2.S991 Spring 2021
Learner's Journey - Becoming a 10x Learner
Fridays, 3:00pm to 5:00pm
plus a 1-hour recitation, time TBD



Instructors: Andrew Sutherland, Lana Cook, and Ken Zolot
Special Guest Facilitators: Drew Bent and Gabriel Ginorio

Advisor: Sanjay Sarma

The pandemic has forced us to reflect on learning itself. We’ve all scrambled to learn remotely, and we can do better. In this special seminar, we’ll reflect on who we are as learners, how we can improve our own learning, and how we can create the future of equitable and effective educational tools and institutions.

How do I become a stronger learner? Can digital tools help me think deeper thoughts? How do I create the conditions for better learning through education tools, classrooms, institutions, and systems? These questions serve as our call to action, with the course culminating in a design project to prototype educational tools, projects, and systems that can help us become 10x learners.

We’re pleased to welcome Quizlet founder and former MIT student Andrew Sutherland, one of the world’s most celebrated and accomplished entrepreneurs in education transformation. Andrew will be with us for the entire semester and will help lead our journey.

This is a student-led seminar where you’ll co-create the curriculum with classmates, under the guidance of distinguished guest lecturers and leaders in learning science, education technology, and institutional innovation. You’ll practice the “Feynman Method” of learning by teaching fellow classmates. You’ll have a chance to work with MIT senior leadership to design and launch learning innovations and help shape the future of MIT.

The course will be broken down into three steps, each built on the last:

1. You: Let’s learn how to learn, with guidance from science. How do we get the most from books and other media? How do we think deeper, better thoughts by achieving “flow state”? What are the habits of effective learners? How can emerging technologies help?
2. The world: Using what we learned about personal learning, we will examine our society’s systems of education, from the teaching profession to the "dream university". How could these systems better align with what we know about the science of learning?
3. You changing the world: Let’s apply what we learned to design and build something new: a software tool, a new kind of assessment, a new educational institution, etc. What will you design?

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