2004-2005 Funded Projects
An Interactive Website for Supporting Teaching Assistants - $25,000
Doctor Lori Breslow, Teaching and Learning Laboratory
Jane Dunphy, Foreign Languages and Literature
Doctor Breslow and Ms. Dunphy will create an interactive teaching website to strengthen the instructional skills of MIT's teaching assistants. The website will provide TAs with access to a rich database, including video, audio, and text-based resources that will provide best practices in teaching, familiarize users with the new pedagogies and technologies being used in MIT classrooms, and illustrate possible solutions to potential instructional pitfalls. This website should help TAs both to enhance their classroom performance and interact more effectively with their students.
Designing Complex Dome Structures Using Digital Fabrication - $10,200
Professor Lawrence Sass, Architecture
These funds will support a presentation of the design process using digital fabrication (rapid prototyping) devices in the field of architecture. Most people admire architects' creativity and systematic project engineering, but there are few if any presentations of this creative process. Professor Sass will present the design process and new design possibilities resulting from this advanced process in the form of 4 large architectural models designed and built using CAD and rapid prototyping machines. The work will serve as the third part of the undergraduate introduction to computing subject 4.206.
Discussion Forum - A Learning Environment Beyond the Classroom - $3,000
Tong Chen, Lecturer, Foreign Languages and Literature
Mr. Chen will create a natural learning environment beyond the classroom for students who are going to take Chinese 21F.103-106. Discussion fora will be created for MIT students to discuss topics related to each of their lessons with students in China at the Departments of Foreign languages and Literatures at Nankai University and Tianjin Normal University in Tianjin. From the discussions, our students will be able to read authentic Chinese responses to their questions and observe how the views and attitudes of Chinese students differ from their own. This will provide them with a way of expanding their textbook material with short explorations of Chinese culture and society as they prepare to study, work, or live in China or in a Chinese setting.
Enhancing First Year Writing at MIT - $13,700
Professor James Paradis and Doctors Rebecca Faery, Andrea Walsh, and Kimberly De Vries, Writing and Humanistic Studies
This award will fund workshops for teaching staff of first year writing subjects to incorporate recent scholarship in composition studies and to promote coherence among CI-HW subjects, as well as to plan and offer an orientation session "Writing at MIT". In the curricular enhancement process Professor Paradis and his colleagues will address the rich diversity in backgrounds and learning styles of MIT students to help serve the needs of all our students, who will be living and working in the future in an increasingly global environment. The orientation session would help freshmen make important choices about their initial writing subjects and the continuum of writing opportunities and development of writing abilities that is the purpose and trajectory of the Communications Requirement.
Explicit Linking of Mathematics in the Undergraduate Engineering Curriculum - $13,810
Professors Karen Willcox and John Deyst and
Doctor Doris Brodeur, Aeronautics and Astronautics
Professors Haynes Miller and David Jerison, Mathematics
Earlier work by Professor Willcox and colleagues, partially funded by the Alumni Funds, identified lack of communication and limited pedagogical linkages between mathematics and engineering departments as major contributing factors to many problems identified in the level of mathematics skills of Course 16sophomores and juniors. Professor Willcox and her colleagues will build on the recommendations of that study, in particular to revise curriculum to establish explicit linking between mathematics and engineering subjects. They will also create explicit links to work of several mathematics faculty who are developing web-based modules for in-lecture demonstrations and on-line reference tools.
Ingenuity Experiments for ME 2.001/2.002- $1,000
Pierce Hayward, Mechanical Engineering
Many of the students in mechanical engineering are without a single vocational subject from their high school curriculum: no mechanical drawing, wood shop, or machine shop. These students generally sense this missing practical knowledge and want the practical experience they have missed. Mr. Pierce Hayward proposes to design experiments in which mechanical engineering students make a series of devices as part of the lab procedures, in order to provide this kind of experience, improve student enjoyment and nurture mechanical ingenuity.
LEGO-Based Educational Modules for 1st and 2nd Year Aero-Astro Engineering Courses - $23,994
Professor Kristina Lundqvist and Colonel Peter Young, Aeronautics and Astronautics
Professor Lundqvist and Colonel Young will use Lego Mindstorms for students to learn the fundamentals of computer programming, the conception and design of autonomous mobile vehicles, the vehicle engineering to create reliable and functional devices, and to be given opportunities to "design by redesign" while working in teams on a collaborative hands-on engineering project. Mindstorms are complex; microprocessor controlled multi-part "kits" which allow students to design and assemble electric-motor powered robots to carry out desired tasks of varying complexities and will be used in 16.00 Introduction to Aerospace Engineering and Design, 16.Unified, and 16.35 Real-Time Systems.
Making Testing and Specifications Come Alive - $23,658
Professor Michael Ernst, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Many students view testing and specifications as two of the dryer and more tedious topics in undergraduate programming subjects, though they are critical to the success of any real software system. Professor Ernst proposes to integrate research tools into 6.170 to make testing and specifying programs easier and thus more pleasant and to make their benefits more apparent to students, thus motivating students to perform these essential tasks. The result should be students who enjoy programming more, understand it better, and write better programs, and the tools should be transferable to other programming subjects at MIT.
Media in Performance - $22,700
Professor Jay Scheib, Music and Theater Arts
Professor Scheib will develop a new subject Media in Performance that will provide an opportunity for MIT students to make use of media technology as a means of expanding their engagement with the performing arts. While our students are well versed in manipulating these technologies, they lack the intellectual and aesthetic means to make them speak eloquently. By examining the historical development of multimedia performance, as well as the techniques, and conceptual tactics deployed in contemporary performances around the world students will develop tactics for using media as a means of expressing the complexities of their lives.
Mobile Fluid Stations for Teaching in Fluid Dynamics of the Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate - $12,310
Professor John Marshall, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Professor Marshall will develop mobile "fluid stations" for use as a teaching tool in laboratory subjects, designed to illustrate key dynamical principles governing the circulation of the Atmosphere, Ocean and Climate. The development of these mobile fluid stations will enable students to have an intimate hands-on interaction with the fluid experiments by carrying out rotating fluid experiments, viewing and recording those experiments via an overhead rotating camera connected to a wireless transmitter, and taking observations and analyzing them using particle tracking, in-situ temperature sensors, dyes, etc.
Space System Product Development - $5,000
Professor David W. Miller, Aeronautics and Astronautics
The Space Systems Product Development class at MIT (16.83x) is an innovative, three-semester subject that provides undergraduates design-build experience in the lifecycle development of an aerospace product. The current class is developing Self-assembling Wireless Autonomous Reconfigurable Modules (SWARM), an innovative approach to satellite design that attempts to alleviate specific drawbacks that have plagued the industry. Professor Miller will supervise student purchasing of components for the prototype satellite, including computers, thrusters, avionics, communications networks, and micro-controllers.
