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April 11, 2001
Dear Colleagues:
These are wonderful times for educational innovation at MIT. With support from sources such as the d'Arbeloff gift, Project iCampus, Alumni class funds, and funds given directly to departments and Schools, many of us are developing new educational programs. The faculty committees are eager to support these activities in every way possible. The Committee on the Undergraduate Program (CUP), in particular, is charged with licensing, supervising, and assessing educational experiments, and can grant exemptions from Institute requirements to facilitate the introduction of new teaching styles and methods.
As the Chairs of the Faculty committees responsible for oversight of educational programs, we are finding that some new educational initiatives conflict with long-standing MIT practice. We are especially concerned that online delivery of subject material and asynchronous discussion is being substituted for face-to-face contact between faculty and students and among students in a cohort. Since some of the new initiatives address the shortcomings of conventional lectures, there may be much to gain by replacing some lectures in some subjects with carefully-planned alternatives. However, the recent Task Force on Student Life and Learning report emphasized the central importance of personal contact throughout a student's years at MIT. We endorse this finding and intend to be particularly careful when proposed subject changes would reduce actual contact time between faculty and students.
As a rule the Committee on Curricula (CoC) must approve a new undergraduate subject or significant changes in an existing one before it can appear in the MIT Bulletin. We believe that plans to substitute online delivery of subject material for conventional lectures represent a significant enough departure from current practice to require informing the CoC. [When a subject is approved by the Committee on Curricula (CoC), it is approved for a specific time distribution that denotes the expected number of weekly hours for lectures and recitation; laboratory, design or fieldwork; and preparation (e.g., 3-0-9). We generally interpret the first and second digits in the unit distribution as the number of weekly hours of face-to-face contact among students or between students and faculty.] In general, we believe the net effect should not be to reduce face-to-face contact. Instead, we hope that when traditional lectures or recitations are replaced by online delivery of the same material, they will be augmented by tutorials, seminars, informal discussion, design, or problem solving sections, or other unconventional educational modes.
Changes to existing subjects that would lead to an actual decrease in face-to-face contact between faculty and students will need to be presented to the CUP. Such proposals could go forward as CUP licensed educational experiments to permit time for assessment and evaluation.
We hope to hear of more new and exciting ways to use distance learning technologies to enhance the educational experience of our undergraduates.
We would be pleased to hear from you.
Robert
L. Jaffe
Chair, Committee on the Undergraduate Program
Ahmed
F. Ghoniem
Chair, Committee on Curricula
Steven
R. Lerman
Chair of the Faculty
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