elements, it offers authentic language (from native speakers of Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico). Multimedia tools provide instant repetition of short audio or video segments, partial or full text transcriptions, and glosses. Students, acting as reporters, engage in a virtual exploration of neighborhoods of Santafe de Bogota, Colombia, and research and write feature articles about their experiences. They send reports and receive text comments from their newspaper editors.
Goals: Projects, Collaboration, New Approach to Curriculum
Modes: Project Based Learning, Collaborative Learning
Analysis and authoring of cybertexts. Games, MUDs, World Wide Web home pages, multimedia essays, and other kinds of digital communication are studied in terms of traditional theories of rhetoric to articulate elements of the new cyber-rhetoric for digital/multi/hyper-media. Techniques of creating cybertext for the communication of ideas and information. Study of the history and theory of contemporary computer communication. On the basis of this analysis, students design their owncybertexts for display and discussion.
Goals: Promote Critical Thinking, Collaborative Learning; Research orientation; New Approach to Curriculum
Modes: Interactive Tutorials; multimedia essays; access to specialised hypermedia resources and multiple representations
Since 1992, The MIT Shakespeare Project has been constructing electronic environments for teaching and research based on digital copies of primary documents in all media, including texts, high resolution page images of early editions, digital collections of art, illustration and stage photographs, and film and video adaptations. A collaborative venture between the MIT Literature Department and MIT's Center for Educational Computing Initiatives, the project aims to use emerging technologies to create exemplary digital collections in all media by building alliances with libraries, publishers, and theatrical companies, design systems of access in which all materials are linked to the lines of text to which they are relevant and which are easily used at all levels -- from advanced scholars to university and high school students and the general "reader," and deliver a variety of archival resources to users through special collections available at research libraries and participating universities, publications on CDROM, other distributable media, and the World Wide Web.
Goals: Efficient Delivery of Materials
Modes: Electronic Collection
This guide to Italian Renaissance Architecture consists of 98 images, representing 36 sites. The images are grouped by site and may be viewed in chronological order, by architect, or by city. The site is restricted to viewing on the MIT campus only.
Goals: Efficient Delivery of Materials
Modes: Electronic Collection
Featured works by Manet, organized chronologically, grouped with images related to the work, by him and other artists.
Goals: New, Interdisciplinary Approach to Curriculum, Collaboration, Projects
Modes: Software Tools, Project Based Learning
The Emergent Design Studio is an innovative curriculum that focuses on teaching design in terms of its processes and the computational tools it requires, by drawing on approaches and techniques from the disciplines of Architecture and Artificial Intelligence. Research focuses on morphology and the emergent properties of complex spatial systems. The curriculum stresses interdisciplinary collaboration and a team oriented focus on a broad yet concrete design project. The architectural project forms a platform for adapting existing software tools and as the stimulus for the design of new open source tools in Java and C++.