Current Projects

The Call for Preliminary Proposals in Fall 2008 focused on those subject areas that are detailed in the Education Commons Subcommittee Final Report. Specifically, proposals were requested for First-Year-Focus subjects in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS), Elements of Design subjects and Science, Math and Engineering (SME) Foundations pilots. Also encouraged were projects that aspire to provide dynamic, effective teaching within the General Institute Requirements, including Communication Intensive subjects. These emphases build upon the vision expressed by the Educational Commons Subcommittee. Further information about this vision can be found at the ECS website. Current projects include:

3.003 Principles of Engineering Practice

L.C. Kimerling, Anant Agarwal, E.A. Fitzgerald, Randolf Kirchain, William Uricchio, Fred Salvucci, Chris Weaver, Silvija Gradecak, Christina Ortiz

Principles of Engineering Practice is a project-based subject taught in the Spring Semester. In its second year, the subject introduces students to three threads of learning with which to de-construct the apparent complexities of Big Engineering projects: large-scale, modern engineering ventures that rely on the integration of multiple science/engineering disciplines, executed through a distributed workload that involves specialized team interacting over an extended production time. The goal of the subject is to instill in first-year students an appreciation of the interdisciplinary nature of massive 21st century engineering projects and to equip them with the motivation and skills to engage in them. The three threads of learning are: technical toolkit, social science toolkit and a methodology for problem-based learning.

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A Bootstrapping Approach to Teaching Statistics

Roy Welsch

This subject is designed as a 6-unit statistics SME foundations subject that does not necessarily depend on the prior teaching of probability. An innovative approach that starts and ends with data and is based on the statistical method of boostrapping (resampling) will be developed. Included in the subject are topics such as sampling, visualization, and statistical computing culminating in the basic ideas of statistical thinking and criticism allowing the student to be skeptical of data analyses that seem to violate statistical principles. Students will be able to perform basic data analysis and visualization tasks by the end of the subject.

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Computational Design: a proposed General Institute Requirement

Eric Grimson, John Guttag

Intended as an example of a new Design GIR, Computational Design will focus on computational thinking rather than programming, although students will have exposure to the modern programming language Python. Building on the design model articulated by ECS, Computational Design uses the Modes of Reasoning framework applied to computational reasoning. Learning to “think like a computer scientist” will require students to fundamentally address issues of modularity, abstraction, complexity, scaling, approximation, uncertainty and modeling. The new subject is built on the work already done on 6.00 and is intended to serve non-EECS students from all parts of the Institute.

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Coordinating the MIT Mathematics GIR Curriculum

Haynes Miller, Gil Strang

This project proposes a substantial modification of the basic mathematics subjects taken by most MIT undergraduates, focusing on the needs of the students, the expectation of MIT faculty and new pedagogical methods. Three stages of the project are expected:

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Experience Engineering – “Elements of Design”

Dava Newman, Dan Frey, Jeff Hoffman, Denny Freeman, Alex Techet

Building on the recommendations of the Educational Commons Subcommittee, this project proposes further development of the Elements of Design principles and concepts. In conjunction with faculty from other Schools, the aim is to develop an experimental subject(s) that are based on best practices and lessons learned from MIT subjects as well as the best practices in academia. The curriculum development will likely use a combination of active and experiential learning with the explicit goals of fostering students’ passion, excitement and creativity and well as preparing students to take ownership of their learning experience.

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Globalization: the Good, the Bad and the In-Between

Jane Dunphy, Margery Resnick, Patricia Tang

A renewal proposal, Globalization will be taught for the second time in Fall, 2009. Globalization is taken in conjunction with a nine-unit language subject. All students in the course address the problems, as well as the opportunities, that globalization has engendered. Students are presented with a variety of perspectives from different fields. They focus on specific topics that are intellectually related and presented as a coherent whole. Faculty in the subject are drawn from four of MIT’s schools including Architecture and Urban Planning, Engineering, HASS and Sloan. The course integrates innovative project-based experience with theoretical learning; large concepts with specific examples in globalization.

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How Culture Works

Erica James, Susan Silbey

This new subject in Anthropology, planned by the Anthropology faculty and co-taught by a team of two to four faculty every year, is designed to meet the parameters of a First-Year-Focus subject. The subject will introduce students to theoretical debates on the meaning and use of the concept of culture using historical materials and contemporary examples. It will critically engage contemporary representations of ‘culture’ in popular media and scholarly disciplines. Students will also learn empirical methods of cultural inquiry and analysis by evaluating a diverse array of materials including first-hand observations, synthesized histories and ethnographies, quantitative representations and visual and fictionalized accounts of human experiences.

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Measurement, Instrumentation, Control and Analysis (MICA)

Ian Hunter, Lynette Jones, Barbara Hughey

The proposal provides desired improvements in equipment used in an existing Mechanical Engineering undergraduate project-based course that will allow the testing methodology and equipment to be more broadly used in educational activities. Upgrading the functionality in the MICA hardware and software is a major advance in permitting students to select the phenomena they wish to measure, analyze and possibly control. The specific objectives of this proposal are to develop a small quantity of experiments in the two physics GIRs, 8.012 and 8.022 (in addition to the Mechanical Engineering subjects in which it is already used). It is anticipated that the use of the system can be expanded to other undergraduate courses at MIT.

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Power: Interpersonal, Organization and Global Dimension

Susan Silbey, Roberto Fernandez, Ezra Zuckerman

"Power" offers students an in-depth analysis of what might be considered the most central concept in all of social science. It uses literature from anthropology, sociology, social psychology, political science, economics and philosophy to develop the tools for analyzing the forms and distribution in social relations. The course serves as an introduction to some of the classics in western social thought, reviewing work from Machiavelli, Hobbes, Marx and Weber through Foucault, Bourdieu, Giddens and Habermas, but importantly joins those more theoretical works with empirical research on power dynamics in interpersonal, organization and global transactions. This subject is co-taught by faculty in Anthropology and the Sloan School.

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