Past Projects

6.002 iLab

Jesus del Alamo

Online laboratories (iLabs) are experimental facilities that allow students to carry out experiments from anywhere at any time. While used since Fall 2005 in the EECS subject 6.002, the new EECS curriculum reduces that number of units for 6.002 requiring that new iLab experiences be developed to mitigate the loss of experimental exercises in the new curriculum. Instrument upgrades are funded for three purposes: proper input for step-response measurement; increasing measurement capacity in two dimensions through a hardware switching matrix; developing new circuits-under test for iLab. These changes may make iLab a valuable educational tool for feedback and control system courses in other disciplines at both the introductory and advanced levels. Funded by Class of 1960

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Alumni Engagement

Andy Eisenmann and Maria Shkolnik

Alumni Engagement thus is a program to provide a central resource at MIT dedicated to catalyzing alumni educational connections on a larger scale, both on-campus and globally, and to assist faculty and promote greater alumni participation in the educational work of MIT for undergraduate and graduate students. Current efforts include: "12.000 - Solving Complex Problems," "8.224 - Exploring Black Holes," and "BioMatrix."

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Biomatrix: A Mentoring Program

Martha Gray and Richard Mitchel

project website

BioMatrix is a mentoring program for anyone interested in issues related to life sciences and engineering. The program brings together a community of students, clinicians, researchers, and other and industry professionals and faculty who have made their way through education, training and the many decisions involved related to career choice.  

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Building a Constructive Culture

Natalie Kuldell, Ken Oye, Randy Rettberg

This subject, first taught in Spring, 2008, is a project-based introduction to biological engineering designed for lst-year undergraduates. Future biological engineers will need a strong foundation in the life sciences in order to analyze and understand existing living systems. Equally essential is the ability to use methods that enable the reliable design and construction of engineered biological systems that behave as expected. Students who are learning how to engineer life must be aware of the promises and challenges posed by such work. This new subject will motivate students to master discipline-specific knowledge in context and apply their energies to solve a personally compelling design challenge.

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Centering Africa in Diaspora: Introduction to Black Studies

Sandy Alexandre, Alisa Braithwaite, Christopher Capozzola, Thomas DeFrantz, Michel de Graff, Erica James, Helen Elaine Lee

Constructed as an interdisciplinary survey, this interdisciplinary SHASS freshman experience will explore experiences of people of African descent in diaspora through overlapping disciplinary approaches including history, linguistics, literature, anthropology, legal studies, media studies, performance, and creative writing. Connections will be drawn between African American experiences and other minoritarian American social, political and cultural histories.

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Cityscope

Diane Davis

This new subject, to be offered in the Spring of 2007, is designed to "expose first year students to the complex system dynamics of cities 'at risk' and to encourage them to use physical design, social policy, engineering, technology, or other social and science innovations to assess and solve problems in urban environments." A pre-session trip to New Orleans during IAP is included in the plans for this subject. Students will work on solutions to the city's problems using first-hand knowledge and various interdisciplinary techniques.

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The Collaboration Toolbox

Clark Colton and Bonnie Burrell

The Collaboration Tool Box is designed to provide a focus for students to learn the basics of collaboration and team building through a Web-based interactive team development system for student. The program permits the faculty to create a team building syllabus with the accompanying curriculum, which can be integrated into a course that utilizes team projects or two-student collaborations.

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Creation and Science: Learning from the Past

Diana Henderson, Jeff Ravel, Janet Sonenberg

Professors Henderson, Ravel and Sonenberg are developing a first-year interdisciplinary HASS subject that will focus on Western Europe in the 17 th century - "when modern scientific and social attitudes were just beginning." This team-taught subject will drawn on a wide range of texts, images, and performances, and demonstrate "the variety of approaches to knowledge allowed by the humanities and arts disciplines." Their hope is "to spur students' active engagement with the past and help them become more creative, sensitive participants in the present."

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Digital Arts Learning Studio

John Maeda

project website

A deeper perspective on art—and artistic self-expression—for the technology-minded student can best come through participation in the immersive learning environment specific to the atelier, and the satisfaction and feeling of accomplishment experienced through a public exhibition of work. With physical space at a constant premium on the MIT campus, the answer to providing such experiences—particularly in the digital realm—suitably lies in the virgin territory of online space. Thus we intend to realize a Digital Arts Learning Studio and associated d’Arbeloff Student Art Gallery, as a new form of online community experience for any MIT student wishing to participate.

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Discover Engineering: DME

Kate Thompson

Discover Engineering is a parent organization for a series of immersive freshman seminars aimed at providing an introduction to the engineering disciplines and improving the quality of the freshman year at MIT. Each seminar has five main components: a hands-on project where the students build a device related to the sponsoring department; a competition or activity involving the device; daily breakfast and lunch with department faculty, staff, alumni, graduate students and upperclassmen; tours of departmental research labs and brief research presentations; and an excursion to a related off-campus institution.

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Discovery in the Lecture: A New Teaching Modality

Emanuel Sachs, Fred Fort Flowers and Daniel Fort Flowers

The goal of this project is to bring discovery into the lecture – that is for the students to discover concepts in engineering science for themselves. Prof. Sachs will work with the lead instructors in four core engineering science subjects in Mechanical Engineering. In each subject three or four key concepts which are difficult to teach by conventional methods will be identified. Simple in-lecture experimental hardware will be developed which will allow the students to make observations, discover relevant variables and begin the task of formulating quantitative relationships. These sessions will be run in Rm 3-370 which has recently been renovated to facilitate both lecture and exploration in a single class session. It is hoped that periodic experience with in-lecture discovery will: i) provide a mechanism for learning difficult concepts, ii) illustrate to the students that they can create knowledge themselves and that this approach leads to better retention (hypothesis), iii) implicitly teach the scientific method, iv) provide "stealth education" in engineering by exposure to well designed and engaging hardware.

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The Education Triad

Jaime Devereaux and Peter Schulman

The Undergraduate Association has been working to promote the Infinite Connection and its expansion by making funds from the d'Arbeloff Grant that we received for this academic year available to a variety of existing student groups. In order to assist groups in their existing efforts to involve alumni in their events, we opened the funds to proposals from living groups and student activities by publicizing the availability of the funding and resources.

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Embodied Computation for Interaction with the Real World: Scalable, Exportable Lab Kits for Embodied Systems

John Leonard, Una-May O'Reilly, Nicholas Roy, Daniela Rus, Seth Teller

project website

We are developing a robotics project course with the goal of introducing students to the key aspects of interfacing computation to the physical world. Specifically, this project course is a hands-on introduction to robotics. Our class robots will employ some of the most advanced techniques for perception, navigation, and manipulation to cope with unknown environments, negotiating intricate paths, adapting their next move to obstacles, finding useful objects in the environment, and using them to build a structure. This work will provide our students with the foundations for creating computer systems that interact with the physical world, leading the way from PCs to PRs (personal robots). During lectures, the students are introduced to the basic concepts in robotics, focusing on the mechanical and electronic principles behind building robots and on the classic algorithms, architectures, and theories behind controlling and programming robots. Topics include: motion planning, geometric reasoning, kinematics and dynamics, state estimation, tracking, map building, manipulation, human-robot interaction, fault diagnosis and   embedded system development. The students build a robot in teams using a robot building kit. The students receive structured instructions for putting their robot together during labs in the first part of the term. This robot is then used to implement the algorithms discussed in class in the context of the course challenge task.

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Energy, Environment, and Society: An Interdisciplinary, Project-Based Program for First-Year Students

Jeffrey Steinfeld, Jefferson Tester

As part of a linked set of curricular activities on "Energy, Environment and Society" for first year students, a 9-unit community project-based subject will be offered in the Spring of 2007.    In this class, students will explore energy issues and community dynamics at the local level - on the MIT campus, and in the cities of Cambridge and Boston.    Staff in the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment will work with community contacts to develop project ideas that are of concern to community leaders and that have potential to affect local energy management.   First year MIT students will be involved in all aspects of project design - from the refinement of research questions to conclusions and presentation of findings.

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Experimental Education Textbook Series

Alexander Slocum

Few people recount with fondness a high school or early college text. As the Nation drowns in rigid standardized tests, fewer and fewer children are left behind, but how many lose the will to look ahead? For many years, the Experimental Study Group at MIT has treated students like customers, with the result that it has established a passionate learning community. ESG does often use classic texts, but they are tempered with small classes, instructor created materials, and a Socratic style to infuse passion into subjects and learning. In order to help others take advantage of the ESG-way, and help better prepare high school students for college, and college students for fun lifelong learning, ESG is developing a new series of textbooks. The initial focus is on physics and mathematics with the titles: The Birth of Philosophy and Mathematics, Physics & Sports, Physical Intelligence

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Experimental Investigations of the Charles River

David Mohrig

The planned class for monitoring the Charles River will not only establish a mechanism for students to learn about the collection and visualization of environmental data, it will also establish for them a connection to a larger group of scientists and engineers who will have participated in studying various aspects of the Charles River. Students and faculty at MIT have the relatively unique opportunity to characterize the ‘health’ of an urban river system through a systematic gathering and analysis of data from its watershed over many years. This information will be available via a class web page, allowing current students to place their results in an historical perspective and allowing interested former students to keep up on current conditions of the river.

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Explore Space, Sea and Earth Fundamentals of Engineering Design

Dava Newman, Alexander Slocum, Edward Crawley

These two pilot freshman subjects - one to be offered in Fall 2006 and the other in Spring 2007 — will combine active and experiential learning "where ownership, passion, excitement and creativity are paramount, motivating students in technical learning, and linking their learning experience to real world complex problems." The objective of these subjects is to expose first year students to design, engineering reasoning and problem solving, as well as systems thinking, teamwork and leadership development. The theme of the "Explore" pilot is based on human exploration - past, present and future - with examples and a project encompassing exploration of the sea, earth and space. The theme for students in the "FUNdaMENTALS" subject is to learn engineering fundamentals and methods of synthesis via a robotics competition.

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Exploring Black Holes

E. Bertschinger and Edwin Taylor

Exploring Black Holes introduces undergraduates and alumni/ae to the physics and astrophysics of black holes and the universe using Einstein's General Relativity theory combined with modern research discoveries. The subject has a strong online component and is offered to both MIT undergraduates and an almost equal number of MIT alumni/ae scattered over the US. This class is a practical trial of the possibilities and promise of combining personal interaction among undergraduates and instructors with the use of sophisticated online resources and close participation of alumni/ae.

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Finding & Evaluating Information

Donald Sadoway, Steve Gass, Angie Locknar

This project is designed to introduce first year students to the scientific research process and provide them with the skills necessary to find, evaluate and use information successfully throughout their educational careers. Staff in the MIT Libraries will be working with Professor Donald Sadoway to develop online modules that 3.091 students can refer to throughout the semester to learn about conducting effective searches for information, identifying and evaluating relevant sources of information in a variety of formats, and citing information properly. A small group of 3.091 students will also enroll in a 3-unit course for more in-depth instruction in these information skills.

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Freshman Arts Seminar and Advising Program

Alan Brody and Michelle Oshima

project website

This initiative fosters an environment where students can explore the arts resources at MIT and artistic expression early in their academic careers. The Freshman Arts Seminar and Advising Program (FASAP) actively nurtures freshmen in their exposure to, involvement with and creation of art, and builds upon a rich panoply of existing resources to engender a more vibrant arts community at the Institute. A primary goal of FASAP is to develop a freshman year seminar, advising, and mentoring program in the arts with extensive participation of faculty and the Council Scholars in the Arts.

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Freshman Projects in Microscale Engineering for the Life Sciences

Dennis Freeman, Martha Gray

This freshman project laboratory will be piloted in the coming Fall term, and will use hands-on projects to demonstrate to students how microscale engineering can be applied to life sciences problems. During the first half of the term, the classes will consist of a combination of brief lectures followed by hands-on experiences using both hardware and computer simulations.   During the second half of the semester, students will work in pairs to explore a research or design topic of their choice.   Professors Freeman and Gray hope to provide first year students with an active learning experience that will help   develop professional skills, introduce interdisciplinary research, and "stimulate interest in the intersection of engineering with the life sciences."

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Globalization: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Margery Resnick, Isabelle de Courtivron, Elizabeth Garrels, Shigeru Miyagawa, Emma Teng, Edward Turk, William Uricchio, Jing Wang

Globalization is a subject that combines interdisciplinary study on broad cultural issues raised by globalization, with language study that “provides specificity to the international questions raised in the course”. With guest lecturers from around the Institute, the course focuses on four different modules. “Globalization and Cultural Identity” discusses the concept of the nation. “Globalization and the politics of language” studies how languages create cultural difference, identity and other issues. “Globalization and media” addresses the impact of new media technologies on global international education. “Globalization and the Creative Arts” looks at the “translocation of creative forms from the national to global”.

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High-Speed Imaging for Physical Education

Noah Riskin and James Bales

project website

We propose to use advanced high-speed imaging techniques to create new Physical Education teaching tools and methods for new active learning opportunities for PE instructors, students, coaches and athletes, and new hands-on undergraduate research opportunities. Such tools will provide:

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How to Stage a Revolution

Meg Jacobs, Pauline Maier, Peter Perdue, Elizabeth Wood, Jeff Ravel

In a subject being developed for Fall 2007, first year students will "explore moments of major social and political transformation throughout the world and over time." Through the intense engagement with primary sources, students will develop the analytical skills essential for success in studying history: "they will conduct their own research, make their own discoveries, and formulate their own conclusions about the historical past." The instructors of this "new breed of HASS freshman year course" hope to aid students' progression from high school textbook history learning to collegiate scholarly historical thinking and research.

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Keeping the Fire Alive: Hands-on science and Engineering for Freshman

Chryssostomos Chryssostomidis

project website

Our concept is to introduce freshman year students to the complex and exciting world of cutting-edge technology and science through carefully designed team projects, consisting of an integrated set of lectures and laboratory work, related to on-going research in our laboratories, leading to the design and testing of a system. Most students entering MIT have a passionate interest in science and engineering, fueled by TV programs such as NOVA, popular science magazines such as Discover and Scientific American, a technical hobby such as amateur astronomy, or perhaps an inspiring teacher or science program in high school. Hence, a young student s first exposure to science and technology is often at a high level: learning about working scientists and engineers at the 'cutting edge' where the excitement, naturally, lies. The student then comes to MIT and is immersed for two semesters, a long time for a young person, in the fundamentals - mathematics and the basic sciences - that could seem like a long way off from building robots to look for life on Mars. With our proposed concept, we answer the crucial question, viz. how do you keep students interested and motivated while they learn their essential - but often dry and distant fundamentals; in other words, how do you keep the fire alive.

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Mapping Controversies: Preparing scientists and engineers for a complex world

Vincent-Antonin Lepinay

Being an engineer or scientist now requires a deep understanding of the political and social dimensions of science and technology. Mapping Controversies seeks to introduce students to the uncertain universe of scientific and technical research. The goal is to learn how to account for and to map techno-scientific controversies which are: rife with uncertainties and dilemmas; objects of advanced technical expertise; simultaneously entangled with legal, moral, economic and social questions. The course develops aptitudes for qualitative investigation that are complementary to the capacities of formalization, modeling, analysis and calculation required in other subjects. Above all, it teaches that science and engineering are contested terrains in which it is crucial to understand stakes, resources, alliances and varied scientific cultures to engineer new diplomatic solutions. Funded by Class of 1960.

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MathMix: Computer - Aided Teaching of Mathematics

Professors Jerison, Miller, and Strang

project website

The goal of MathMix is to revitalize the basic mathematics courses at MIT; these include Calculus, Differential Equations, and Linear Algebra. Almost all MIT students take these courses in a lecture-recitation format, and with adequate resources and effort, this mode could be radically altered and improved. We hope to maximize the effectiveness of our teaching by the introduction of active learning techniques, group work, and the creation of a suite of classroom demonstrations. These applications of technology enable us to convey mathematics at a more visual and conceptual level.

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Meta-Media: Enhancing Media Literacy

William Uricchio, Pete Donaldson and Kurt Fendt

project website

MetaMedia provides students and faculty with a flexible online environment to create, annotate, and share media-rich documents for the teaching and learning of core humanistic subjects. Faculty can build subject-specific mini-archives to extend the use of the multimedia materials in the classroom and thus further pedagogical innovation. Based on open standards, the MetaMedia framework allows the formation of learner communities across disciplines and distances and ensures interoperability with a wide range of current and future media resources.

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Mission 2005: Solving Complex Problems

Kip Hodges

project website

This year's grant has enabled the second offering of 12.000 (Mission 2005) this semester. Sixty-two students attended the class, and we had 21 teaching fellows. Forty-three alumni mentors were recruited with the assistance of Diana Strange and Andy Eisenmann. Although not funded through this d'Arbeloff Grant, Maria Shkolnik provided superb administrative support through Academic Services. There is an intensive assessment component to this experiment spearheaded by Alberta Lipson; this fall's activities included interviews and surveys of the current students as well as alumni of Mission 2004.

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Mission 2006: Solving Complex Problems

Kip Hodges

project site

This year's grant represents the third installment of funding for 12.000 (Solving Complex Problems). Each year, a group of freshmen are given an assignment that requires them to apply multidisciplinary thinking to address a difficult problem. This year, approximately 70 students will be charged with developing strategies to monitor the Amazon rainforest ecosystem and design a program to preserve it. The subject includes a unique blend of case-study andproject-based learning that involves the collaboration of faculty, upperclassmen, graduate students, and alumni with the freshmen registered for the subject.

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Music and the Supernatural: Witches, Magi, and Ghosts

Ellen Harris, James Howe, Charles Shadle

The new subject focuses on the relationship between Music and the Supernatural with particular emphasis on the social context of historical supernatural beliefs as reflected in key musical works of the western tradition from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Taught by faculty and lecturers from Music and Theater Arts and Anthropology, with guest lecturers from Comparative Media Studies, Literature and Foreign Languages and Literature, this interdisciplinary approach offers the opportunity for students to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the complex cultural traditions and situations in which they will find themselves in their work. The class will introduce some of the approaches to inquiry found within the humanities, arts and social sciences through the examination of a wide range of texts, visual images and performances.

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On the Shoulders of Giants: Reexamining the pre-Modern Roots of the Modern World

Anne McCants, Arthur Bahr, William Broadhead, Sally Haslanger, Rae Langton, Steve Ostrow

On the Shoulder of Giants proposes developing a new integrated domain of study at MIT that explores the contributions of classical forebears on the present and how their contributions to knowledge continue to provide the impetus for much of what is progressive in the modern world. The realization of the importance of ethics to the formation of students; the importance of reaching beyond ourselves to other worlds and times; the crucial role of language-learning in the contemporary world; all point to the need for rethinking the ancient and medieval heritage of the West in ways that cross cultural, geographical and disciplinary lines. Initial d’Arbeloff funding allows the development of several of these subjects for introduction into the curriculum. Funded by Class of 1960

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Pilot study for a case-based, tutorial mode core curriculum in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Hal Abelson, Eric Grimson, Gerald Jay Sussman

This project is a one-year pilot investigation, intended to lay a foundation for transforming the EECS core curriculum- 6.001, 6.002, 6.003, and 6.004 - to a new structure, where students work in small groups under the direction of tutors to pursue a case-based introduction to electrical engineering and computer science. The inspiration for this approach is Harvard Medical School's "New Pathways" transformation of its first- and second-year curriculum. The pilot hopes to demonstrate the intellectual feasibility of using a case-based approach with a small experimental version of 6.002 in spring 2003.

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Portable, Wireless Computing for 2.001-2.005

Sanjay Sarma and Mary Boyce

Just as the calculator is now an indispensable tool of the trade for mechanical engineering practice, we believe that personal computers and laptops will become the trademark of the engineer of the future; he or she will be able to quickly use a CAD system to design a new component and share it with their peers, generate CNC tool paths using a CAM system, instrument and control an electromechanical system using a data acquisition system, or analyze a structure or a flow using a finite element system. Recognizing this reality, the department has decided to weave the use of mobile computing platforms into everyday teaching.

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Proposal for Study of Wireless and Mobile Computing

William Mitchell and Susan Yee

The goals of this project are (1) to document experience with wireless and mobile computing at MIT, and in the Department of Architecture in particular, (2) to extract some useful general conclusions about the relationship of mobile computing to patterns of space use in a university setting, (3) to specify the associated educational benefits, and (4) to produce a well grounded publication (and associated PowerPoint) of results that will be useful to architects, planners, computer and networking specialists, and educational policy makers who are interested in this issue.

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Public Service Design Projects at MIT

Amy Smith and Kim Vandiver

project website

Student enterprise, applied learning, and public service are the bases of our initiative, as we introduce two new programs to MIT: service learning and the IDEAS competition. This initiative will enrich the educational experience and create an expanded community of service at MIT. Service learning, the practice of integrating public service projects into academic course work, has been offered in ten MIT classes this year. We are also highlighting the excitement of creative public service with the IDEAS competition in the spring. IDEAS, an acronym for Innovation, Development, Enterprise, Action and Service.

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Redesigning Academic Information Delivery

Mary Enterline and Kim Vandiver

project website 1
project website 2

This project's objective is to define what information students and advisors need and make the best use of information technology to deliver that information. By improving online information we will save students and advisors valuable time that can be used to develop stronger mentoring relationships, and we will ensure that all students and advisors have access to reliable and up-to-date information.

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Residence-Based Advising

Julie Norman, Elizabeth Young, Dan Chapman and Leslie Bottari

project website

Residence Based Advising (RBA) is a pilot that seeks to enrich the first-year experience. Now nearing the middle of its second year at MIT, RBA focuses formal advising support in the living group, where it can compliment the valuable informal advising provided by peers, with the goal of making resources more easily accessible to students (and first-year students, in particular). In a sense, RBA seeks to unite the two major support networks for first-year students: the freshmen advising system and the residential community.

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Solving Real Problems Using Systems Thinking and Design

Sumi Ariely, Dan Frey, Paul Lagace, Chris Magee, Camilla Shannon, Amy Smith, Sally Susnowitz, Joseph Sussman, David Wallace

In a collaborative effort, the department of Mechanical Engineering, the Engineering Systems Division, and the MIT Public Service Center will develop a new subject for the Spring of 2007, that will combine instruction in systems thinking and design skills with service-oriented hands-on projects to build appreciation for the broader roles of engineering in society. The project sections of the subject will provide students instruction and experience in solving hands-on, exciting, and socially important design challenges."

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Studio Physics

John Belcher and Andrew McKinney

project website

Studio Physics is a new format for freshman physics education at MIT that is designed to help students develop much better intuition about, and conceptual models of, physical phenomena. The format is centered on an active learning approach - that is, a highly collaborative, hands-on environment, with extensive use of networked laptops and desktop experiments. We are using modern animation and applet technology delivered via laptops to complement this active learning approach. We are merging lecture, recitations, and hands-on laboratory experience into a technologically and collaboratively rich experience for incoming freshmen.

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The Supernatural in Culture, Literature and Music

Ellen Harris, James Howe, Charles Shadle

The subject, taught for the first time in Fall, 2007, focuses on the relationship between Music and the Supernatural with particular emphasis on the social context of historical supernatural beliefs as reflected in key musical works of the western tradition from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Taught by faculty and lecturers from Music and Theater Arts and Anthropology, with guest lecturers from Comparative Media Studies, Literature and Foreign Languages and Literature, this interdisciplinary approach offers the opportunity for students to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the complex cultural traditions and situations in which they will find themselves in their work. The class will introduce some of the approaches to inquiry found within the humanities, arts and social sciences through the examination of a wide range of texts, visual images and performances.

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TBPTeach!

Vikash Mansinghka

project website

TBP Teach is a Tau Beta Pi-led effort to develop a substantial unified curriculum covering ''engineering fundamentals'' material as well as ''gentle introductions'' addressing gaps in the introductory offerings from several engineering departments. This curriculum will be presented to students in two ways: through a comprehensive web site containing lecture notes, interactive problem sets, and other learning tools, and a series of not-for-credit IAP courses, based on the web materials, that will meet for two hour sessions, four times each week, for two weeks. Our pedagogical approach will involve making explicit the intuitions and problem-solving heuristics used by experts, giving students practice in articulating the key concepts, and presenting material in the context of real-world case studies wherever possible. Our IAP class series will include an emphasis on group problem solving in addition to opportunities for getting questions answered in depth. We hope our IAP courses will be useful as a source of review for current engineering undergraduates and that our written material will be useful to teachers and students both at MIT and worldwide as a source of coherent presentations of key concepts.

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Teaching Computation in Studio, Course 1.00

Steve Lerman and Jud Harward

project website

The new curriculum stresses a hands-on approach to computation to reinforce 1.00's traditional focus on algorithms and data structures as a means to engineering problem solving. 1.00 students now develop software in Java on laptops using an integrated development environment. They program and debug, demonstrate problems and brainstorm solutions in class. They bring their problems to office hours on a running laptop. Tutorial groups of four to six students have replaced the former large recitation sections. Students are paired by sharing a laptop computer for the term.

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The Art of the Probable: Literature and Probability

Alvin Kibel, Noel Jackson, Shankar Raman

This collaboratively taught subject for first year students will explore the relationship of literature with the history of probability. As the authors write in their proposal, "we wish students to think deeply about the broader conditions underlying the science and technology they study, as well as to make apparent the relevance of les sciences humaine to their lives." They hope to engage students "in studying a topic that visibly or invisibly affects all of us all the time." This new subject will be offered in the Spring of 2007.

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Visualizing Cultures

John Dower and Shigeru Miyagawa

project website

We will create a large database of visual images of Japan from 1853 (when Commodore Matthew Perry forced feudal Japan to abandon its “closed country” policy) to the present. With this project, we aim to transform undergraduate education in history from the predominantly text-based approach to one that integrates historically significant images in a systematic manner. These images of Japan in the context of world history will provide new insights into the social, cultural, political, and historical significance of events in which Japan played an active role. Through such graphic perspectives, it will become clear that there is no one “Japan.” Rather, the country and its people are associated with a multitude of constantly changing identities. We have created a new course with the same time, and the entire content will go up on OpenCourseWare this fall. Along with the web site, we have created a traveling exhibit of images; the exhibit opened in Newport RI in July 2003 during the Black Ship Festival. A number of other U.S. cities have requested the exhibit. We have begun the work of establishing collaborative relationships with institutions that have extensive collections relevant to our work, including the Boston MFA, Smithsonian’s Sackler Museum, University of Tokyo, and Nagasaki University, to name a few.

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When Engineering Gets Big: Building Faster Highways Inside Cities and Computers

L. C. Kimerling, Herbert Einstein, Andrew Whittle

This subject introduces students to three threads of learning with which to deconstruct 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 teams interacting over an extended production timeline”. The three threads of learning are: a technical toolkit; a social science toolkit; a methodology for problem-based learning. Initial projects include two Big Engineering projects: the Big Dig – the highway project for the City of Boston and “The Integrated Circuit (IC) Chip – the Intel Corporation’s Core 2 Duo microprocessor for mobile computing. The goal of the subject is to introduce first-year students to an appreciation for the “interdisciplinary nature endemic to massive 20th and 21st – century engineering projects”.

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Wireless Portable Computing in the Design Studio

Bill Mitchell and Susan Yee

The grant provides 50 wireless laptops for one year and supports the installation of wireless access points within the Department’s studio spaces, presentation areas, and cafe. The goals of the project are to gain a better understanding of MIT's rapidly evolving wireless infrastructure and to find innovative ways to enhance studio and classroom learning, through practical experimentation with the technology in use. It is clear that universities will be moving very rapidly towards heavy reliance upon student-owned wireless laptops, and we need to understand the implications of this for design education. The wireless laptops have been the main delivery mechanism for StudioMIT.

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