Chalk Radio

You don't need a multibillion-dollar supercollider to detect subatomic particles. In fact, you can build a working cloud chamber—a device capable of revealing the cosmic radiation and radon decay events that go on continuously around us—with just a block of dry ice, some rubbing alcohol, and a few objects you probably already have in your kitchen. What's more, constructing the cloud chamber only takes about an hour, making it an ideal project for an introductory physics class, for intellectually engaged nonscientists, or even for curious kindergartners (with some adult supervision!). In this interview, engineering professor Anne White discusses the pedagogical usefulness of such hands-on activities—and at the other end of the spectrum, she describes her enthusiasm for a much, much larger physics project, the decades-long effort to put nuclear fusion to practical use as a source of clean power for the world. The interview also touches on Prof. White's experience of mentorship, both as mentee in her youth and as mentor now, and on the formative influence of childhood toys in paving the way for the kind of creative goal-driven tinkering that nuclear scientists and engineers practice.Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalProfessor White's faculty page22.011 Nuclear Engineering: Science, Systems and Society on MIT OpenCourseWareAnne White's article: Cloud Chamber Kit for Active Learning in a First-Year Undergraduate Nuclear Science Seminar Class (PDF)PBS NOVA video on making a kitchen cloud chamberMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn XOn InstagramOn LinkedInStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer Dave Lishansky, producer Show notes by Peter Chipman

We first interviewed Professor Michel DeGraff back in season 1; he now returns for another episode, diving deeper into issues of culture and identity. He talks about his childhood in Haiti, where he was punished at school for speaking his own mother tongue, and where he was taught by his teachers and even his parents that Kreyòl was not “a real language.” After doing early work in natural language processing that led him to question widespread assumptions about language, Prof. DeGraff shifted his academic focus to linguistics. He now begins each iteration of his course 24.908 Creole Languages and Caribbean Identities by asking his students to write linguistic autobiographies that describe the languages they grew up speaking and examine their own attitudes about language. In addition to discussing that course, he talks in this episode about his efforts to draw attention to language's role in perpetuating imbalances of power. As an added bonus, we hear from two students from 24.908, discussing how Prof. DeGraff helped cultivate trust in the classroom, and how that trust freed the students to enrich each other's understanding of the world by sharing personal experiences and insights.*English Translation of Prof. Michel DeGraff's Kreyòl Statement: So, my fellow countrymen,There's something that is very VERY important to understand:we must understand the origins of prejudices against Kreyòl.We must also remember that Dessalines said, so clearly,that everyone is human. And he also knew that,if everyone is human, then every language is a perfectly normal language.So Kreyòl, too, is a perfectly normal language.  That's why he said, since before 1804,that Kreyòl is our own language,so we don't need to always look for other languages to speak.Yes, we must remember, if we did not have Kreyòl as a language,we could never have succeeded in making this revolutionthat gave us an independent Haiti.Kreyòl was the language of the revolution.So, today, we must useKreyòl too as language of instruction.It is this language that will allow all children in Haiti to access quality education as their right.Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWare The OCW Educator Portal Professor DeGraff's faculty page 24.908 Creole Languages and Caribbean Identities on OpenCourseWare The MIT-Haiti Initiative Chalk Radio Season 1 episode with Prof. DeGraffNY Times op-ed by Prof. DeGraff Linguistics and Economics in the Caribbean (article by Ianá Ferguson) Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions (https://www.sessions.blue/) Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our site On Facebook On Twitter On Instagram  Stay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. (https://ocw.mit.edu/newsletter/) Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going!  CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer Dave Lishansky, producer Show notes by Peter Chipman

Many people associate the word “sustainability” with a few specific activities such as composting or recycling. Our guests for this episode, Dr. Liz-Potter-Nelson and Sarah Meyers, point out that sustainability is actually much broader, encompassing all the future-oriented practices that promote the continued flourishing of individuals, cultures, and life on earth. Dr. Potter-Nelson and Meyers have sought not only to make education a tool for sustainability but to make it a sustainable activity itself. In this episode, they describe how they created the Sustainability and Climate Change Across Learning Environments (SCALES) project, a curated repository of open-source, easily adaptable educational resources, many of them originally adapted from course materials on MIT OpenCourseWare. These resources, which are categorized according to a set of six main pedagogical approaches and six chief competency areas, draw from a surprisingly wide range of academic fields, but each was selected for its potential to support sustainability in the classroom and in the world. After all, Dr. Potter-Nelson and Meyers say, sustainability is an inherently interdisciplinary subject, one that can inform–and be informed by–teaching in nearly any field of study.Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWare The OCW Educator Portal Dr. Potter-Nelson's website Sarah Meyers at MIT's Environmental Solutions Initiative Teaching with Sustainability resource on OpenCourseWare The SCALES Project Dr. Potter-Nelson's white paper on sustainability education United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions  Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our site On Facebook On Twitter On Instagram  Stay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.  Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going!  CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer  Dave Lishansky, producer Show notes by Peter Chipman

Nobody comes into this world already knowing how to teach—and most students arrive at undergraduate or graduate programs without any teaching experience at all. For those who are selected to be teaching assistants, the prospect of facing a classroom of students for the first time can be terrifying. To assuage those fears and provide pedagogical skills, the Biology department at MIT runs a training program for new TAs; our guest Dr. Summer Morrill helped develop the curriculum for that program, as well as serving as an instructor in it. In this episode, Dr. Morrill describes how she designed the content of the training program to reflect the specific challenges Biology TAs typically face in their first semester. Among the topics she discusses are the importance of empathy and inclusiveness in classroom teaching, how the same habits of thought that make effective biologists can also make especially effective teachers, and ways in which the course materials from the training program (which she is sharing in a forthcoming supplemental resource on OCW), would lend themselves to being usefully adapted for training TAs in other disciplines and at other institutions. Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWare The OCW Educator Portal RES.7-005 Biology Teaching Assistant (TA) Training on OCW (coming soon!)Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions  Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn Instagram Stay CurrentSubscribeto the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.  Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware,donateto help keep these programs going!  CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer  Dave Lishansky, producer Show notes by Peter Chipman

In this episode we meet Haynes Miller, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, who in his 35+ years of active teaching at MIT has done much to shape the institute's math curriculum. Prof. Miller's special focus is algebraic topology, but his teaching has encompassed a wide range of other topics from differential equations to number theory, and he has a special interest in teaching undergraduates. Join us as Prof. Miller discusses math education with guest host Paige Bright, a current MIT third-year student who was one of his students in a first-year seminar and who has since acquired teaching experience of her own as the instructor for the course Introduction to Metric Spaces during the Independent Activities Period in January 2022 and 2023. Among the topics they cover in this discussion are the importance of communication in mathematics, Prof. Miller's use of computer manipulatives (which he calls “mathlets”) to engage students more actively, what “lab work” means in the context of pure mathematics, how instructors from different institutions have come together online to discuss ways to improve undergraduate math education, and what happens when you ask students to switch roles and become teachers.Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWare The OCW Educator Portal 18.03 Differential Equations on OCW 18.821 Project Laboratory in Mathematics on OCW 18.915 Graduate Topology Seminar: Kan Seminar on OCW Paige Bright's course Introduction to 18.S097 Metric Spaces on OCW Prof. Miller's faculty page Prof. Miller's “manipulatives” at mathlets.org Online Seminar on Undergraduate Mathematics Education (OLSUME) Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions  Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our site On Facebook On Twitter On Instagram  Stay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going!  CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer  Dave Lishansky, producer Show notes by Peter Chipman

Eric Grimson is MIT's chancellor for academic advancement and interim vice president for Open Learning; he's also a longstanding professor of computer science and medical engineering. In this episode, Prof. Grimson shares his thoughts on in-person and online education. We learn that he rehearses each lecture one, two, or even three times before coming to the classroom, and that he often pauses in his speech when lecturing to avoid distracting his students with “um”s and “ah”s and similar disfluencies. But though some of the techniques he describes might seem to reflect a view of teaching as performance, Grimson firmly believes that education should be a dialogue rather than a monologue—that students should be engaged as partners in the exploration of the material, even in an introductory-level class. “Anybody with enough curiosity ought to be able to explore a field,” he says, “and we ought to be able to teach at a level that opens it up to them.” The same conviction underlies his commitment to sharing his expertise online, whether by publishing his course materials on MIT OpenCourseWare or through purpose-built MOOCs on MITx. [Warning: this episode also includes numerous bad jokes!]     Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWare The OCW Educator Portal 6.0001 Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python on OCW 6.0002 Introduction To Computational Thinking And Data Science on OCWProfessor Grimson's faculty page Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions  Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn Facebook On Twitter On Instagram  Stay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer  Dave Lishansky, producer Show notes by Peter Chipman

MIT has long been an innovator in online education. For even longer—for its whole history, in fact—it has championed hands-on learning. These two emphases may seem incompatible, but the MICRO initiative draws on both in an effort to increase diversity within the field of materials science. Dr. Jessica Sandland and Dr. Cécile Chazot, our guests for this episode, describe how MICRO recruits undergraduates from minoritized backgrounds to do impactful research remotely in collaboration with MIT researchers. Dr. Sandland and Dr. Chazot see this collaboration as a mutually beneficial relationship: the MICRO students gain valuable experience in cutting-edge research, as well as an introduction to a field they may not have had the opportunity to study previously, while the MIT researchers benefit both from the students' work on the projects and from the fresh perspectives they bring to the field. In this episode, we also hear how MICRO supports participants' professional development with guidance from “near-peer” grad-student mentors, who provide help not only in technical matters but also in developing soft skills such as writing abstracts or defining questions for research.  Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalMICRO resource on OCWMentoring worksheets: Defining a Research Project and Aligning Expectations (PDF)Planning and Managing Remote Research Tasks (PDF)Effective and Inclusive Communication in Remote Mode (PDF)Fostering Independence (PDF)Establishing a Network of Mentors: The Mentoring Map (PDF)  Abstracts of research by MICRO participantsApply to MICRODr. Sandland's faculty pageDr. Chazot's websiteMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn Instagram Stay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer  Dave Lishansky, producerShow notes by Peter Chipman 

Do you always make the best possible choices, even when you're stressed or short on sleep? The ideally rational person (“Homo economicus”) assumed by conventional economics always acts in ways that are materially advantageous to them. But Associate Professor Frank Schilbach seeks in his research and teaching to explore the ways in which Homo economicus fails as a model of actual human behavior; in particular, Prof. Schilbach is interested in uncovering the psychological factors that influence people's choices, even when those choices appear obviously counterproductive and irrational. In this episode, Prof. Schilbach discusses how psychologically-informed interventions can not only boost people's productivity, earnings, and savings, but can even increase their tendency toward benevolence and cooperation. As he puts it, while economists have not ignored mental health altogether, they have tended to view it instrumentally, in terms of its effects on productivity or financial stability. It would be better, he suggests, to view mental health as valuable for its own sake, as an inherent element of overall well-being–which is why he prioritizes students' mental health by making assignments due not first thing in the morning but at 6 or 8 PM!Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWare The OCW Educator Portal Professor Schilbach's behavioral economics course on OCWProfessor Schilbach's faculty pageProfessor Schilbach at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action LabMusic in this episode by Blue Dot SessionsConnect with Us:If you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn InstagramStay Current:Subscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.Support OCW:If you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going!Credits:Sarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer  Dave Lishansky, producer Show notes by Peter Chipman

To most people, especially those who are too young to remember the Cold War, the possibility of nuclear Armageddon may seem so remote as not to be worth contemplating. But Prof. Bob Redwine and Jim Walsh, two of the instructors behind MIT's Nuclear Weapons Education Project (NWEP), warn that it may not be so unlikely after all, and that failure to take the threat of nuclear war seriously makes it more likely that it will actually occur. Redwine, Walsh, and their colleagues used their expertise from a wide array of fields to create the NWEP and its associated course 8.S271 Nuclear Weapons – History and Prospects. Together, the course and the project website represent an interdisciplinary effort to educate nonspecialists on the science, technology, and history of nuclear weapons, along with present efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation and to reach international agreements to reduce the likelihood of a world-devastating conflict. In this episode, we hear how the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki changed geopolitics forever, how a well-intentioned nuclear doctrine may have disastrous unintended consequences, and why understanding the topic of nuclear weapons requires an interdisciplinary approach. Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator Portal Professor Redwine's faculty pageJim Walsh's faculty page8.S271 Nuclear Weapons - History and Future Prospects on OCWNuclear Weapons Education Project website“Nuclear Gets Personal with Prof. Michael Short” (Chalk Radio episode)Music in this episode by Blue Dot SessionsConnect with Us:If you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn InstagramStay Current:Subscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going!CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer  Dave Lishansky, producer Show notes by Peter Chipman

Professor Gigliola Staffilani, who teaches in MIT's Department of Mathematics, was closely involved in designing and teaching the introductory-level 18.01 Calculus I course series now found on the MIT Open Learning Library. She's also been involved in teaching calculus to students on campus. To help students become proficient in a notoriously intimidating subject, she has tried to design learning experiences that bridge the gap between the pure abstractions that mathematicians love, exemplified by the use of conventional notation such as x, y, and f(x), and the concrete real-world situations in which calculus is typically applied in other fields such as chemistry or physics. In this episode, Prof. Staffilani discusses her efforts to make calculus less abstract and more intuitive for learners–efforts that draw on a diverse mix of teaching tools and props: digital applets, sketching tools, bagels, croissants, donuts, and even a balloon in a box. She also discusses her commitment to increasing equity and fighting implicit bias in her field.Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalShare your teaching insightsProfessor Staffilani's faculty pageSingle variable calculus courses on MIT's Open Learning Library18.01 Calculus I: Single Variable Calculus on OCWMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn Instagram Stay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer  Dave Lishansky, producer Show notes by Peter Chipman

Though there's widespread consensus that the slavery and colonization that characterize the history of European relations with Africa represent a legacy of grave injustice, there is much less agreement on how to redress that injustice. Professor M. Amah Edoh, who teaches in MIT's Department of Anthropology, designed the course 21A.S01 Reparations for Slavery and Colonization with the goal of honestly facing the historical record and openly discussing how best to respond. Because she believes expertise is too often conceived of as something that flows “north-south” from the developed nations toward the developing world, she structured the course to embrace expertise wherever it might be found—recruiting guest lecturers from various disciplines and from institutions around the world, as well as activists currently involved in the quest for reparative justice. She even went a step further, sharing the lecture videos on YouTube while the semester was still ongoing and inviting viewers to contribute their own insights into how to deal with the ongoing legacy of historical wrongs. In this episode, Prof. Edoh describes the motivation for this innovative course structure and reflects on the challenges of grappling with such a sensitive subject.Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalShare your teaching insightsProfessor Edoh's faculty pageCourse materials by Professor Edoh on OCW21A.S01 Reparations for Slavery and ColonizationOpen Learning story on 21A.S01OCW YouTube playlist for 21A.S01Africa's Expertise (YouTube lecture by Prof Edoh)African Futures Action LabHow Africa Has Been Made to Mean (2020 episode of Chalk Radio)Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn Instagram Stay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer (https://twitter.com/learning_sarah)Brett Paci, producer  (https://twitter.com/Brett_Paci)Dave Lishansky, producer (https://twitter.com/DaveResonates)Show notes by Peter Chipman

When humans interact, they don't just pass information from one to the other; there's always some relational element, with the participants responding to each other's emotional cues. Professor Cynthia Breazeal, MIT's new Dean of Digital Learning, believes it's possible to design this element into human-computer interactions as well. She foresees a day when AI won't merely perform practical tasks for us, but also will provide us with companionship, emotional comfort, and even mental health support. But a future of closer human-AI collaborative relationships doesn't only require technological development—it also requires us to learn what AI is capable of and how to interact with it in a more informed way. To further this goal, Professor Breazeal leads the Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE) initiative at MIT, which runs an annual “Day of AI” program to promote better understanding of AI in the next generation of technology users and developers. In this episode, she describes those projects as well as her work developing the groundbreaking social robots Kismet and Jibo, prototypes of what she calls “warm tech”—AI-enabled devices designed to be engaging, expressive, and personal. Relevant Resources:Day of AIRAISE (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education)MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalShare your teaching insightsProfessor Breazeal's faculty pageProfessor Breazeal named Dean of Digital LearningProfessor Breazeal introduces Jibo (YouTube video)The Rise of Personal Robotics (TED talk by Professor Breazeal)Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn Instagram Stay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseWare, donate to help keep these programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer  Dave Lishansky, producer Nidhi Shastri and Aubrey Calloway, scriptwriters Show notes by Peter Chipman

In the previous episode we learned about a project undertaken as part of the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) initiative at MIT's Schwartzman College of Computing. In this episode we hear about another SERC project, from Prof. Daniel Jackson and graduate teaching assistant Serena Booth, who have partnered to incorporate ethical considerations in Prof. Jackson and Prof. Arvind Satyanarayan's course 6.170 Software Studio. Jackson and Booth explain that software can fail its users in three ways: First, it can simply work badly, failing to meet the purpose it was intended for. Second, it may do what the user wants it to, while simultaneously accomplishing some insidious purpose that the user is unaware of. Third, as Prof. Jackson puts it, it may “contribute to a computational environment that has subtly pernicious effects” on the individual or on society—effects unintended not only by the user but also by the software designer. In their revised syllabus for 6.170, Jackson and Booth attempt to address these second and third types of failure by introducing ethical concerns early in the course and by sharing an ethics protocol to scaffold students' decision-making throughout the software design process. Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator Portal Share your teaching insightsSocial and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) resource on OpenCourseWare6.170 Software Studio ethics assignmentsSERC websiteProfessor Jackson's faculty pageSerena Booth's personal websiteMusic in this episode by Blue Dot SessionsConnect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn InstagramStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going!CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer Dave Lishansky, producer Show notes by Peter Chipman

When computer science was in its infancy, programmers quickly realized that though computers are astonishingly powerful tools, the results they achieve are only as good as the data you feed into them. (This principle was quickly formalized as GIGO: “Garbage In, Garbage Out.”) What was true in the era of the UNIVAC has proved still to be true in the era of machine learning: among other well-publicized AI fiascos, chatbots that have interacted with bigots have learned to spew racist invective, while facial-recognition software trained solely on images of white people sometimes fails to recognize people of color as human. In this episode, we meet Prof. Catherine D'Ignazio of MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) and Prof. Jacob Andreas and Harini Suresh of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. In 2021, D'Ignazio, Andreas, and Suresh collaborated as part of the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing initiative from the Schwarzman College of Computing in a project to teach computer science students in 6.864 Natural Language Processing to recognize how deep learning systems can replicate and magnify the biases inherent in the data sets that are used to train them. Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalShare your teaching insightsSocial and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) resource on OpenCourseWareCase Studies in Social and Ethical Responsibilities of ComputingSERC websiteProfessor D'Ignazio's faculty pageProfessor Andreas's faculty pageHarini Suresh's personal websiteDesmond Patton's paper on analysis of communications on TwitterMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn Instagram Stay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseWare, donate to help keep those programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer  Dave Lishansky, producer Script writing assistance by Aubrey CalawayShow notes by Peter Chipman 

Most of the students in Professor Dennis McLaughlin's course 1.74 Land, Water, Food, and Climate come to it with established opinions on some very controversial topics: whether GMOs are safe, whether climate change is real (and really human-induced), whether organic agriculture is preferable to conventional agriculture, and whether it's better for land to be worked by individual farmers or by larger corporations. Dealing with topics like these in an introductory graduate-level class can be challenging. You have to train students to read the scientific literature so that they can evaluate the facts on both sides of an issue. But you also have to strike a balance between those concrete facts and the intangible social values that enter into debates on sensitive topics. In this episode, Professor McLaughlin describes his approach to those two challenges in teaching 1.74; he also explains how a diversity of backgrounds among the students in the class enriches class discussion, and he describes what he sees as the teacher's role: to adjust and when necessary reframe the terms of discussion, while still allowing students the freedom to explore the ramifications of their ideas.  Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalShare your teaching ideas and insights with Dennis McLaughlinProfessor McLaughlin's course on OCWProfessor McLaughlin's faculty pageOther environment courses on OCWThe MIT Climate PortalConnect with Curt Newton at LinkedIn or TwitterMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn Instagram Stay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep those programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer  Dave Lishansky, producer Script writing assistance by Nidhi ShastriShow notes by Peter Chipman 

Students in MIT's course 5.310 Laboratory Chemistry have a state-of-the art lab to work in, with energy-saving hibernating fume hoods and a new spectrometer that achieves mind-blowingly precise measurements—not parts per million or parts per billion, but parts per trillion! And the students do spend much of their time in that new lab. But Dr. John Dolhun, director of the Undergraduate Chemistry Teaching Labs at MIT, who taught 5.310 for many years, and Dr. Sarah Hewett, who currently teaches it, make sure that the course doesn't take place entirely behind closed doors. One of the lab activities involves collecting water samples from the Charles River and analyzing them for dissolved oxygen and contaminants such as phosphates. This activity, named the “Ellen Swallow Richards Lab” after an environmental chemist who was also the first female student at MIT, ensures that the coursework is grounded in real-world concerns. In this episode, Dr. Dolhun and Dr. Hewett discuss that lab and other topics, such as how to teach perseverance, why their course emphasizes ways of communicating science to an audience of nonscientists, and the importance of sharing educational resources. Relevant ResourcesMIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalShare your teaching ideas and insights with John Dolhun and Sarah HewettDr. Dolhun and Dr. Hewett's course on OCWChemLab Boot Camp video series on OCWEllen Swallow Richards biography at WikipediaMIT Spectrum article on the new undergraduate chemistry labsMIT News article on energy-saving measures in the undergraduate chemistry labsMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn Instagram Stay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, please donate to help keep those programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer  Dave Lishansky, producer Script writing assistance by Aubrey CalawayShow notes by Peter Chipman

Sanjay Sarma is not only a professor of mechanical engineering; he's also Vice President for Open Learning at MIT, where he oversees innovative efforts to reimagine education, and he is coauthor (with Luke Yoquinto) of the recent book Grasp, which explores the nature of learning. In this episode, Professor Sarma discusses the differences between nominal learning, in which you memorize a fact or procedure but soon forget it, and real learning, in which you can effectively apply the skills and concepts you've previously mastered. When the format of education is consistent with what science tells us about how our brains store and retrieve information, Sarma says, real learning can be optimized. He argues that well-designed platforms for online learning are a vital resource for people worldwide who lack access to in-person education—like a glass of water to someone in a desert. But he also sees online learning as an indispensable tool for in-person education, allowing innovations that help to maximize the value of students' and instructors' time together, and he is optimistic about the potential value of online learning credentials as a pathway toward in-person degrees.Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalSanjay Sarma & Luke Yoquinto's xTalk on GraspProfessor Sarma's course on OCWProfessor Sarma's faculty pageProfessor Sarma at MIT Open LearningProfessor Sarma's book GraspMicromasters programs from MITxMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with Us:If you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn Instagram Stay Current:Subscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCW:If you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! Credits:Sarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer Dave Lishansky, producer Script writing assistance from Nidhi ShastriShow notes by Peter Chipman

Nancy Kanwisher, founding member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and professor in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, describes the effort to understand the mind as “the grandest scientific quest of all time,” partly because it seeks to answer fundamental questions that all people ponder from time to time: What is knowledge? How does memory work? How do we form our perceptions of the world? In this episode, Prof. Kanwisher gives a nutshell history of her field and describes how scientists use imaging techniques to study the brain structures involved in different cognitive skills. She also reflects on the usefulness of personal anecdotes as a teaching technique in courses like her 9.13 The Human Brain. Kanwisher believes scientists have a moral obligation to share the results of their research with the world—which may explain why she has published her course materials for 9.13 on OpenCourseWare—but she doesn't see that sharing as an onerous responsibility. “The stuff I do is easily shareable with people,” she says, “but it's also fun. It's really fun to get an idea across and see somebody resonate to it.”Relevant ResourcesMIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalShare your teaching ideas and insights with Nancy KanwisherProfessor Kanwisher's course on OCW (9.13 The Human Brain)Professor Kanwisher at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain ResearchProfessor Kanwisher's series of short videos on brain scienceMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn Instagram Stay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep those programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer (https://twitter.com/learning_sarah)Brett Paci, producer  (https://twitter.com/Brett_Paci)Dave Lishansky, producer (https://twitter.com/DaveResonates)Script writing assistance from Nidhi ShastriShow notes by Peter Chipman

Contemporary Movements for Justice is an MIT course in which scholars and activists speak about pursuing justice for European colonialism in Africa and its contemporary legacies. Do you have ideas that could help shape these discussions? If so, please participate in this new OCW opportunity. Watch course lectures online at the same time as MIT students. No registration required, and it's completely free. Then share your ideas by following the link below. Professor Edoh will incorporate your questions and comments into the offline discussions that happen in class.  After each class discussion she'll pin a summary comment on each video on YouTube so you can see how your contributions informed the conversation. The next course module is on the efforts of a group of Afro-descended Belgian activists to hold accountable a commission that was established to examine Belgium's colonial past in Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda. Tune in to the OCW YouTube channel throughout November 2021 to watch videos from experts speaking about transitional and reparative justice in this context. You can find a complete schedule of the lectures for the course below. Amah Edoh is the Homer A. Burnell Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African Studies at MIT. Last year she was the winner of the Everett Moore Baker Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. She has previously appeared on the Chalk Radio podcast (and been profiled in Open Matters) discussing her course 21G.026 Global Africa: Creative Cultures. In addition to that course, OCW also has published the materials from Professor Edoh's 21G.025 Africa and the Politics of Knowledge. Relevant Resources:Contribute Your Ideas to Contemporary Movements for JusticeContemporary Movements for Justice Video PlaylistMIT OpenCourseWareProfessor Edoh's Faculty PageMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Lecture Schedule:OctoberWhat do We Mean by Reparations?Openings for Seeking Justice for Colonial Violence in Algeria NovemberRelevance of a Transitional Justice Framework to Address Belgium's Colonial Past (coming soon)Accessing Archives to Make Claims (coming soon) Connect with Us:If you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you! Call us at 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn Instagram Stay Current:Subscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCW:If you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep those programs going! Credits:Sarah Hansen, host and producerBrett Paci, producer  Dave Lishansky, producer Show notes by Peter Chipman

The classic New England town meeting, with voters gathered in a large hall to decide issues directly, is often cited as the purest form of American democracy. But historically, those town meetings gave a voice only to certain classes of people. In this episode we meet Ceasar McDowell, Professor of the Practice of Community Development at MIT and newly appointed associate director of MIT’s Center for Constructive Communication. Prof. McDowell has devoted his career to nurturing a more vibrant, inclusive democracy, one adapted to the complex reality of a modern, largely urbanized America. In his course 11.312 Engaging Community (coming soon to OpenCourseWare), he helps his students use the tools of civic design to craft forms of community engagement and decision-making that will bring everyone into the conversation, even those on the margins of our society. In keeping with his commitment to collaborative effort, Prof. McDowell encourages his students to propose specific real-life problems they’re interested in, and to decide collectively which ones to address in the class. “We have to learn to talk to each other,” he says. “Yes, this is hard work, and yes, you can do it.” Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalProfessor McDowell’s faculty pageMIT's Center for Constructive CommunicationWe Who Engage (blog)We Who Engage (podcast episodes)We Who Engage (Instagram)America’s Path ForwardCivic Design FrameworkMusic in this episode by Blue Dot SessionsConnect with Us:If you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! Call us at 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn InstagramStay Current:Subscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.Support OCW:If you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep those programs going!Credits:Sarah Hansen, host and producerBrett Paci, producer  Dave Lishansky, producer Show notes by Peter Chipman

In our previous episode we met Professor Dava Newman, cofounder of the nonprofit group EarthDNA. Today’s guest is Brandon Leshchinskiy, a graduate student in Technology and Policy at MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, who has helped Prof. Newman create the EarthDNA Ambassadors program, training young people in communication, negotiation, and storytelling to build support for individual and collective action on climate change. Leshchinskiy has crafted an engaging interactive presentation, called Climate 101, that creatively employs materials from various sources to examine climate change from scientific, economic, and civic perspectives. By teaching young people to deliver this presentation effectively, he is developing a cohort of trained climate educators who can in turn teach their peers to reach out to friends and family on one of humanity’s most pressing issues. In this episode, Leshchinskiy discusses why young people make effective climate ambassadors, how climate presentations can be made more powerful by customizing them with specific details that are relevant to people’s own communities, what we can learn from society’s response to the challenges of Covid-19, and how to avoid developing “doom fatigue” from exposure to negative news stories.Relevant ResourcesMIT OpenCourseWareOCW’s 20th anniversary celebration registration pageThe OCW Educator PortalEarthDNA on the WebEarthDNA’s Climate 101 on OCWEarthDNA Ambassadors programWangari Maathai (Nobel Peace Prize winner)“I will be a hummingbird” (YouTube video)Professor Dava Newman at MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and SocietyRand Wentworth at Harvard’s Center for the EnvironmentMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn Instagram Stay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep those programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producerBrett Paci, producer  Dave Lishansky, producer Show notes by Peter Chipman 

Professor Dava Newman is an aerospace engineer whose career has largely focused on developing improved space suits for eventual interplanetary travel. But in recent years she has turned her sights back toward Earth, using the vast amounts of data collected by satellites in near space to inform and motivate the public for the fight against catastrophic climate change. In this episode, Prof. Newman fields listener-submitted questions about climate change and also talks more specifically about EarthDNA, a nonprofit startup she co-founded to serve as a platform for climate advocacy and action. EarthDNA aims to curate petabytes of data and presents it in eye-catching visualizations structured around the four major subsystems of our home planet—oceans, land, air, and near space. But it won’t just present the facts; it also seeks to steer users toward actions and activities that will make a difference. One of the chief goals for the platform is to provide personalized information that is relevant to the user’s specific interests and geographic location because, as Prof. Newman explains, we all care most about what’s happening in our own backyards or in the places that are important to us.     Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalEarthDNA on the WebProfessor Newman’s climate resources on OCWProfessor Newman’s aerospace engineering course on OCWProfessor Newman at MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and SocietyMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you!Call us at 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn Instagram Stay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep those programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producerBrett Paci, producer  Dave Lishansky, producer Show notes by Peter Chipman

Garnette Cadogan is an acclaimed essayist who teaches in MIT’s Urban Studies and Planning program. As befits a teacher who is also a professional creative writer, he conceives of the academic syllabus as a matrix of interconnected and recurring themes and leitmotifs, not as a schematic outline of self-contained units. In this episode, he describes how he designed his latest class, 11.S947 The Fire This Time: Race and Racism in American Cities, to draw on a wide range of cultural documents—not only written texts but also standup comedy, song, poetry, and film—to de-simplify students’ understanding of racial relations. Too often, he says, the struggle for social justice is presented in terms of a teleological progression toward freedom and inclusion, and too often victimization is presented as if it were the only experience of those on the receiving end of racism’s injustices. Oppression dehumanizes everyone, oppressor and oppressed alike, Cadogan says, but it isn’t the sum total of anyone’s being. He hopes this class will help students encounter the experiences of others in their full human complexity of joy, hope, pessimism, struggle, and imagination.Relevant ResourcesMIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalGarnette Cadogan’s course 1.S947 The Fire This Time: Race and Racism in American Cities -- coming soon!Garnette Cadogan’s course 11.S948 Seeing the City Afresh on OCW Garnette Cadogan’s essay “Walking While Black”Garnette Cadogan’s faculty pageWatch MIT’s 47th Annual MLK Jr Celebration to hear more voices on the role of joy in the struggle against systemic racism Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn Instagram Stay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producerBrett Paci, producer  Dave Lishansky, producer Show notes by Peter Chipman

Over the years, Sarah Hansen has interviewed the creator of the “Women of NASA” minifigure series as well as a professor of astronautics and former deputy administrator of NASA. Now, for the first time, she interviews an actual astronaut, Jeff Hoffman, who teaches aerospace engineering and systems engineering at MIT. In this episode, Prof. Hoffman describes his experiences in space and how one’s understanding of the world is changed by seeing it from the outside, as a finite sphere, with our seemingly boundless sky revealed as just a thin layer of breathable atmosphere. So far this broadening of physical perspective has been limited to a select few, but Prof. Hoffman tries to achieve an analogous broadening in his students’ mental perspective by introducing them to the Conceive Design Implement Operate (CDIO) framework, an approach to engineering education that uses student-designed-and-built projects to develop teamwork and professionalism and to help students envision the big picture of the systems being designed: what they are intended to be and how they will be used in the real world by actual people, whether on the ground or in the vacuum of space.Relevant ResourcesMIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalProfessor Hoffman’s systems engineering course on OCWProfessor Hoffman’s aerospace engineering course on MIT’s Open Learning LibraryProfessor Hoffman’s full video interview with Sarah HansenProfessor Hoffman’s faculty pageCDIO approach to engineering educationMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn Instagram Stay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep those programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producerBrett Paci, producer  Dave Lishansky, producerShow notes by Peter Chipman

First-year students who already plan to major in chemistry don’t require any special bells or whistles to motivate them to study the subject. But introductory chemistry is a required subject for all students at MIT, regardless of their intended major, and materials scientist Jeffrey Grossman has found that for many students in his course 3.091 Introduction to Solid State Chemistry, the subject becomes much more accessible if he takes conscious steps to make it real for them. He does this both inside and outside the classroom. First, he makes sure that part of each lecture he delivers explores the connection between the topic of the lecture and his students’ actual experience. Second, he gives students the chance to play around with real-world materials so they can learn the principles of chemistry firsthand. As Professor Grossman explains in this episode, it was by playing around with materials that the very first chemists began to learn about matter and its properties, and this kind of basic experimentation has an inherently multisensory quality that deepens and enriches students’ understanding of the concepts they learn.Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWare The OCW Educator Portal Professor Grossman’s course on OCW - coming soon!Professor Grossman’s faculty pageMIT’s General Institute Requirements (GIRs)“Plenty of Room at the Bottom” (PDF) (Richard Feynman’s lecture on atomic-scale engineering)Music in this episode by Blue Dot SessionsConnect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! Call us @ 617 475-0534On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn InstagramStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep those programs going!

For millions of years after the Big Bang, nearly all the matter in the universe was in the form of hydrogen and helium; other elements like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen only formed later, in nuclear reactions inside stars. To learn what the universe looked like back then, MIT astrophysicist Anna Frebel studies the oldest stars we can find—13 billion years old, to be precise—scanning them for traces of elements that will give a clue to their history. As Professor Frebel explains to Sarah Hansen in this episode, curiosity about the origins of the universe we live in is a profoundly human trait, just like curiosity about one’s own family history. To help communicate to laypeople the wonder and amazement that motivates astronomers like herself, Prof. Frebel has written a book and recorded a companion series of videos, both of which are intentionally designed to be as user-friendly as possible. It doesn’t matter, she says, if viewers and readers don’t grasp all the details; her hope is that they will develop the desire to understand more, and that that desire will spark further learning.Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator Portal"Cosmic Origin of the Chemical Elements" on OCWProfessor Frebel’s book Searching for the Oldest StarsProfessor Frebel’s faculty pageMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! Call us @ 617 475-0534On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn Instagram Stay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep those programs going! 

One might imagine that an expert on financial technology would view human relations through a primarily transactional lens. But Professor Gary Gensler, in teaching his course on financial technology (or “FinTech”) at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, tries to base his interactions with his students on a different model. Feeling indebted to the older mentors who helped and supported him in his student days and his early career, he seeks to repay that debt by nurturing his own students’ intellectual and professional development and by teaching them to do the same for others in years to come. In this episode, Prof. Gensler discusses his teaching philosophy and how he sees his role in the FinTech course as involving the communication of values and respect as much as it involves transmitting knowledge of the course’s up-to-the-minute subject matter. Along the way, he touches on what FinTech is, how artificial intelligence is shaking up the financial sector, and how, when teaching remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic, he helped students develop a sense of community.   Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalProfessor Gensler’s course on OCWProfessor Gensler’s faculty pageBenjamin Franklin quote referenced by Prof. GenslerMusic in this episode by Blue Dot SessionsConnect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! Call us @ 617 475-0534On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn InstagramStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.

Many instructors in recent years have turned to open educational resources (OER) so that their students don’t have to pay for an expensive textbook. And that is indeed one of the foremost benefits of OER. But Professor Elizabeth Siler, who teaches at Worcester State University, has found that using OER offers advantages to instructors too: doing so allows you to teach the material you think your students need to learn, and to teach that material the way you think your students need to learn it, rather than being tied to a prepackaged sequence of material. Professor Siler enjoys being able to select and adapt material for her courses from publicly-available sources. One source that she’s used successfully in teaching negotiation at WSU is the OpenCourseWare version of a course originally taught at MIT by Professor Mary Rowe. In this episode, we talk with both Professor Siler and Professor Rowe about why instructors might decide to share, reuse, and remix course materials, and how that decision plays out in teaching actual courses like their own courses in negotiation.Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator Portal Mary Rowe’s MIT faculty pageElizabeth Siler’s Worcester State University faculty page15.667 Negotiation and Conflict Management on OCWDealing with an Aggressive Competitive Negotiator case study [PDF]Guidelines for writing a Perceived Injurious Experience letter [PDF]Other negotiation courses on OCWMusic in this episode by Blue Dot SessionsConnect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn InstagramStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.

Professor Jonathan Gruber wants to train students to think like economists. Economics uses elegant mathematical models to explain how people make decisions and allocate their resources—but all too often those models are taught in ways that remain disconnected from students’ own experience. In this episode, Professor Gruber shares his thoughts on bridging that gap in his course 14.01 Introductory Microeconomics. He says he tries to anchor the course with real-world examples; as he explains, “You only really understand something when you go out in the real world and apply it.” And those examples, he says, have to be relatable. So rather than discussing companies none of his students have heard of or commodities nobody cares about, he illustrates fundamental economic concepts with examples like Kim Kardashian’s exercise corset, Uber’s policy of surge pricing, and LeBron James’s decision not to attend college. By engaging students with accessible examples of economic principles in action, Professor Gruber helps them develop economic intuition—a sense of how the mathematical models apply in the real, seemingly chaotic world. If you’ve always thought economics was boring, listen in on this podcast. It may change your mind!Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalProfessor Gruber’s Scholar course on OCWProfessor Gruber’s microeconomics course on EdXProfessor Gruber’s faculty pageMusic in this episode by Blue Dot SessionsConnect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn InstagramStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. 

Can you really learn to fly by sitting in a classroom and attending lectures? Of course not! But the course offered by Philip Greenspun and Tina Srivastava in 16.687 Private Pilot Ground School has proven surprisingly popular as a means of learning the basic principles one needs to know before getting into the cockpit of a small aircraft. Originally offered in weekly class sessions over the course of a semester, 16.687 has evolved over the years; it now takes the form of an immersive three-day classroom experience. In this episode, Greenspun and Srivastava discuss how they’ve maintained flexibility in their teaching while still making sure they cover the standard body of material that prospective pilots are required to master. They also explain why they feel that online study can’t completely substitute for the in-person learning experience: to be a pilot, one needs not only to learn facts but also to become comfortable with decision-making in the quickly changing circumstances presented by flying planes. This skill, Greenspun and Srivastava say, is much harder to acquire through individual study than in the interactive environment of a classroom discussion.Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator Portal Private Pilot Ground School course on OCWMIT Flying ClubFAA website: Become a PilotFlight manuals available onlineMusic in this episode by Blue Dot SessionsConnect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn InstagramStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.

“We all hold dear certain attitudes about language,” Professor Michel DeGraff says in this episode centered on his course 24.908 Creole Languages and Caribbean Identities. Those attitudes can be positive for ourselves and for others, DeGraff says, but they can also have negative effects. His goal is to make linguistics accessible to a broader audience, to connect language to issues of culture and identity, and to show how language prejudices are rooted in hierarchies of power. Specifically, he seeks to increase public awareness that the creoles of the Caribbean, like his native Haitian Creole (or Kreyòl), are fully developed languages worthy of as much respect as higher-prestige languages like French or English. To pursue this goal, he promotes dual-language education for Haitian-American students, and he himself speaks Kreyòl in as many public forums as possible—including in the videos on the OpenCourseWare site for his course, and at various points in this podcast itself! At the same time, as he explains, he encourages his students to examine their own backgrounds to see how their attitudes about the languages they speak have been shaped by explicit or implicit attitudes about culture and identity.Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator Portal Professor DeGraff’s course on OCWProfessor DeGraff’s faculty pageThe MIT-Haiti Initiative English / Haitian Creole dual-language kindergarten in BostonMusic in this episode by Blue Dot SessionsConnect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn InstagramStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.

Join us as we talk with Justin Reich, assistant professor in comparative media studies at MIT. Professor Reich runs the Teaching Systems Lab, which was founded with the mission of designing, implementing, and researching the future of teacher learning. With the emergence of the current coronavirus pandemic, Prof. Reich has been turning his attention to helping teachers and education policy makers figure out how to transition rapidly to remote learning. In this special episode of Chalk Radio, Prof. Reich discusses the need for teachers to use a balance between asynchronous materials and synchronous check-ins, the challenge of making home learning equitable for students, and the value of existing open educational resources (like the materials on OCW!) for teachers who are suddenly forced to teach their classes remotely. “It’s totally normal to struggle during a pandemic,” Reich says, but he reassures teachers and parents that effective education at home may look different from effective in-school education—we simply need to recognize and cultivate the kinds of learning that can happen best under these extraordinary circumstances.  Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalThe Teaching Systems LabProfessor Reich’s faculty pageProfessor Reich’s TeachLab podcastInterview with Prof. Reich on WBUR’s “On Point”Resources, tools, and support for teaching remotely at MITSupport remote learning by donating to OCWSupport OCW by sharing your storyMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with UsWe’d love to hear from you! If you enjoyed this episode, have a suggestion for a new episode, or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story.  On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn Instagram Stay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. 

You might imagine that fluency is an inherently good thing in teaching. But Dr. Christopher Terman, Senior Lecturer Emeritus at MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab, explains that breaks in the flow of the classroom can actually make the learning experience more memorable. This is just one of the insights Dr. Terman has gained in twenty years of teaching the course 6.004 Computation Structures. “If you’re going to spend 40% of your time in the classroom,” he says, “you might as well teach well.” He and the rest of the teaching team for 6.004 are always seeking to optimize their students’ learning experience, adapting the course through repeated iterations to include as much as possible of what they’ve found works best. Among the details Dr. Terman shares in this episode are how the course engages students from different backgrounds by offering a “buffet” of learning materials through the use of the MITx learning platform, how creating hands-on browser-based digital design lab experiences help students internalize the material, and how online forums reduce student frustration by offering quicker answers to questions that arise outside of class.Relevant ResourcesMIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator Portal6.004 on OCWDr. Terman’s Faculty PageEnhance your teaching at MIT with the MITx Residential PlatformMusic in this episode by Blue Dot SessionsConnect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn InstagramStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.

What would Shakespeare have made of today’s popular television shows? He might or might not like them, but he wouldn’t dismiss them simply because they’re popular. In this episode, Professor David Thorburn, who has spent his career challenging conventional assumptions about what kinds of works have artistic merit, speaks eloquently about why popular art forms like film and television belong in the classroom. He explains that in his course 21L.011 The Film Experience, which he has taught at MIT for over 35 years, he strives to reframe classic works for modern audiences—with “classic works” in this context meaning everything from Charlie Chaplin comedies to Technicolor musicals, Hitchcock thrillers, and Japanese samurai movies. Professor Thorburn hopes that his lectures, which are available in full on MIT OpenCourseWare, will help as many students as possible to know how to enjoy the movies more richly, regardless of their intended major. In passing, he talks about topics as various as the usefulness of lectures as an educational technique, the difficulty of imagining a world without iPads, the universality of “All in the Family,” and his admiration for Claude Monet’s paintings of Rouen Cathedral.   Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator Portal Professor Thorburn’s course on OCWA profile of Professor ThorburnKnots, Professor Thorburn’s first book of poetryWikipedia article on Jean RenoirWikipedia article on Claude Monet’s cathedral paintingsMusic in this episode by Blue Dot SessionsConnect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn InstagramStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. 

This episode explores a new kind of independent study. MIT has traditionally encouraged its Sloan MBA fellows to engage in international projects with partners around the globe. Our guest, Dr. Anjali Sastry, has led over 100 groups of MBA fellows in these projects. But she recently changed the structure of the class so that instead of signing on to projects developed by instructors, students are now able to develop their own projects based on their own interests. All the new projects in this course called 15.960 New Executive Thinking Social-Impact Projects involve applying technology in new ways to find solutions to common problems worldwide. In one project, for example, a student employed data analytics to improve financing prospects for small-scale farmers in Brazil and elsewhere. Sastry finds that mentoring a variety of students with disparate interests presents a real challenge, because it often involves working in areas beyond her own area of expertise. And keeping track of the various projects required her to develop a very structured process for students to use in reporting their progress. It’s worth the extra effort, though it isn’t easy, says Sastry. “Teaching this way is incredibly rewarding, and also really scary.”Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator Portal Dr. Sastry’s Social-Impact course on OCWOther courses by Dr. Sastry on OCWDr. Sastry's MITx course on Business and Impact Planning for Social EnterprisesDr. Sastry’s faculty pageSloan Fellows MBA ProgramMusic in this episode by Blue Dot SessionsConnect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn InstagramStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.

Mathematics Professor Gilbert Strang is one of MIT’s most revered instructors; his courses, especially the perennially popular linear algebra course 18.06, have received millions of visits on OpenCourseWare, and his lecture videos have won him a devoted following on YouTube as well. (A sample YouTube comment on one of his lectures: “This is not lecture, this is art.”) A few years ago, Professor Strang began teaching a new course (18.065) focusing on the application of mathematical matrices to deep learning and AI. This new course is very unlike a typical undergraduate math course. For one thing, there’s no final exam—in fact, there are no exams at all! Instead, Professor Strang asks each student to spend the semester developing a project that applies the techniques they’re studying to some topic or problem they personally find interesting. In this episode, we hear from Professor Strang about his efforts to humanize math teaching, the value of thinking through problems in real time during lectures—even if it means getting stuck and having to backtrack!—and the importance of staying continually conscious of your students.    Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator Portal 18.065 on OCW18.06 on OCW18.06 Scholar on OCWProfessor Strang’s faculty pageProfile of Professor StrangMusic in this episode by Blue Dot SessionsConnect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn InstagramStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.

“How has Africa been made to mean?” For a long time, Africa has been depicted in the arts and media as a place of famine and dysfunction. More recently, the continent has been increasingly portrayed as the next frontier for business and artistic innovation. In this episode, we talk with MIT Professor of African Studies M. Amah Edoh about how Africa, as a concept, is produced through cultural practices--things like music, film, theatre, clothing, etc. She shares how she engages MIT students with this concept in 21G.026 Global Africa: Creative Cultures, a course she’s shared on MIT OpenCourseWare. Topics include how her own experiences with formal education shape how and why she tries to value students’ voices in the classroom, redefining students’ relationships to scholarly texts to make academia feel less alienating, giving students language to articulate relationships of power, encouraging students to experiment with creative cultural production, getting off campus to experience cultural performance in a social context, and living the life of a new faculty member (spoiler alert: it’s a lot like engaging in marathon improvisational theatre, and it’s exhausting!).Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator Portal Professor Edoh’s course on OCW“The Price of Love” [PDF] (Wedding Project) by Nwamaka Amobi and Gabrielle BallardProfessor Edoh’s faculty page Blog post on Professor’s Edoh’s approach to creating a supportive academic cultureFaculty profile: 3 Questions with M. Amah Edoh on Africa and Innovation Spotify playlist Music in this episode by Blue Dot SessionsConnect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn InstagramStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.

It’s a safe bet that Professor Michael Short’s 22.01 Introduction to Nuclear Engineering and Ionizing Radiation is the only course at MIT where students are encouraged to bring their toenail clippings to class. In this episode, Professor Short discusses one of the core principles of his teaching philosophy: the importance of making abstract concepts tangible by means of hands-on activities. Want to know how much gold or arsenic is in your body? Bombard the aforementioned toenail clippings with neutrons in a reactor and see what gamma rays they give off! Want to know whether the stone in your ring is a genuine diamond or just a cubic zirconia? Put it under the electron microscope! Professor Short also emphasizes the value of opening “knowledge gaps”—awakening his students’ curiosity by focusing on interesting questions they don’t yet know the answer to. Later, Professor Short describes how he designed the course with a built-in mechanism for collecting real-time feedback so that he can respond immediately to students’ concerns. As a bonus, near the end of the podcast, Professor Short answers various nuclear science questions posed by actual OpenCourseWare users. Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalProfessor Short’s Nuclear Engineering and Ionizing Radiation course on OCWProfessor Short’s Do-It-Yourself Geiger Counters on OCWProfessor Short’s faculty pageBlog post on Professor Short’s work in MongoliaMusic in this episode by Blue Dot SessionsConnect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn InstagramStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.

In each episode of this new podcast, we meet the instructors behind one of MIT’s most interesting courses, from nuclear physics to film appreciation to piloting small aircraft. The instructors open up to us about the passions that drive their cutting-edge research and innovative teaching, sharing stories that are candid, funny, serious, personal⁠, and full of insights. Listening in on these conversations is like being right here with us in person under the MIT dome, talking with your favorite professors.  About the HostDr. Sarah Hansen connects educators around the world to openly licensed MIT teaching materials and approaches through the MIT OpenCourseWare Educator project. Before she began working at MIT, she was a faculty member in the Education Department at St. Catherine University. She was an elementary school teacher before teaching teachers. Sarah holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction from the University of Minnesota, where her scholarship focused on equity issues in education. Her hobbies include doing art projects with her preschool-aged daughter, spending time with her family in India, and experiencing gorgeous public architecture.  Relevant ResourcesMIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalQ & A with Sarah Hansen Connect with UsIf you enjoyed this conversation, have a suggestion for a new episode, or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you!On our siteOn FacebookOn TwitterOn Instagram Stay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.