Brittany Law and Shira Fruchtman | MITx

The MIT motto, mens et manus or “mind and hand,” reflects the educational ideals of MIT’s founders to promote both theory (mind) and practical application (hand). Today, MIT lives and learns by this motto, combining rigorous academics with a learning-by-doing approach to explore and solve real-world problems.

After more than a decade of making massive open online courses (MOOCs), MITx’s teams of faculty and instructors, Digital Learning Lab scientists, and learning design experts have found that the MIT motto is a core guiding principle for what we do: making online courses that are accessible to a wide and diverse audience, and that encourage learning by doing for positive learning outcomes.

More than 6.2 million unique learners from around the world have turned to MITx for their varied educational pursuits. From learning during lockdown and in the face of war to landing new career opportunities and earning accelerated MIT Master’s degrees, MITx learners have used their online learning experiences to better themselves, build specific skills, and advance their educational and professional careers.

“One thing MITx learners have in common is the desire to learn the MIT way — by doing,” says Dana Doyle, MITx program director. “Our faculty and instructors work to bring as much of the MIT learning experience online as possible, often pushing the envelope of online assessments to create new and engaging learning experiences.”

A practical approach to online education

MITx courses are informed by the on-campus MIT curriculum, which already reflects the mens et manus approach. For example, the popular MOOC 6.00.1x Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python is the online version of MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science’s 6.0001 / 6.100A course for undergraduate students. Online learners who enroll in MITx courses get access to the same rigorous academic concepts and practical application as MIT students in the classroom.

Many MIT faculty and instructors engage on-campus students in the course content through research-based teaching practices and real-world examples. Methods such as active and blended learning enhance the students’ connection between the content theory and its authentic practice. When developing online courses, MITx builds on many of these teaching practices. But there’s still a significant amount of work required to effectively adapt course content from the classroom to a global, asynchronous digital format.

Qualitative research done by Meghan Perdue, Digital Learning scientist, shows that MOOC learners have diverse goals and motivations. Unlike campus learners, MOOC learners are not always looking to complete a course with a passing grade. They may join only a portion of the course to learn a skill, refamiliarize themselves with a particular concept, or connect with others in their field. MOOC learners also have varying levels of prerequisite knowledge. Many of them use online courses to supplement what they’ve already learned from their formal education, profession, or everyday lives. This range of learner motivations and knowledge presents a unique challenge for designing engaging courses while maintaining the academic rigor of the content.

An important step in designing courses is determining how learners will interact with the course. Some questions MITx course designers often ask themselves as they begin to develop a course are “What do I want learners to know when they complete this course?” and “What do I want them to be able to do to show they have mastered the material?”

The doer effect

Research has shown that learning by doing — combining formative practice with instructional content — is more effective than passive learning. This evidence-based association, known as the “doer effect,” illustrates that learners who actively engage with the course content and receive feedback on their responses have higher learning gains than those who only passively engage by reading text or watching videos. MITx courses are structured to give learners multiple opportunities to practice what they learn.

Here are some effective learning design techniques used in MITx courses:

• Scaffolding and support: A supportive course structure breaks down complex concepts into more manageable chunks of information to reduce learners’ cognitive load, which allows them to learn more effectively. Instructors can guide learners through examples step by step, pointing out what is important and encouraging learners to explain concepts to themselves. Eventually, learners will be able to approach these questions without the instructors’ assistance.
• Learning activities and online assessment: Research has shown that spacing retrieval practice over time helps reinforce instructional material. When courses provide periodic self-assessments, learners can recall and retain more information. Learners can also be paired with their peers to grade open-ended assignments and interact with one another. A clear and pedagogically sound rubric helps peers grade appropriately and allows learners to use the feedback to improve their work.
• Rapid feedback: Low-stakes assessments, such as practice problems or videos that prompt recall questions, produce instant feedback so learners can quickly shift their understanding and move through more material.
• Interactive tools, simulations, and visualizations: Many MITx courses use tools that enhance online learning. For example, the Calculus Sketch Tool in Calculus 1A — designed by Jennifer French, Digital Learning scientist, and Martin Segado, Digital Learning research fellow — allows learners to hand draw curves and graphs. The tool then uses complex algorithms to interpret and automatically grade the sketches.
• Reflective exercises: Exercises that encourage self-reflection build metacognitive skills so learners can better understand their own habits and any knowledge gaps they may have.
• Application of knowledge: Including ways for learners to apply course concepts to new situations allows them to more deeply understand the material and its real-world applications.

From left to right: Nina Gal, Willem van Valkenburg, Alpha Arsano, and Colin Fredericks during the “Impacting Sustainability Education” panel discussion at the IEEE Learning with MOOCs conference 2023.

Sara Feijo | MIT Open Learning

What have we learned about online learning since the creation of massive open online courses (MOOCs) well over a decade ago? What are effective strategies to implement these courses in today’s world? How can educators leverage tools and technologies such as generative AI in course development and delivery?

These were just some of the many topics discussed at the 2023 IEEE Learning with MOOCs conference (LWMOOCs) October 11–13 at MIT. The international forum returned to campus for the first time since its inception in 2014, attracting more than 100 academic and industry professionals who were eager to learn about the latest advances in MOOCs.

“Right now is an exciting time for the MOOC community,” says Jessica Sandland SB ’99, PhD ’04, general chair for the conference and principal lecturer and digital learning scientist in materials science and engineering at MIT.

“We are seeing two big changes in the educational landscape in general — the change in both students’ and instructors’ expectations of online learning due to their pandemic experiences, and the development of generative AI tools, which are providing both enormous challenges and enormous opportunities to educators,” she adds.

Keynote speaker Stephanie Blackmon, associate professor at William & Mary School of Education, leads a discussion at IEEE Learning with MOOCs conference 2023.

Sparking conversation

The LWMOOCs conference kicked off with a welcome reception featuring work-in-progress posters and demonstrations, including digital tools to enhance music education by Meghan Perdue, MIT digital learning scientist, and augmented reality in mechanical engineering labs by John Liu MS ’12, PhD ’18, digital learning scientist at MIT. Keynote speaker Stephanie Blackmon, associate professor of higher education in the William & Mary School of Education, led a discussion on the concept of problem-solving in MOOCs.

“We try not to be a typical academic learning conference,” says Manuel Castro, past president and president emeritus of the IEEE Education Society and professor of electronics technology at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia in Spain. “The idea for the conference is to have as much discussion and activities as possible, and to try to be as open as possible.”

Left: María Soledad Ramírez Montoya of Tecnológico de Monterrey chairs a session; Center: Conference attendee asks a question; Right: Kelvin Bentley of University of Texas System gives a lightning talk.

This focus on fostering conversation was evident during the “Impacting Sustainability Education” panel discussion, which sparked a lively dialogue about how open online courses impact sustainability education and what learners can do with the skills they gain from these educational resources.

Panelist Willem van Valkenburg, executive director of TU Delft Extension School in the Netherlands, said learners should walk away from courses thinking about the complete circle of resources. “Every resource you use, you should already think about what’s going to happen when the product is over,” he says.

Alpha Arsano, another panelist and an assistant professor at Northeastern University who worked on MITx’s 4.464x Sustainable Building Design course as a postdoc, stressed the importance of agency and helping learners understand that their decisions have an environmental impact. Instructors, she said, can use comparative illustrations to demonstrate the impact of actions on the environment so that “learners can take home these ideas.”

“Seeing all the examples of great work that others are doing as well as the unclear potential of technology, like AI, I feel like participants could walk away with interest in pushing the limit into new areas again.”

Panelist and marine geologist Nina Gal felt empowered after completing MITx’s 22.811: Sustainable Energy course last year. “I knew I was going to start working in corporate sustainability so I definitely felt more confident in being able to take on that work, and have a better foundation in terms of calculating footprints and what all of the different energy usage terms mean,” says Gal, now a science associate at Industrial Economics, Incorporated.

That message of empowerment is translatable to different disciplines, says Darcy Gordon, a digital learning scientist at MIT Open Learning who attended the discussion and also led a conference workshop about her work on fostering inclusive teaching practices. “The sustainability panel was really interesting because they spoke at various levels of course design and delivery, and I found it hopeful that folks in this space are speaking to messages of empowerment,” Gordon says.

Exploring the future of MOOCs

Throughout the three-day conference, participants joined workshops on AI in education and inclusive teaching, and learned evidence-based practices from experts developing and managing MOOCs and other open online courses.

The conference featured fireside chats between the leaders of the two top MOOC platforms: a chat with Anant Agarwal, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, chief platform officer of 2U, and founder of edX, and another chat with Jeff Maggioncalda, chief executive officer of Coursera. Dhawal Shah, founder and chief executive officer of Class Central, moderated both fireside chats.

Jessica Sandland (right), principal lecturer and digital learning scientist at MIT, introduces a fireside chat with Anant Agarwal (left), chief platform officer of 2U and founder of edX, moderated by Dhawal Shah (center), founder and chief executive officer of Class Central.

Key takeaways from the conference included:

• strategies to increase the access and impact of open online courses and reaching underserved groups worldwide;
• approaches to designing and revising open online courses;
• using AI to improve course production; using analytics to personalize learning experiences and improve learner engagement;
• integrating micro-credentials into degree programs for the success of the lifelong learning and job training landscapes; and
• using innovative technologies such as virtual and augmented reality in courses to enhance learning and provide more realistic practice.

Katherine Ouellette | MIT Open Learning

Envision a classroom with posters hung on the walls, each labeled with a variety of identities: gender, race, sexuality, age, abilities, religion, and more. Students are encouraged to reflect on which identities apply to themselves and stick post-it notes on the respective posters. The teacher then leads a class discussion about how these different facets of ourselves impact the way we navigate the world.

For Michaela Bartusel, postdoc at MIT Calo Lab, this exercise from MIT 7.InT Inclusive Teaching Module embodied the course’s main goal. “The most striking thing from this module was when I became aware of certain identities that I hold,” she says. “We probably all hold hidden identities that strongly influence how we interact with others.”

“We probably all hold hidden identities that strongly influence how we interact with others.”

Inclusive Teaching is a hybrid training workshop series offered to MIT postdocs, graduate students, and junior faculty the summer before embarking on their first teaching experiences. The in-person classes focus on interactive discussions that model what inclusive teaching looks like in practice, and learners keep the discussion top of mind as they complete online assessments and reflection questions. “You can experience the active learning that you want to include in your classroom,” Bartusel says.

This MIT-wide resource is being adapted into an online course under a Creative Commons license. Educators around the world will be able to explore the material on their own and offer the workshop at their own institutions. But this microcredential was initially intended for a much smaller community.

The core frameworks used in the workshop. Image courtesy of MIT 7.InT Inclusive Teaching Module.

Incorporating the best of both worlds

Inclusive Teaching was first developed in response to a need for teaching training, support, and community for MIT’s postdoc population. Darcy Gordon, digital learning scientist at MIT Open Learning, experienced that resource gap firsthand when she was a postdoc at MIT Department of Biology. One of her early efforts to foster community was qtPhDs, MIT’s first queer and trans postdoc group, which she founded and co-led with then-postdoc David Bergsman from MIT Materials Science and Engineering. Together, they went on to develop the first iteration of the Inclusive Teaching Training Workshop in 2019. Gordon estimates they reached approximately 100 postdocs through four in-person workshops in 2019 and 2020.

“I started out wanting to meet a need of an underserved part of the MIT community, LGBTQ+ postdocs,” Gordon says. “The fact that this blossomed into so much more demonstrates the demand for this material is so much greater.”

“It’s the little things, like learning someone’s name, that make a big difference. You don’t need to completely change the way you teach.”

In the wake of Covid-19 and Bergsman’s postdoc departure for a faculty position, Gordon pivoted the curriculum online. The digital format allowed her to extend the workshops to other groups on MIT campus like the Communication Lab and Jameel World Education Lab. Connecting with a broader audience became the catalyst to build an online module available to anyone at MIT, not just the postdocs.

The next iteration of Inclusive Teaching was a microcredential-bearing workshop series, combining the best aspects of the online module with the best aspects of in-person discussion. Mary Ellen Wiltrout (PhD ‘09), digital learning scientist at MIT Open Learning, received an MITx Express Exploration Grant to build this microcredential with Gordon as the lead. They had faculty sponsorship from Professor Cathy Drennan.

“This module helps you understand the ‘why’ and see the value of what you’re doing.”

Once complete, Gordon co-facilitated the Inclusive Teaching microcredential three times with Hallie Dowling-Huppert, diversity, equity, and inclusion officer for MIT Biology. Most of the graduate students, postdocs, and junior faculty who took the workshop were in the Department of Biology, but they also reached learners in the chemistry and engineering disciplines. The team distributed surveys before and after the course and analyzed the results.

“We saw significant gains in how learners reported their identity awareness and empathy as well as their confidence in building inclusive classrooms,” Gordon says. “That tells me we are making the impact we hoped for.”

Achieving a deeper understanding of effective teaching methods

By the time Bartusel took Inclusive Teaching in November 2022, the workshop had evolved into this hybrid microcredential. She says it complements the Kaufman Teaching Certificate Program from MIT Teaching and Learning Lab, which she had been completing concurrently. The Inclusive Teaching material, she says, helped her achieve a deeper understanding of why these pedagogies are effective. “I understood the whole motivation behind the diverse classroom and why these actions were important,” she states.

Creating a sense of belonging doesn’t have to be a daunting task. Bartusel says, “It’s the little things, like learning someone’s name, that make a big difference. You don’t need to completely change the way you teach.”

“I understood the whole motivation behind the diverse classroom and why these actions were important.”

The continuous iterations and improvement of the Inclusive Teaching Module have coincided with reaching broader audiences who benefit from this training. The impact is starting to extend beyond the MIT community thanks to open education resources. Gordon presented Promising Results from a Blended Inclusive Teaching Micro-Credential at the 2023 Open edX Conference. On October 11, she will present the workshop Facilitating an Inclusive Teaching Workshop with Open Education Resources at the IEEE 2023 Learning with Massive Open Online Courses conference at MIT. The Creative Commons-licensed Inclusive Teaching Module will be available on the MIT Open Learning Library in mid-October.

“This module helps you understand the ‘why’ and see the value of what you’re doing,” Bartusel says. “I want to create clarity in the classroom rather than teaching, ‘This is how we should do it.’”

Katherine Ouellette and Sara Feijo | MIT Open Learning

A new learning analytics dashboard is supporting online learners’ self-regulated learning, performance, and retention. The Metacognitive-Learning Analytics Dashboard (Meta-LAD) was released this summer to provide a visual summary of learners’ course activity and help them monitor and reflect on their progress.

Meta-LAD is the brainchild of Heeryung Choi, digital learning postdoc, and Eva Ponce, executive director of the MITx MicroMasters in Supply Chain Management and research scientist at MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL). They developed the dashboard to facilitate students’ self-regulation in CTL.SC0x Supply Chain Analytics, a course that explores core methodologies used in supply chain analysis and modeling.

Meta-LAD identifies learners’ profiles and personalizes actionable feedback so students can improve their CTL.SC0x performance in real time. To determine common areas of struggle and effective, practical advice about studying and motivation, the team surveyed and interviewed previous learners who successfully passed MicroMasters courses or achieved high grades. Now, the team is analyzing that data to determine Meta-LAD’s effectiveness.

“In our initial analysis, we discovered that our dashboard was particularly beneficial for students at risk — achieving a higher final course grade and successfully passing the course,” Choi says.

On October 12, Choi will present about the Meta-LAD dashboard with Inma Borrella, CTL research scientist, and Eva Maria Ponce Cueto, CTL research engineer, at the IEEE 2023 Learning with Massive Open Online Courses conference at MIT.

The Metacognitive-Learning Analytics Dashboard provides a visual summary of learners’ course activity to help them monitor and reflect on their progress.

In addition to helping students develop the critical skill of self-regulation, Choi says the teams at the Micromasters in Supply Chain Management program and CTL are always keen to incorporate the latest learning science research and use cases to improve learner outcomes for their courses.

A member of the Digital Learning Lab (DLL), part of MIT Open Learning, Choi analyzes real course data and learner surveys to determine potential redesigns of the online learning environment that could increase the chances of learner success.

After discerning where learners get stuck, which course modules learners did or did not find effective, and the study habits of learners who passed or completed the course, Choi uses that contextual information to make recommendations on how to improve the learner experience.

“The members of the DLL are very interested in making an impact in learners’ experiences and learning environments,” says Choi. “There’s a discrepancy between the amount of content academia wants to cover and what practitioners can actually accomplish with their available bandwidth. The MicroMasters team knows the DLL focuses on real-world applications.”

Katherine Ouellette | Office of Open Learning

How can MIT’s community leverage generative AI to support learning and work on campus and beyond?

At MIT’s Festival of Learning 2024, faculty and instructors, students, staff, and alumni exchanged perspectives about the digital tools and innovations they’re experimenting with in the classroom. Panelists agreed that generative AI should be used to scaffold — not replace — learning experiences.

This annual event, co-sponsored by MIT Open Learning and the Office of the Vice Chancellor, celebrates teaching and learning innovations. When introducing new teaching and learning technologies, panelists stressed the importance of iteration and teaching students how to develop critical thinking skills while leveraging technologies like generative AI.

“The Festival of Learning brings the MIT community together to explore and celebrate what we do every day in the classroom,” said Christopher Capozzola, senior associate dean for open learning. “This year's deep dive into generative AI was reflective and practical — yet another remarkable instance of ‘mind and hand’ here at the Institute.”

2024 Festival of Learning: Highlights

Incorporating generative AI into learning experiences

MIT faculty and instructors aren’t just willing to experiment with generative AI — some believe it’s a necessary tool to prepare students to be competitive in the workforce. “In a future state, we will know how to teach skills with generative AI, but we need to be making iterative steps to get there instead of waiting around,” said Melissa Webster, lecturer in managerial communication at MIT Sloan School of Management.

Some educators are revisiting their courses’ learning goals and redesigning assignments so students can achieve the desired outcomes in a world with AI. Webster, for example, previously paired written and oral assignments so students would develop ways of thinking. But, she saw an opportunity for teaching experimentation with generative AI. If students are using tools such as ChatGPT to help produce writing, Webster asked, “how do we still get the thinking part in there?”

One of the new assignments Webster developed asked students to generate cover letters through ChatGPT and critique the results from the perspective of future hiring managers. Beyond learning how to refine generative AI prompts to produce better outputs, Webster shared that “students are thinking more about their thinking.” Reviewing their ChatGPT-generated cover letter helped students determine what to say and how to say it, supporting their development of higher-level strategic skills like persuasion and understanding audiences.

Takako Aikawa, senior lecturer at the MIT Global Studies and Languages Section, redesigned a vocabulary exercise to ensure students developed a deeper understanding of the Japanese language, rather than just right or wrong answers. Students compared short sentences written by themselves and by ChatGPT and developed broader vocabulary and grammar patterns beyond the textbook. “This type of activity enhances not only their linguistic skills but stimulates their metacognitive or analytical thinking,” said Aikawa. “They have to think in Japanese for these exercises.”

While these panelists and other Institute faculty and instructors are redesigning their assignments, many MIT undergraduate and graduate students across different academic departments are leveraging generative AI for efficiency: creating presentations, summarizing notes, and quickly retrieving specific ideas from long documents. But this technology can also creatively personalize learning experiences. Its ability to communicate information in different ways allows students with different backgrounds and abilities to adapt course material in a way that’s specific to their particular context.

Generative AI, for example, can help with student-centered learning at the K-12 level. Joe Diaz, program manager and STEAM educator for MIT pK-12 at Open Learning, encouraged educators to foster learning experiences where the student can take ownership. “Take something that kids care about and they’re passionate about, and they can discern where [generative AI] might not be correct or trustworthy,” said Diaz.

Panelists encouraged educators to think about generative AI in ways that move beyond a course policy statement. When incorporating generative AI into assignments, the key is to be clear about learning goals and open to sharing examples of how generative AI could be used in ways that align with those goals.

The importance of critical thinking

Although generative AI can have positive impacts on educational experiences, users need to understand why large language models might produce incorrect or biased results. Faculty, instructors, and student panelists emphasized that it’s critical to contextualize how generative AI works. “[Instructors] try to explain what goes on in the back end and that really does help my understanding when reading the answers that I’m getting from ChatGPT or Copilot,” said Joyce Yuan, a senior in computer science.

Jesse Thaler, professor of physics and director of the National Science Foundation Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions, warned about trusting a probabilistic tool to give definitive answers without uncertainty bands. “The interface and the output needs to be of a form that there are these pieces that you can verify or things that you can cross-check,” Thaler said.

When introducing tools like calculators or generative AI, the faculty and instructors on the panel said it’s essential for students to develop critical thinking skills in those particular academic and professional contexts. Computer science courses, for example, could permit students to use ChatGPT for help with their homework if the problem sets are broad enough that generative AI tools wouldn’t capture the full answer. However, introductory students who haven’t developed the understanding of programming concepts need to be able to discern whether the information ChatGPT generated was accurate or not.

Ana Bell, senior lecturer of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and MITx digital learning scientist, dedicated one class toward the end of the semester of Course 6.100L (Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python) to teach students how to use ChatGPT for programming questions. She wanted students to understand why setting up generative AI tools with the context for programming problems, inputting as many details as possible, will help achieve the best possible results. “Even after it gives you a response back, you have to be critical about that response,” said Bell. By waiting to introduce ChatGPT until this stage, students were able to look at generative AI’s answers critically because they had spent the semester developing the skills to be able to identify whether problem sets were incorrect or might not work for every case.

A scaffold for learning experiences

The bottom line from the panelists during the Festival of Learning was that generative AI should provide scaffolding for engaging learning experiences where students can still achieve desired learning goals. The MIT undergraduate and graduate student panelists found it invaluable when educators set expectations for the course about when and how it’s appropriate to use AI tools. Informing students of the learning goals allows them to understand whether generative AI will help or hinder their learning. Student panelists asked for trust that they would use generative AI as a starting point, or treat it like a brainstorming session with a friend for a group project. Faculty and instructor panelists said they will continue iterating their lesson plans to best support student learning and critical thinking.

Panelists from both sides of the classroom discussed the importance of generative AI users being responsible for the content they produce and avoiding automation bias — trusting the technology’s response implicitly without thinking critically about why it produced that answer and whether it’s accurate. But since generative AI is built by people making design decisions, Thaler told students, “You have power to change the behavior of those tools.”

Sara Feijo and Katherine Ouellette | Office of Open Learning

How can MIT’s community leverage generative AI to support learning and work on campus and beyond?

Imagine a world where students have access to an application that helps them improve their public speaking skills. A world where anyone can create a mobile app that harnesses the power of generative AI — even if they don’t have programming or coding experience. That world already exists.

More than 250 people got a behind-the-scenes look at some of MIT’s cutting-edge artificial intelligence projects during the “Generative AI + Education’’ symposium. Hosted by MIT Open Learning, the symposium featured 12 interactive demonstration stations, as well as engaging discussions with education leaders who explored the future of generative AI in and beyond the classroom.

Valfee: Helping students with public speaking

Nwanacho Nwana SB ’20 demonstrates his mobile application, which uses AI-assisted observational learning to help students reduce their public speaking anxiety. Photo: Gretchen Ertl

Surrounded by a crowd of people, Nwanacho Nwana SB ’20 demonstrated his mobile application, Valfee, which uses AI-assisted observational learning to help students reduce their public speaking anxiety. Valfee asks students to select a role model whom they’d like to emulate as a way to practice their public speaking skills. Students then choose prompts and answer questions about those topics, and the app compares their speeches against the verbal patterns of their role models.

“The app gives feedback on how to speak slower or faster, how to reduce filler words, or how to use fewer pauses or more pauses,” Nwana explained enthusiastically. “We’re excited to hopefully change students’ lives.”

Nwana received a $27,260 education research grant this past summer from the MIT Integrated Learning Initiative to assess Valfee’s effectiveness at reducing public speaking anxiety. He is conducting that research with Lori Breslow, senior lecturer in managerial communication at MIT Sloan.

MIT Personal Robots group: Helping students learn and flourish

Research Assistant Isabella Pu speaks about K-12 curricula and professional development for teachers about ChatGPT and hidden biases in these tools. Photo: Gretchen Ertl

At another station, Research Assistant Isabella Pu eagerly spoke about the creative side of generative AI for K-12 students. Along with Safinah Ali and other members of the MIT Personal Robots group, Pu is working on middle school curricula that introduce students to AI, tools that generate creative and emotional images, and the hidden biases within these tools.

“The next generation of students is growing up among these technologies that we couldn’t even dream of not too long ago,” Pu said. “So, it’s really important to teach them about AI and how AI can help support their creative process.” Pu envisioned educators preparing students to solve the world’s problems by leveraging these tools in bold innovative ways.

Members of the Personal Robots group are also working on a storybook co-creation tool that allows students to use generative AI to write and illustrate their stories. In a story-writing activity, AI suggestions are used to inspire students to stretch their imagination and take their stories in new directions. “These curricula and tools are designed with educators in mind, come with educator guides, and are used by teachers in the classroom,” Pu said.

Another demonstration by Brayden Zhang, a research assistant at the Personal Robots group, highlighted a project that is leveraging the planning ability of language models to expand social affordances that promote personal growth. For example, the group is investigating how AI can be used to help at-risk kindergarten-age children learn language and literacy skills.

MIT App Inventor: Harnessing the power of generative AI

Software Developer David Kim speaks about MIT App Inventor. Photo: Gretchen Ertl

David Kim, a software developer for MIT App Inventor, challenged participants to think about what sorts of mobile apps students can create with these powerful generative AI tools. “Imagine a kid creating a mobile application where they list all the ingredients they have in the refrigerator and then ask ChatGPT, ‘What should I cook for dinner?’ And ChatGPT comes back suggesting a dish,” said Kim. “Imagine a kid creating a mobile application where they can generate new art based on a description of a dream they had last night.”

With MIT App Inventor, anyone can create a mobile application that harnesses the power of generative AI. Kim demonstrated how users can use App Inventor’s drag-and-drop, blocks-based programming to create applications.

Aptly: Turning ideas into working apps

Participants get a sneak peek into 12 MIT cutting-edge artificial intelligence projects during the “Generative AI + Education’’ symposium. Photo: Gretchen Ertl

At a nearby table, developer Evan Patton showcased how Aptly builds on App Inventor’s 15-year experience in democratizing mobile application creation for people without a background in coding or technology. The Aptly tool transforms spoken descriptions into working applications. For example, a user verbally instructs a computer to create an app with a text box, a list of six languages, and a button that translates text into the selected language. The result is a working app that does exactly that.

“I may program it in Italian just to show that English might not necessarily be the programming language of the future, but your own native language might be the programming language of the future,” Patton said.

Other demonstration stations featured:

• An application that gives users a more robust search experience on MIT OpenCourseWare. With natural language processing working in tandem with basic text-based searches, the app can better refine which content results are yielded for the user. Part of MIT Open Learning, OpenCourseWare offers free, online educational resources from more than 2,500 MIT courses.
• A chatbot that is an expert teacher assistant for STEM courses. Chattutor, which stemmed from the MIT Quantum Photonics and AI group, accurately answers students’ questions and can be incorporated into courses.
• A project that is investigating the use of AI-generated characters for supporting personalized learning, and its impact on learning motivation.
• Research from the MIT Fluid Interfaces research group that is looking into how generative AI technology can help people develop critical thinking skills in a world where devices put information at people’s fingertips.
• A personalized educational robot that is currently being developed by the MIT Clinical Machine Learning group. The robot will be able to help students and educators more efficiently prepare class materials.
• Research from the Fluid Interfaces group that is looking at how cutting-edge technologies, such as generative AI, can be used to tailor learning experiences in and outside of the traditional classroom.
• Open-AI-mer, a chatbot that allows users to talk with a virtual version of theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. Open-AI-mer, which talks like Oppenheimer and knows about his papers and experiences, is part of a larger project that aims to showcase the personalities and stories of scientists who have been historically excluded from science because of the history of the field.
  

The “Generative AI + Education’’ symposium was part of MIT Generative AI Week. This three-day event series explored the latest cutting-edge research, the implications and possibilities of generative AI, and the opportunities and challenges posed by this technology in education, health, climate science, and management.

Visit the MIT News website for the full coverage of MIT Generative AI Week, including an overview of the entire week, a recap of the “Generative AI: Shaping the Future” symposium and a presentation on generative AI-aided art.

Amy MacMillan Bankson | MIT Sloan

Many people are uncomfortable speaking in public. In fact, the fear of public speaking is more common than the fear of both heights and spiders. Sidestepping spiders probably won’t affect your quality of life, but avoiding public speaking can hinder professional development, which is why teenagers and young adults should learn to overcome this fear. An MIT research grant awarded to an MIT Sloan alumnus and a faculty member may offer an accessible and appealing solution to this common condition.

This past summer, the MIT Integrated Learning Initiative (MITili) awarded a $27,260 education research grant to Nwanacho Nwana, SB ’20, and Lori Breslow, senior lecturer in managerial communication at MIT Sloan. This is the fourth year MITili has awarded these education research grants on the science of learning, and it’s the first time a team from MIT Sloan has been chosen for this annual grant.

Artificial intelligence-assisted observational learning

In 2021, Nwana developed an app known as Valfee. The Valfee app encourages students to choose an avatar representing a public speaker whom they might want to emulate as a way to practice public speaking. Using Valfee on their phone, students can then practice public speaking by choosing a prompt and answering a question about that topic. AI-derived metrics on the app compare the user’s speech to the avatar’s and gives them feedback on how to speak more closely like their role model.

“I’m an educational researcher, and we know that anxiety gets in the way of learning.”

Using grant money, Nwana and Breslow will research if their hypotheses is true: Can Valfee help reduce the anxiety around public speaking using AI-assisted observational learning? The research will involve a validated reliable instrument to measure speech anxiety and a pre-test/post-test design with a randomized control trial with middle school and high school students. Breslow said this is a population that’s important to reach because many students do not have access to courses or workshops devoted to improving their communication skills.

Nwana believes that the common fear of public speaking should be conquered throughout society. “I think if we don’t solve this problem, we are actually not really unlocking our full potential as humans. Because a lot of the smartest people — who may have the best ideas — don’t really have confidence if they have anxiety about speaking in front of others,” he said.

Breslow, who was the founder and former director of the Teaching & Learning Lab at MIT, agreed. “I’m an educational researcher, and we know that anxiety gets in the way of learning. Most of the research done has been about test anxiety, but there have been other studies about other kinds of anxiety getting in the way of people learning,” she said.

Class connections

Nwana and Breslow first met when he took her class, “Communicating with Data,” during his senior year at MIT Sloan. After graduating, Nwana started Valfee with a few partners. He contacted Breslow for advice, and she eventually became an advisor to the startup.

As a child, Nwana had a fear of public speaking, but it dissipated after he performed a puppet show in elementary school. He went on to become class president at MIT for all four years as an undergraduate, as he double majored in management and political science and played varsity basketball for three years. He also co-founded the Minority Business Association at MIT, as well as Engineering Social Change -- a virtual panel series to connect students with alumni and industry professionals in search of the best ways to achieve social change in the workplace.

But as class president during the pandemic, he faced one of his biggest challenges yet when he had to give a virtual commencement address in 2020. To prepare, MIT Sloan provided him with a communications coach, and this experience provided the spark for Valfee.

“I think if we don’t solve this problem, we are actually not really unlocking our full potential as humans.”

As Nwana shifted into startup mode, he began to realize it is difficult to define a “good speech.” He started researching the literature and then asked Breslow to join him, and it led to the research grant. Working on an educational research project with a former student is a first for Breslow. “I’m excited about the possibility of really reaching this population of students.”

This fall, the pair just received final approval from the Committee on the Use of Humans as Experimental Subjects (COUHES) approval from MIT to start the research, which will involve a randomized control trial. An Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) student will be added to the team once the data is collected.

Stephen Nelson, MITili senior manager, said Nwana and Breslow’s project was one of “dozens of amazing research ideas from all of the departments across campus [that applied for grants].” Nelson added, “This year, unsurprisingly, two themes emerged: AI in education and student mental well-being. Following a difficult decision process, our team felt the research Breslow and Nwana would undertake would help with social anxiety and public speaking for young learners and have an exceptional impact in the classroom.”

AI aside, Nwana’s quick advice on how to become a better public speaker: “Find someone whom you really love watching speak, and figure out how you can emulate them. Also, people aren’t as critical [of your speaking] as you might think … a lot of people are way more supportive, and a lot of the fear is in our head.”

Originally published at https://mitsloan.mit.edu on October 16, 2023.

Katherine Ouellette | MIT Open Learning

During the journey from the suburbs to the city, the tree canopy often dwindles down as skyscrapers rise up. A group of New England Innovation Academy students wondered why that is.

“Our friend Victoria noticed that where we live in Marlborough there are lots of trees in our own backyards. But if you drive just 30 minutes to Boston, there are almost no trees,” said high school junior Ileana Fournier. “We were struck by that duality.”

This inspired Fournier and her classmates Victoria Leeth and Jessie Magenyi to prototype a mobile app that illustrates Massachusetts deforestation trends for Day of AI, a free, hands-on curriculum developed by the MIT Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE) initiative, headquartered in the MIT Media Lab and in collaboration with the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and MIT Open Learning. They were among a group of 20 students from New England Innovation Academy who shared their projects during the 2024 Day of AI global celebration hosted with the Museum of Science.

The Day of AI curriculum introduces K-12 students to artificial intelligence. Now in its third year, Day of AI enables students to improve their communities and collaborate on larger global challenges using AI. Fournier, Leeth, and Magenyi’s TreeSavers app falls under the Telling Climate Stories with Data module, one of four new climate-change-focused lessons.

“We want you to be able to express yourselves creatively to use AI to solve problems with critical-thinking skills,” Cynthia Breazeal, director of MIT RAISE, dean for digital learning at MIT Open Learning, and professor of media arts and sciences, said during this year’s Day of AI global celebration at the Museum of Science. “We want you to have an ethical and responsible way to think about this really powerful, cool, and exciting technology.”

Moving from understanding to action

Day of AI invites students to examine the intersection of AI and various disciplines, such as history, civics, computer science, math, and climate change. With the curriculum available year-round, more than 10,000 educators across 114 countries have brought Day of AI activities to their classrooms and homes.

The curriculum gives students the agency to evaluate local issues and invent meaningful solutions. “We’re thinking about how to create tools that will allow kids to have direct access to data and have a personal connection that intersects with their lived experiences,” Robert Parks, curriculum developer at MIT RAISE, said at the Day of AI global celebration.

Before this year, first-year Jeremie Kwapong said he knew very little about AI. “I was very intrigued,” he said. “I started to experiment with ChatGPT to see how it reacts. How close can I get this to human emotion? What is AI’s knowledge compared to a human’s knowledge?”

In addition to helping students spark an interest in AI literacy, teachers around the world have told MIT RAISE that they want to use data science lessons to engage students in conversations about climate change. Therefore, Day of AI’s new hands-on projects use weather and climate change to show students why it’s important to develop a critical understanding of dataset design and collection when observing the world around them.

“There is a lag between cause and effect in everyday lives,” said Parks. “Our goal is to demystify that, and allow kids to access data so they can see a long view of things.”

Tools like MIT App Inventor — which allows anyone to create a mobile application — help students make sense of what they can learn from data. Fournier, Leeth, and Magenyi programmed TreeSavers in App Inventor to chart regional deforestation rates across Massachusetts, identify ongoing trends through statistical models, and predict environmental impact. The students put that “long view” of climate change into practice when developing TreeSavers’ interactive maps. Users can toggle between Massachusetts’s current tree cover, historical data, and future high-risk areas.

Although AI provides fast answers, it doesn’t necessarily offer equitable solutions, said David Sittenfeld, director of the Center for the Environment at the Museum of Science. The Day of AI curriculum asks students to make decisions on sourcing data, ensuring unbiased data, and thinking responsibly about how findings could be used.

“There’s an ethical concern about tracking people’s data,” said Ethan Jorda, a New England Innovation Academy student. His group used open-source data to program an app that helps users track and reduce their carbon footprint.

Christine Cunningham, senior vice president of STEM Learning at the Museum of Science, believes students are prepared to use AI responsibly to make the world a better place. “They can see themselves shaping the world they live in,” said Cunningham. “Moving through from understanding to action, kids will never look at a bridge or a piece of plastic lying on the ground in the same way again.”

Deepening collaboration on earth and beyond

The 2024 Day of AI speakers emphasized collaborative problem solving at the local, national, and global levels.

“Through different ideas and different perspectives, we’re going to get better solutions,” said Cunningham. “How do we start young enough that every child has a chance to both understand the world around them but also to move toward shaping the future?”

Presenters from MIT, the Museum of Science, and NASA approached this question with a common goal — expanding STEM education to learners of all ages and backgrounds.

“We have been delighted to collaborate with the MIT RAISE team to bring this year’s Day of AI celebration to the Museum of Science,” says Meg Rosenburg, manager of operations at the Museum of Science Centers for Public Science Learning. “This opportunity to highlight the new climate modules for the curriculum not only perfectly aligns with the museum’s goals to focus on climate and active hope throughout our Year of the Earthshot initiative, but it has also allowed us to bring our teams together and grow a relationship that we are very excited to build upon in the future.”

Rachel Connolly, systems integration and analysis lead for NASA's Science Activation Program, showed the power of collaboration with the example of how human comprehension of Saturn’s appearance has evolved. From Galileo’s early telescope to the Cassini space probe, modern imaging of Saturn represents 400 years of science, technology, and math working together to further knowledge.

“Technologies, and the engineers who built them, advance the questions we’re able to ask and therefore what we’re able to understand,” said Connolly, research scientist at MIT Media Lab.

New England Innovation Academy students saw an opportunity for collaboration a little closer to home. Emmett Buck-Thompson, Jeff Cheng, and Max Hunt envisioned a social media app to connect volunteers with local charities. Their project was inspired by Buck-Thompson’s father’s difficulties finding volunteering opportunities, Hunt’s role as the president of the school’s Community Impact Club, and Cheng’s aspiration to reduce screen time for social media users. Using MIT App Inventor, ​their combined ideas led to a prototype with the potential to make a real-world impact in their community.

The Day of AI curriculum teaches the mechanics of AI, ethical considerations and responsible uses, and interdisciplinary applications for different fields. It also empowers students to become creative problem solvers and engaged citizens in their communities and online. From supporting volunteer efforts to encouraging action for the state’s forests to tackling the global challenge of climate change, today’s students are becoming tomorrow’s leaders with Day of AI.

“We want to empower you to know that this is a tool you can use to make your community better, to help people around you with this technology,” said Breazeal.

Other Day of AI speakers included Tim Ritchie, president of the Museum of Science; Michael Lawrence Evans, program director of the Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics; Dava Newman, director of the MIT Media Lab; and Natalie Lao, executive director of the App Inventor Foundation.

Stephen Nelson | MIT Open Learning

How do you set and lead learning machine strategies and tasks? That’s what 50 members of the United States Air Force (USAF) and United States Space Force (USSF) learned at a three-day training at MIT. They visited campus from more than a dozen bases to elevate their knowledge about AI, the responsible design and use of AI systems, and AI leadership.

The annual Learning Machines Training was held at the MIT Media Lab and featured lectures led by members of the Media Lab’s Personal Robots Group and MIT Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE), an initiative spearheaded by the Media Lab and MIT Open Learning. The workshop design followed a constructionist approach where participants learned about AI through creative hands-on learning in teams. Activities included coding with drones, computer games, and robotics. Participants also engaged in facilitated group discussions on AI ethics, policy, and organizational change topics.

Teaching drones to fly

The training kicked off with an energetic welcome from Cynthia Breazeal, director of the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab, director of MIT RAISE, and dean for digital learning at MIT Open Learning. “We’re here to learn, but also here to have fun,” she said before outlining the course objectives, which included: demystifying AI algorithms, identifying challenges and opportunities in autonomous systems and machine learning, and exploring ethical issues and policy considerations in real-world AI applications.

Day one included several tasks designed by MIT’s Sharifa Alghowinem to prepare participants to teach a drone to fly itself — or rather autonomously create its own path using data. For example, participants programmed their drone to recognize certain colors, shapes, or patterns using supervised machine learning and navigate to those features when prompted. Participants were given balloons as targets and worked in teams to pop their balloon the quickest. During this exercise USAF and USSF participants showed their first hints of competitiveness, a recurring theme throughout the three-day training. Each exercise increased in complexity as the day progressed.

Invited guest speaker, Professor Julie Shah, department head of Aeronautics and Astronautics, spoke about the autonomy paradox: the notion that automating basic tasks doesn’t eliminate the need for humans, it simply changes humans’ roles, often requiring more training and higher skills in other fields. “Used responsibly,” Shah said, “generative AI can increase flexibility and transparency to help overcome issues with increased technology in the workforce.”

Day one wrapped up with a session led by MIT’s Dong Won Lee on Conversational AI and Large Language Models. These lessons served as a foundation for the rest of the week, asking participants to think about what technology is promising and why — and encouraging participants to think critically about the sometimes unbelievable benefits touted by industry.

Making autonomous robots responsibly

MIT’s Matt Taylor led attendees using a block-based coding platform created at MIT (Scratch) to train the behavior of an AI player in a game. The activity demonstrated to participants that minor adjustments to the game play would help the AI-player learn from experience what movements would maximize point values within the game through reinforcement learning. The better the manipulation, the stronger the AI player became at learning to score higher with each task.

Nathaniel Hanson from MIT Lincoln Laboratory then taught a deep-dive session on how to train and evaluate autonomous agents using deep reinforcement learning. The key learning objective for this session was to have students appreciate the intricacies of hyperparameter setup, and how they can determine the overall system performance. The learners explored several deep reinforcement algorithms in interactive Jupyter Notebooks. “An important part of this exercise is to clearly show that learning algorithms that work in one problem-space with a set of hyperparameters, do not necessarily translate to a different environment,” Hanson said. “There is no master algorithm.”

Following these coding activities, participants were introduced to responsible ethics and policy with MIT’s Daniella DiPaola and Anastasia Ostrowski. DiPaola, who helped create MIT’s free Day of AI curriculum with an approach to weave ethical, social, and policy considerations throughout technical explanations, spoke briefly about the moral repercussions of lifting guardrails completely. “I tend to think that by becoming more informed about AI technologies and having a clear picture of their capabilities as well as their shortcomings, it will help us make decisions on how we can best integrate them into schools and the workplace,” DiPaola said.

Day two concluded with a training session on AI leadership, culture, and change, conducted by MIT’s Brandon Leshchinsky. The overarching theme conveyed the need for leaders to grasp the complexity of AI and distill it to bite-sized lessons to make it easier for the entire organization to comprehend from top to bottom.

Learning practical applications

The training concluded with a day of generative AI and its practical applications in coding and in media, while having an eye for responsible use and ethical implications. MIT’s Safinah Ali and Ayat Abodayeh taught participants about image and code generation, which led to participants competing, evaluating, and eventually playing interactive games created collaboratively with AI. Anastasia Ostrowski led a session on how to apply responsible design to their own work. They also introduced participants to the concept of techno-solutionism, which is the tendency for people to solve problems through the use of technology without fully evaluating the overall outcomes.

RAISE is an MIT-wide initiative headquartered in the MIT Media Lab and in collaboration with the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and MIT Open Learning.

Katherine Ouellette | MIT Open Learning

Full STEAM Ahead, a collection of MIT resources for teaching and learning online curated in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, is now going full steam ahead with in-person programs. This summer, pK-12, part of MIT Open Learning, held a two-week program on MIT campus for approximately 80 students between 11 and 14 years old.

The Full STEAM Ahead Into Summer program is an academic enrichment opportunity that combines hands-on exploration, project design, and skill building in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM). The 2023 program offered four modules related to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, also giving participants a chance to design their own projects that address issues they care about.

Full STEAM Ahead’s mission, initially created in partnership with MIT Jameel World Education Lab, aims to address the learning gap posed by the pandemic through digital and non-digital learning resources. Even though K-12 classrooms have returned to in-person instruction, there’s still a need for supplementary learning materials to help combat the learning loss students encountered during remote instruction. The Boston Globe reported that Massachusetts standardized test scores in 2023 are still “well below” pre-pandemic levels.

The Full STEAM Ahead Into Summer program is an academic enrichment opportunity that combines hands-on exploration, project design, and skill building in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. Photos courtesy of Full STEAM Ahead.

A working paper published in the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that “high quality tutoring” can help tackle learning loss, an action The Center on Reinventing Public Education urges states to adopt at scale. Full STEAM Ahead Into Summer hired undergraduate and graduate students at MIT and other institutions to mentor the program’s participants. To prepare mentors to work with middle school students, the MIT pK-12 team ran sessions on hands-on project-based learning, maker skills, classroom management, and coaching student projects. Participants also directly benefited from the expertise of four MIT staff members who managed and participated in the program.

The Full STEAM Ahead Into Summer program for local middle school students builds on MIT pK-12’s local efforts. Last year, the Full STEAM Ahead Educators Immersion Program was an in-person summer enrichment opportunity offered to a cohort of educators from greater Boston area schools. The Educators Immersion Program focused on building the capacities of schools and organizations to develop their own STEAM programs by sharing the same principles of hands-on exploration, project-based learning principles, and program co-design.

To prepare undergraduate and graduate students to mentor middle school students, the MIT pK-12 team ran sessions on hands-on project-based learning, maker skills, classroom management, and coaching student projects. Photos courtesy of Full STEAM Ahead.

Hands-on learning to solve real world challenges

Over two weeks, the middle school participants in the Full STEAM Ahead Into Summer program completed four modules related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals of Zero Hunger, Sustainable Cities and Communities, and Climate Action, including:

• Fun with satellites/living in space
  by Devora Najjar and Avery Normandin with contributions from Wendy Zhang, Raj Kirpalani, Kirky DeLong, and Joe Diaz
  Projects in this module taught how satellite data can be used to explore space and better understand the Earth. Students worked with open-source satellite data, built model cubesats, and learned about data collection.
• Project night owl
  by Tim Brothers with contributions from Martina Riascos and Adegboyega Asanpaola
  Light pollution is one of the fastest-growing environmental issues. This module covered how light pollution affects night sky visibility and our community as a whole. Activities included taking nighttime ambient light measurements at home and constructing potential models for street lights that would broadly reduce their negative light impact.
• Life in a sustainable city
  by Aisling O’Grady, Aunjoli Das, and Julia Bae with contributions from Adegboyega Asanpaola and Wendy Zhang
  This interactive role-playing game depicted the varying effects of carbon pricing as an equitable climate policy in a theoretical city. The module also encouraged students to develop their own projects to redesign sustainable cities.
• Everybody eats inventor
  by Simone Mora, Francesco Gianni, and Monica Divitini with contributions from Raj Kirpalani and Martina Riascos
  Students learned design thinking and “Internet of Things” technology skills through a highly collaborative, playful approach. Teams constructed interactive prototypes with code, electronics, and everyday materials like paper and cardboard.
  

Full STEAM Ahead Into Summer participants selected challenges they wanted to solve for their final projects. Students used principles of design thinking while they collaborated on brainstorming plans and constructing prototypes. Photos courtesy of Full STEAM Ahead.

According to a parent survey, students responded favorably to the program. “My son went to camp every day beaming and came home ecstatic every day,” says one parent. “He learned a tremendous amount, loved his mentors, and gained so much from the experience.”

In addition to the academic content, parents also noted the social-emotional gains for their children. “It is like a dream for my son to learn STEAM as we do not have this kind of experience in our home country,” another parent shares. “He really feels like he belongs in the program, and he made so many friends. It was not easy for him to get friends in the past.”

The survey also reported that the majority of parents were “very satisfied” with Full STEAM Ahead. One parent liked the fact that the program didn’t just focus on theoretical lessons. Students participated in hands-on engineering and thought about real world problems.

In addition to the academic content, parents also noted the social-emotional gains their children displayed after participating in Full STEAM Ahead Into Summer. Photos courtesy of Full STEAM Ahead.

For their final project, students collaborated on a challenge of their choosing. Students considered principles of design thinking to formulate their project plans, initially brainstorming before constructing physical and digital prototypes. Additionally, students were encouraged to implement technology in their final outputs, such as LEDs, sensors, and Scratch coding.

One team integrated micro:bits in an initiative to clean up local rivers. They looked into using motors to control the gates of a water-cleaning component and began integrating sensors for estimating when the cleaner was full. Another group envisioned extensions of public transportation that would serve more populations in the Greater Boston area. After considering fuel costs and needs of families in different areas, the students drew out maps that imagined subway and above ground trolley lines that would reach people in regions including Lynn, Brookline, and Randolph.

As one parent shares, “The topics covered and hands-on projects inspired my child to join MIT in the future, spend time off a screen, and instead learn something new.”

Sara Feijo | MIT Open Learning

When Dustin Liang was diagnosed with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia in June, the cancer consumed his life. But despite a monthlong hospital stay, aggressive chemotherapy treatments, and ongoing headaches, fatigue, loss of appetite, and nausea, the 17-year-old high school senior enrolled in MITx’s class 18.01.1x (Calculus 1A: Differentiation).

MITx, part of MIT Open Learning, offers hundreds of high-quality massive open online courses adapted from the MIT classroom for learners worldwide. The Calculus 1A: Differentiation course was designed and created by the Department of Mathematics and offered through the MITx program. Liang took the free course this summer in between treatment sessions and medical tests so that he could meet the four-year math requirement to graduate from a Massachusetts high school — an arrangement he made with his school.

In class, Liang learned how to differentiate functions and how to make linear and quadratic approximations. He then applied this knowledge to estimate his blood cell counts. “I was in a hospital bed when I saw the doctor draw a graph of my neutrophils on a whiteboard, and I thought you could apply a quadratic approximation to it to estimate my blood cell counts at a certain time in the future,” Liang recalls. “I talked to the doctors about it, and they said it was a good idea but that they currently didn’t have the technology to do that.”

When doctors conduct blood tests on a patient, they look at multiple cell counts. Three of those are especially important for cancer patients: hemoglobin, which is the protein in red blood cells responsible for the delivery of oxygen to tissues; platelets, tiny blood cells that help the body form clots to stop bleeding; and neutrophils, a type of white blood cell that helps the body fight infections.

“Heavy chemo kills all of the cells, regardless of whether they’re good or bad,” says Thomas Liang MS ’97, who is Dustin Liang’s father. “We asked the doctor a few times about the nadir [the lowest value of the neutrophil count after drug administration], but the doctors couldn't predict when Dustin would get to it. The anxiety was pretty high.”

While Liang was in the intensive care unit, his doctors ordered blood tests hourly to get a clearer picture of his blood cell counts. Being able to predict blood cell counts allows doctors to more accurately manage the next treatment procedure, and it allows patients and their caregivers to be more cautious and prepare for the next treatment.

Predicting neutrophil counts with math

After being hospitalized for weeks, Liang couldn’t wait to go home. He had his eyes locked on his absolute neutrophil count, which needed to reach 1,000 per microliter of blood in order for Liang to get discharged.

In Calculus 1A, Liang was learning how to predict the near future value of a function using linear or quadratic approximation methods. After seeing a doctor’s chart of his neutrophils, Liang hypothesized that he could use quadratic approximation to predict his neutrophil count.

“Given a series of points of the blood cell counts, a function can be modeled,” Liang explains. “So, predicting a future point not far away is mathematically feasible.”

Determined to test his idea, Liang called his mentor, Jiawen Sun, who works in a London security exchange firm as a trading analyst simulating and modeling stock market behavior. Sun helped Liang create a graph to estimate Liang’s neutrophil count at a certain time. When Liang compared the graph to his blood test results, he found that the math worked.

“I was able to predict the blood cell counts. It was a little off, but close enough,” Liang says. “There are some challenges in simulating the function of blood cells. However, the human blood cell counts turned out to be converging easier than the stock market to simulate.”

Now, Liang is working on a more accurate model for the neutrophil count based on input he received from doctors at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He hopes to use data from other cancer patients to test his model; however, much more work will be needed to determine if this kind of model can be used on other patients.

“If this works, it will alleviate some of the anxiety of cancer patients, and make their lives a little bit easier,” Liang says. “For doctors, they will be able to come up with more accurate procedures for treating cancer.”

Searching for better treatment options

Liang completed Calculus 1A: Differentiation in September, receiving a grade of 100 percent on his final exam. “My other chemo had started, and I was feeling pretty bad when my dad told me the grade,” he recalls. “I’m proud I managed to accomplish something while I was undergoing chemo.”

Liang, who continues to undergo chemotherapy treatment, enrolled in class 18.01.2x (Calculus 1B: Integration) through MITx this fall semester. He is also taking an English class at his high school. After graduating from high school next year, Liang wants to study pre-med and become a cancer researcher.

“I was always pretty interested in the science field. Then I got cancer, and I got even more interested in it,” he says. “I want to research it, find ways to help people get rid of their cancer, and better patients’ treatment.”

For Thomas Liang, his son’s survival is the first priority. “I want him to be a successful survivor,” he says. “Dustin is a brilliant kid and a chess prodigy. He thinks fast. He’s very sensitive. He doesn’t talk a lot, but is very popular among his friends. He's a kindhearted kid. I am proud of his aspirations to be a doctor.”

Anne Trafton | MIT News

Many studies have found that practicing mindfulness — defined as cultivating an open-minded attention to the present moment — has benefits for children. Children who receive mindfulness training at school have demonstrated improvements in attention and behavior, as well as greater mental health.

When the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020, sending millions of students home from school, a group of MIT researchers wondered if remote, app-based mindfulness practices could offer similar benefits. In a study conducted during 2020 and 2021, they report that children who used a mindfulness app at home for 40 days showed improvements in several aspects of mental health, including reductions in stress and negative emotions such as loneliness and fear.

The findings suggest that remote, app-based mindfulness interventions, which could potentially reach a larger number of children than school-based approaches, could offer mental health benefits, the researchers say.

“There is growing and compelling scientific evidence that mindfulness can support mental well-being and promote mental health in diverse children and adults,” says John Gabrieli, the Grover Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, and the senior author of the study, which appears this week in the journal Mindfulness.

Researchers in Gabrieli’s lab also recently reported that children who showed higher levels of mindfulness were more emotionally resilient to the negative impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“To some extent, the impact of Covid is out of your control as an individual, but your ability to respond to it and to interpret it may be something that mindfulness can help with,” says MIT graduate student Isaac Treves, who is the lead author of both studies.

Pandemic resilience

After the pandemic began in early 2020, Gabrieli’s lab decided to investigate the effects of mindfulness on children who had to leave school and isolate from friends. In a study that appeared in the journal PLOS One in July, the researchers explored whether mindfulness could boost children’s resilience to negative emotions that the pandemic generated, such as frustration and loneliness.

Working with students between 8 and 10 years old, the researchers measured the children’s mindfulness using a standardized assessment that captures their tendency to blame themselves, ruminate on negative thoughts, and suppress their feelings.

The researchers also asked the children questions about how much the pandemic had affected different aspects of their lives, as well as questions designed to assess their levels of anxiety, depression, stress, and negative emotions such as worry or fear. Among children who showed the highest levels of mindfulness, there was no correlation between how much the pandemic impacted them and negative feelings. However, in children with lower levels of mindfulness, there was a strong correlation between Covid-19 impact and negative emotions.

The children in this study did not receive any kind of mindfulness training, so their responses reflect their tendency to be mindful at the time they answered the researchers’ questions. The findings suggest that children with higher levels of mindfulness were less likely to get caught up in negative emotions or blame themselves for the negative things they experienced during the pandemic.

“This paper was our best attempt to look at mindfulness specifically in the context of Covid and to think about what are the factors that may help children adapt to the changing circumstances,” Treves says. “The takeaway is not that we shouldn’t worry about pandemics because we can just help the kids with mindfulness. People are able to be resilient when they’re in systems that support them, and in families that support them.”

Remote interventions

The researchers then built on that study by exploring whether a remote, app-based intervention could effectively increase mindfulness and improve mental health. Researchers in Gabrieli’s lab have previously shown that students who received mindfulness training in middle school showed better academic performance, received fewer suspensions, and reported less stress than those who did not receive the training.

For the new study, reported today in Mindfulness, the researchers worked with the same children they had recruited for the PLOS One study and divided them into three groups of about 80 students each.

One group received mindfulness training through an app created by Inner Explorer, a nonprofit that also develops school-based meditation programs. Those children were instructed to engage in mindfulness training five days a week, including relaxation exercises, breathing exercises, and other forms of meditation.

For comparison purposes, the other two groups were asked to use an app for listening to audiobooks (not related to mindfulness). One group was simply given the audiobook app and encouraged to listen at their own pace, while the other group also had weekly one-on-one virtual meetings with a facilitator.

At the beginning and end of the study, the researchers evaluated each participant’s levels of mindfulness, along with measures of mental health such as anxiety, stress, and depression. They found that in all three groups, mental health improved over the course of the eight-week study, and each group also showed increases in mindfulness and prosociality (engaging in helpful behavior).

Additionally, children in the mindfulness group showed some improvements that the other groups didn’t, including a more significant decrease in stress. They also found that parents in the mindfulness group reported that their children experienced more significant decreases in negative emotions such as anger and sadness. Students who practiced the mindfulness exercises the most days showed the greatest benefits.

The researchers were surprised to see that there were no significant differences in measures of anxiety and depression between the mindfulness group and audiobook groups; they hypothesize that may be because students who interacted with a facilitator in one of the audiobook groups also experienced beneficial effects on their mental health.

Overall, the findings suggest that there is value in remote, app-based mindfulness training, especially if children engage with the exercises consistently and receive encouragement from parents, the researchers say. Apps also offer the ability to reach a larger number of children than school-based programs, which require more training and resources.

“There are a lot of great ways to incorporate mindfulness training into schools, but in general, it’s more resource-intensive than having people download an app. So, in terms of pure scalability and cost-effectiveness, apps are useful,” Treves says. “Another good thing about apps is that the kids can go at their own pace and repeat practices that they like, so there’s more freedom of choice.”

The research was funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative as part of the Reach Every Reader Project, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation.

Katherine Ouellette | MIT Open Learning

When 14-year-old Jahzhia Moralez played a vocabulary game that involved jumping onto her friend like a backpack, she knew Itz'at STEAM Academy wasn’t like other schools in Belize. Transferring from a school that assigned nearly four hours of homework every night, Moralez found it strange that her first week at Itz'at was focused on having fun.

“I was very excited,” Moralez says. “I want to be an architect or a vet, and this school has the curriculum for that and other technology-based stuff.”

The name “Itz’at” translates to “wise one” in Maya, honoring the local culture that studied mathematics and astronomy for over a thousand years. Launched in September 2023, Itz’at STEAM Academy is a secondary school that prepares students between the ages of 13 and 16 to build sustainable futures for themselves and their communities, using science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM). The school’s mission is to create a diverse and inclusive community for all, especially girls, students with special educational needs, and learners from marginalized social, economic, and cultural groups.

The school’s launch is the culmination of a three-year project between MIT and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Science, and Technology of Belize. “The Itz’at STEAM Academy represents a revolutionary and bold educational endeavor for us in Belize,” a ministry representative says. “Serving as an institution championing the pedagogy of STEAM through inventive and imaginative methodologies, its primary aim is to push the boundaries of educational norms within our nation.”

Itz’at is one of the first Belizean schools to use competency-based programs and individualized, authentic learning experiences. The Itz’at pedagogical framework was co-created by MIT pK-12 — part of MIT Open Learning — with members of the ministry and the school. The framework’s foundation has three core pillars: social-emotional and cultural learning, transdisciplinary academics, and community engagement.

“The school's core pillars inform the students' growth and development by fostering empathy, cultural awareness, strong interpersonal skills, holistic thinking, and a sense of responsibility and civic-mindedness,” says Vice Principal Christine Coc.

Building student confidence and connecting with community

The teaching and learning framework developed for Itz’at is rooted in proven learning science research. A student-centered, hands-on learning approach helps students develop critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills.

“The curriculum places emphasis on fostering student competence and cultivating a culture where it's acceptable not to have all the answers,” says teacher Lionel Palacio.

Instead of measuring students’ understanding through tests and quizzes, which focus on memorization of content, teachers assess each stage of students’ project-based work. Teachers are reporting increased student engagement and deeper understanding of concepts.

“It’s like night and day,” says Moralez’s father, Alejandro. “I enjoy seeing her happy while working on a project. She’s not too stressed.”

The transdisciplinary approach encourages students to think beyond the boundaries of traditional school subjects. This holistic educational experience reinforces students’ understanding. For example, Moralez first learned about conversions in her Quantitative Reasoning course, and later applied that knowledge to convert centimeters to kilometers for a Belizean Studies project.

Students are also encouraged to consider their roles in and outside of school through community engagement initiatives. Connections with outside organizations like the Belize Zoo and the Belize Institute of Archaeology open avenues for collaboration and mutual growth.

“We have seen a positive impact on students’ confidence and self-esteem as they take on challenges and see the real-world relevance of their learning,” says Coc.

Assignments that engage in real-world problem-solving are practical, offering students insight into future careers. The school aims to create career pathways to strengthen Belize’s existing industries, such as agriculture and food systems, while also supporting the development of new ones, such as cybersecurity.

Students’ sense of belonging is readily apparent to teachers, which positively correlates with their learning. “There's a noticeable companionship among students, with a willingness to assist one another and an openness to the novel learning approach,” says Palacio.

Parents see the impact of the safe learning environment that Itz’at creates for their children. Izaya Lovell, for example, gets to embrace his whole self. “I get to speak my mother tongue, Kriol,” he says. “I can be like my dad — get dreads and grow out my hair. I can play sports and be physical.”

Izaya’s mother, Odessa Lovell, says her son was a completely different person after one month of studying at Itz’at. “He’s so independent, he’s saving money, and he’s doing things on his own,” she says.

Itz'at STEAM Academy uses competency-based programs and individualized, authentic learning experiences focusing on science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM). When given the prompt of designing a hat with two or more separate functions, students pursued their own ideas that they were excited to build. Izaya Lovell (left), constructed a multipurpose accessory, a crown with built-in sunglasses. Jahzhia Moralez designed a cardboard hat that opened up into a flower and also served as a purse for storage (pictured right).
Credits: Left photo courtesy of Odessa Lovell. Right photo courtesy of Alejandro Moralez.

A vision for Belize

The development of Itz’at emerged from a 2019 agreement between MIT's Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL) and the ministry for the implementation of a STEAM laboratory school in Belize, with funding from the Inter-American Development Bank. MIT had a proven track record of projects and partnerships that transformed education globally. For example, MIT collaborated with administrators in India, which trained 3,300 teachers to launch a large-scale education system focusing on hands-on learning and competencies in values, citizenship, and professional skills that would prepare Indian students for further academic studies or the workforce. The Belize program is the first time that groups across the Institute have come together to develop a school from the ground up, and MIT pK-12 led the charge.

“One of the key aspects of the project has been the approach to co-design and co-creation of the school,” says Claudia Urrea, principal investigator for the Itz’at project at MIT and senior associate director of MIT pK-12. “This approach has not only allowed us to create a relevant school for the country, but to build the local capacity for innovation to sustain beyond the time of the project.”

Working with an extended team at MIT and stakeholders from the ministry, the school, parents, the community, and businesses, Urrea oversaw the development of the school’s mission, vision, values, governance structure, and internship program. The MIT pK-12 team — Urrea; Emily Glass, senior learning innovation designer; and Joe Diaz, program coordinator — led a collaborative effort on the school’s pedagogical framework and curriculum. Other core MIT team members include Brandon Muramatsu, associate director of special projects at Open Learning, and Judy Perry, director of the MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program, who created operational guidance for finances, policies, and teacher professional development. By sharing insights with J-WEL, the MIT pK-12 team is fueling shared thinking and innovations that improve students’ learning and pathways from early to higher education to the workforce.

Like the students, this is the Belizean teachers’ first experience with project-based learning. The MIT team shared the skills, mindsets, and practical training needed to achieve the school’s core values. The professional development training was designed to build their capacity, so they feel confident teaching this model to students and future educators.

Itz’at currently has 64 students, with plans to reach full capacity of 300 students by 2026. The goal is to continue to build capacity toward STEAM education in the country, expand the possibilities available to students after graduation, and foster a robust school-to-career pipeline.

“The opening of this school marks a pioneering milestone not just within Belize but also across the broader Central American and Caribbean regions,” a ministry spokesperson says. “We are excited about the future of Itz’at STEAM Academy and the success of its students.”

Stefanie Koperniak and Katherine Ouellette | MIT Open Learning

For Thomas Esayas, now a high school senior in Texas, the shift to virtual learning in the earlier days of the Covid-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to dive further into his interests in computer science. He started learning the fundamentals of Python and developing projects, such as trying to make a bot that could scour Amazon for computer parts in stock with the goal of ultimately building a computer.

“Once you know the syntax of language, computer science is really just problem-solving,” Esayas says. “I enjoy challenging problems, especially things that require much more consideration than something that takes a lot less time. I like the feeling of doing a challenging thing and overcoming it.”

Esayas' aspirations to gain iOS development experience led him to Empowr, a program offering computer science training to Black high school students with the goal of providing support throughout students’ entire high school career. After already participating in Empowr for a year, he joined a pilot internship program this past summer, in which two Empowr students worked remotely with MIT Digital Learning Lab (DLL) scientists to create and improve online learning content.

The DLL, a joint program between MIT Open Learning and MIT’s academic departments, is composed of academic staff and postdocs who collaborate on digital learning innovations on campus and beyond. The idea for the internship grew out of a conversation between Empowr Executive Director Adrian Devezin and Mary Ellen Wiltrout PhD ’09, director of blended and online initiatives in MIT's Department of Biology. They discussed how Empowr might support students by connecting students with high-quality internship opportunities, specially at MIT.

“There were lots of motivations to start this internship program,” says Wiltrout. “The DLL needed extra help, and Empowr had some motivated students wanting coding experience and ready to solve some complicated problems.”

The two interns in this pilot program worked with MIT digital learning scientists across disciplines, including Wiltrout and Darcy Gordon in biology; Alex Shvonski, Michelle Tomasik PhD ’15, and Aidan MacDonagh in physics; and Jessica Sandland ’99, PhD ’04 in materials science and engineering. By working with so many individuals in DLL, the interns were exposed to a wide range of professional projects and learning opportunities. Interns had regular communication with the DLL mentors, with at least one DLL scientist checking in with them every day — with other meetings as needed — in addition to a lot of asynchronous work and checking in via Slack.

“The interns are a lot like MIT students,” says Wiltrout. “Both showed a lot of promise, quickly tackled assignments, and found ways to figure things out on their own when they faced a barrier.”

Specific projects included translating assessment content from Google Docs to the Open edX platform, creating custom XML code for problem or grading functionality in the course running in Open edX, and developing interactive graphs with multiple programming languages. The interns made these contributions within the 7.03.3x (Genetics: Population and Human Traits) course. They gained valuable, hands-on experience in important principles of online content development, including universal design.

“The course I was working on had to feature elements that made it more accessible,” says Esayas. “It opened my eyes to realize you should expand the scope to be more accessible to more people.”

Shvonski worked with the interns on the physics course 8.03x (Vibrations and Waves). Shvonski had developed interactive physics visualizations in Jupyter notebooks but wanted to embed them in web pages more easily, which required that they be rewritten in JavaScript.

“It was an important step to revise the course,” says Shvonski. “Learning how to rewrite these course elements in JavaScript myself would have been time consuming, so the interns made a significant contribution.”

Shvonski implemented the products the interns developed for the fall 2023 semester of Vibrations and Waves, including Esayas’ interactive plot project and other visualizations. “MIT students taking 8.03 have benefited from using these interactive elements this semester,” he says.

Esayas says the internship helped him to understand how computer science skills can be applied across disciplines. “I like computer science a lot,” he says. “The internship helped me to look at it differently. I see it’s very interdisciplinary. I worked in physics and biology — you can use computer science almost anywhere, like a tool that can be implemented in different places.”

In addition to growing their technical skills, the interns also gained professional experience, learning what it is like to work, report hours, participate in professional conversations and scheduled meetings, and more. The Digital Learning Lab also helped Empowr brainstorm ways to support the other high school juniors in the program, such as trainings on resume writing or what to expect when beginning a job.

MIT Open Learning would like to continue exploring areas for future collaborative efforts with Empowr, says Christopher Capozzola, senior associate dean.

“The interns learned more about themselves and all that they were capable of,” says Shvonski, “and we all learned from each other.”

Lauren Thacker | MIT Open Learning

Most digital information is stored on the servers of three companies: Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. In a recent salon hosted by MIT Open Learning, in collaboration with Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW), experts emphasized the need to distribute knowledge with decentralized technology.

Marta Belcher, president and chair of FFDW, laid out the foundation’s mission to preserve the world’s essential knowledge and explained the urgency to adopt decentralized systems. “Anything on the web, or anything that’s digitally preserved, is most likely stored on the servers of one of three companies, which means also that you have these single points of failure,” Belcher said. “If you want to preserve humanity’s most important information, you need to create a better version of the web.”

“If you want to preserve humanity’s most important information, you need to create a better version of the web.” —Marta Belcher

The event, which gathered 45 people on campus and included a global audience watching via livestream, is part of MIT’s work studying how decentralized technologies can affect social change, knowledge distribution, and preservation. If you’re not familiar with the concept of a “decentralized web,” think of it as a system of interconnected, independent, privately-owned computers that work together to provide confidential, secure, censorship-resistant access to information and services. Preserving privacy, ensuring unbiased use of data, democratizing learning through the innovative use of digital technologies, and developing frameworks for the policy-compliant are key to these efforts.

Christopher Capozzola, professor of history and senior associate dean for Open Learning at MIT, said that designing trusted information systems is “critical to building and defending democratic institutions.” He called for the creation of “new policies and practices” to combat misinformation and the distribution and preservation of knowledge that matters deeply to the world — from democracy to climate change and global public health.

Why decentralize?

Danny O’Brien, senior fellow at FFDW, framed decentralization as a technical challenge with major social implications. He explained that large-scale centralized systems like Google may appear secure so people store massive amounts of personal data on various Google platforms. But, he said trust in a single system is dangerous.

Another vulnerability of centralized systems that O’Brien pointed to was Apple’s decision to remove VPN applications from the App Store in China. This compromise between Apple and the Chinese government has consequences for activists and information sharing more broadly. He called this the “centralization trap.”

“Designing trusted information systems is critical to building and defending democratic institutions.” — Christopher Capozzola

“Maybe one day, someone will break through that single, giant, feudal castle that all our data is held in,” O’Brien said. “There are massive incentives to do that.”

A decentralized web is an alternative that could prioritize education and information sharing. O’Brien prompted people to imagine “a world where facts are free and lies are costly, where information finds its way to people who can best use it for positive good.”

Sharing MIT’s collections

Over the course of the event, participants learned about two MIT information repositories: MIT OpenCourseWare and MIT Video Production, both part of MIT Open Learning.

OpenCourseWare, which has shared knowledge from the MIT curriculum since 2001, currently hosts approximately 2,500 courses on its website. Users can view content on the OpenCourseWare YouTube channel, which has the largest subscriber base of any .edu channel in the world, or download and adapt content for their own uses.

OpenCourseWare also serves users through its Mirror Site Program, which provides free copies of content on hard drives to educational organizations with limited or costly Internet access. More than 440 hard drives have been shared via the Mirror Site Program alongside successful collaborations with organizations, including a digital learning nonprofit in Myanmar and schools in Somalia.

Curt Newton, director of MIT OpenCourseWare, called the physical hard drives a “20th-century solution,” one that often requires human couriers and manual updates. New solutions, including work supported by FFDW social impact engineer Ian Davis, may include the InterPlanetary File System, or IPFS, a peer-to-peer network. This type of sharing could distribute information more broadly and efficiently.

Clayton Hainsworth, director of MIT Video Productions, presented an overview of MIT Video Productions’ video archive: audiovisual assets created and collected for the MIT community over decades. It includes digital assets as well as over 42,000 physical legacy assets, with highlights such as a convocation address given by Winston Churchill in 1949 and an interview with Nobel-winning Niels Bohr from 1961.

The archive likely contains long-forgotten content that may prove useful for today’s learners. As an example of the archive’s hidden gems, Hainsworth shared that he recently found a video recording that included an introduction to artificial intelligence as it was known in 1987.

Hainsworth said that with support from FFDW, the work of digitizing archival content has begun. “It is no small task,” he said. “This [funding] has given us the opportunity to think about how this content might get out into the world again.”

Distributing knowledge

Potential roadblocks to creating a decentralized web include the immense amount of data our world generates and subsequent storage capacity issues, funding and regulatory challenges, and the mainstream adoption of decentralized tools and other emerging technologies. Lalana Kagal, who leads the decentralized information group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, also spoke at the event. Her research addresses related issues like policy compliance across distributed sources, accountability in blockchain technologies, and concerns about privacy and biases in machine learning.

Decentralized tools may be more widely used than the general public realizes, Belcher commented. The majority of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are stored on IPFS or the Filecoin network for technical reasons.

Filecoin technology is able to preserve and authenticate video content and has been used in submissions to the International Criminal Court to demonstrate the authenticity of evidence of war crimes. In many ways, Belcher said, the decentralized web highlights the fight against misinformation and the importance of trust.

A recording of the salon can be viewed on MIT Open Learning’s YouTube channel.

MIT’s work on decentralized systems is supported in part by a multi-year grant from Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with the mission of preserving humanity’s most important information. FFDW focuses on charitable activities, including building and supporting the decentralized web community, funding research and development, and educating the public about the decentralized web.

Shira Segal | MIT OpenCourseWare

What can the Massachusetts Institute of Technology learn from faculty at other institutions who use open educational resources (OER) from MIT OpenCourseWare in their teaching? How do implementers of open education at community colleges meet the unique needs of their curriculum and students? What can we learn about open practices by collaborating across sectors of higher education, and how might these collaborations shape what we do, and how?

To begin to answer these questions, MIT OpenCourseWare — part of MIT Open Learning — launched a collaboration with Maricopa Community Colleges in Arizona and College of the Canyons in California to support and learn from community college faculty. Supported by a generous grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, this pilot project has yielded a rich set of reflections and observations about the range and use of MIT OpenCourseWare materials, the nature of open education practices, and the value of collaboration itself across institutions.

In this project, MIT is turning to open-enrollment community colleges as important thought leaders and implementers in the field of open education. By pairing OER from MIT OpenCourseWare with the impactful classroom applications of open education principles and practices, our work together furthers the shared goal of increased equity, inclusivity, and access for students. And, by collaborating across different sectors of higher education, we build on one another’s strengths and create new pathways for learning.

Why these three institutions?

“Community colleges were created to give access to education, to bring democracy to education, to make education more local. That’s why I’m interested in open pedagogy, open educational resources — because I really believe that it’s perfectly aligned with the mission and the vision of the community colleges.” — Fernando Romero, Chandler-Gilbert Community College (Maricopa)

Community colleges have long provided an affordable pathway for both traditional and nontraditional students to pursue high-quality post-secondary education, which intersects with MIT’s dedication to providing high-quality OER for free to the world. By collaborating to train and support faculty as they adopt and adapt MIT-created open materials, we are learning what it means to modify educational resources for localized audiences.

With the launching of MIT OpenCourseWare in 2001, MIT became the first higher education institution to make its course materials freely available online to anyone, anywhere in the world. As a catalyst and model in the global open education movement, MIT OpenCourseWare provides materials from more than 2,500 courses that span the MIT undergraduate and graduate curriculum, and has reached over 500 million learners and educators around the world. While we publish new course material from MIT faculty on our website and to over 5 million subscribers on our YouTube channel, our commitment to access and lifelong learning is incomplete without learning from members of the open education community who leverage open resources and practices to promote more equitable educational experiences for learners.

Maricopa Community Colleges is one of the country’s largest community college districts and the first higher education institution in the United States to enable students to search its course catalog specifically for no-cost or low-cost courses. Since launching the Maricopa Millions project in 2013, the Open Maricopa initiative has saved students over $40 million on textbook costs. Leading the implementation and growth of open educational practices and academic innovation initiatives across the district, Lisa Young serves as faculty administrator for open education and innovation at Maricopa Community Colleges and also as vice-chair of the Board of Directors for Open Education Global.

Similarly, College of the Canyons is part of the California Community College system, the largest system of higher education in the United States, and has long played a key role in advancing the use of OER across California, including the implementation of the Zero Textbook Cost Degree Program for 115 community colleges. At $115 million, this is the largest-ever public investment in OER. As a recognized global leader in the field of open education, James Glapa-Grossklag not only oversees this statewide grant program but also serves as dean of educational technology, learning resources, and distance learning at College of the Canyons and co-leads the Open for Antiracism faculty training program (OFAR) with the Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER).

By joining forces across different sectors of higher education, we are utilizing one another’s strengths to build a strong foundation and model for successful cross-institution open collaborations. So far, we have implemented content curation for specific course topics, provided individual consultations for participating faculty, started building community across those participating, and conducted reflective practice interviews where we are learning about community college faculty’s approaches and curricular needs.

Key findings from community college educators

What are we learning in this pilot project? In our first round of reflective practice interviews conducted by Sarah Hansen, assistant director of open education innovation at MIT OpenCourseWare, here are some of the recurring themes that have emerged from our conversations with community college faculty thus far. Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.

The democratizing force of community colleges

Many of the interview participants stressed that community colleges offer educational opportunities to students from underserved communities. And the education provided by community colleges doesn’t only benefit the individual students, opening the doors to further education and successful careers; it also has a transforming influence on the families and communities those students come from, expanding their awareness of what is possible.

“When I see the students in my class, I really see the four-letter word H-O-P-E. Hope. Really — the hope of the family. Many of them are Hispanic families and first-generation college students. They are really the hope of their families and the community.” — Isaac Koh, College of the Canyons

“Community college is an awesome place to be. […] We not only do the first two years better than anybody else, we also do job training and career enhancement. […] We’re not a junior college, we’re a community college. We serve our community. Our communities have such varied needs. And we take care of them.” — Anne Marenco, College of the Canyons

The nature and value of collaboration

Across several interviews, faculty emphasized the value of having access to teaching ideas from a variety of sources and expressed the desire to learn from one another as well. Erik Altenbernd from College of the Canyons articulated it in terms of having a dialogue, suggesting that when ideas are shared back and forth rather than in a one-way flow, the resulting conversation amongst a community of educators can enrich everyone’s teaching and approach. Through this project, participants appreciated the “opportunity to grow and connect with others,” as Isaac Koh from College of the Canyons put it, in order to brainstorm together and to learn with, from, and alongside one another.

“I believe in collaboration at the institutional level, and I believe in cultural change. […] When we join forces, we become stronger. […] Creating a community of learning is very important.” — Fernando Romero, Chandler-Gilbert Community College (Maricopa)

“I always learn from partnering with people. I love to do collaborative projects because it really increases my repertoire, so that I have more options for my students, more ways to approach an assignment, more ways to solve a problem.” — Lori Walk, Glendale Community College (Maricopa)

A window into how others teach

Faculty identified various reasons why they value the free course materials available through MIT OpenCourseWare. Many instructors value MIT’s materials primarily as sources of insight or inspiration for their own curriculum design and pedagogy. Thus, MIT OpenCourseWare provides a window into how colleagues at MIT are teaching or organizing their courses, and that information can be just as valuable as the OER themselves. One instructor particularly liked the way courses are structured and the modular way the materials are laid out; another praised MIT instructors’ passion for their fields of study, and also the fact that the materials on MIT OpenCourseWare are often the product of many years’ experience in teaching a given subject.

“[MIT OpenCourseWare] opens me up to accessing content that’s been cultivated by other people. So I feel like I have this unlimited world of data that I can pull in and curate and create my own classes, create my own curriculum– create my own style of how I want to teach and what I want to highlight.” — John Francis, College of the Canyons.

Benefits of open education

Of course, MIT OpenCourseWare is only a small part of the much larger ecosystem of open education, and our interviewees’ enthusiasm for OER is by no means limited to the educational materials offered by MIT through OpenCourseWare. Faculty appreciate the fact that open licensing allows them the freedom to pick and choose when adapting materials to meet their curricular needs, and that bringing in perspectives from colleagues at other institutions allows students access to a richer learning experience.

“Having more voices in the room is better. Just having a textbook written by one or a few individuals doesn’t do service to the expanse that there is in knowledge. So I really like the idea of using OER materials not just as a textbook, but to build a class so students can see all the different applications, all the different people involved, all the different processes involved in developing science and what science is.” — Tricia Foley, College of the Canyons

Spotlighting the voices of community college faculty for the global open education community


Joy Shoemate (College of the Canyons) discusses the Exploring OER & Open Pedagogy course during a panel discussion at OEGlobal 2023. Image: OEGlobal on YouTube

The learnings from this project have been informative and impactful, and have the potential to shape how we view and practice open education at large. As such, we wanted to share community college faculty’s insights with the global open education community.

Along with our collaborators, MIT OpenCourseWare presented our work in an Open Education Global (OEGlobal) conference panel titled Planned Communities: Building the Foundation for Successful Cross-Institution Open Collaborations. Aptly, this year’s convening focused on the theme of “Building a Sustainable World through Open Education,” and was hosted by NorQuest College in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, making it the first OEGlobal conference to be co-hosted by a community college. In our presentation, we shared audio interview excerpts from the faculty (some of which are featured in this article) which sparked a great conversation with attendees.

We continued this conversation with an additional conference panel titled “Open for Collaboration: Joining Forces Across Different Sectors of Higher Education” at the OER24: Open Education Conference, hosted by the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) in partnership with Munster Technological University (MTU) and their Department of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) in Cork, Ireland. The theme for this 15th annual conference for open education research, practice, and policy was “Digital Transformation in Open Education.”

The feedback from the global open education community makes us eager to involve MIT faculty who have published their course materials on MIT OpenCourseWare, so that community college faculty can influence how teaching happens at MIT, too. Doing so would accomplish what Erik Altenbernd from College of the Canyons imagines as a dialogue between a two-year college and a major research institution like MIT. In other words, instructors at community colleges and those at MIT might be able to learn from each other, in a mutually beneficial relationship.

Resources you can use

A foundational training element that was designed and implemented as part of this project is a free Canvas course on OER by College of the Canyons titled Exploring OER and Open Pedagogy. Designed by Joy Shoemate, director of online learning at College of the Canyons, and her team, this self-paced Canvas course is an open training that resides at the intersections between equity, OER, open pedagogy, and culturally responsive pedagogy. Topics covered include open licensing as well as how to find and use OER in equitable ways; bonus materials include resources used during this project, such as the reflective practice interview protocol. If you are already enrolled in this self-paced course, you can log into Canvas Free for Teacher.

Tell us your own story of collaborations in open education!

What are you learning in your own collaborations across different sectors of higher education? What are the strengths and opportunities that you are encountering in this work? And what lessons have you learned along the way that can illuminate the pathway forward for others? Respond below to add your voice, and know that we are glad to learn with, alongside, and from you! We thank you for being part of our MIT OpenCourseWare community.

Originally published with audio files at https://www.ocw-openmatters.org.

Lauren Rebecca Thacker | MIT Open Learning

Avidipto Biswas hoped to work in policy and renewable energy after finishing his master’s degree in international energy affairs, but he wanted to gain more knowledge and experience first. He turned to MITx for a course on sustainable and equitable solutions in urban mobility, calling it “the perfect bridge” between his education and work experience.

“This class is a stepping stone for practitioners starting in the field and looking for hands-on research experience,” he says. “The assignments build upon each other to develop a real-life proposal and promote learning by doing.”

Biswas took ENE.001x Transformative Living Labs in Urban Climate Action and Transportation Planning, one of the hundreds of high-quality massive open online courses (MOOCs) adapted from the MIT classroom for learners around the world. A leader in the online learning space since its launch in 2012, the MITx program, part of MIT Open Learning, leverages MIT’s considerable subject matter expertise and drives best practices in emerging digital and scalable learning environments. MITx also offers sequences, or series, of courses that give learners more robust instruction over three to 18 weeks.

The newest MITx sequence, Future Energy Systems, is offered by the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI). The four-course XSeries launched in September 2023 on the edX platform. But MITEI staff have been building toward this release since the debut of their first MITx course, Sustainable Building Design, in 2020. After working with the MITx team to develop three new courses from the ground up, MITEI now offers Sustainable Energy, Energy Economics and Policy, and Transformative Living Labs in Urban Climate Action and Transportation Planning.

“We always knew we wanted to make a program of courses that, together, represent the interdisciplinary nature of energy studies and focus on energy as the lever for mitigating climate change,” says Rowan Elowe, MITEI energy education program coordinator.

“XSeries courses are designed to work together as a group,” explains Sarah Davis, MITx project administrator. “When a learner completes the four courses, they should be able to see the connections and have a fuller, deeper understanding of energy and the climate crisis.”

The MITx teams work with MIT faculty to translate their research and on-campus courses into online courses. MOOCs are carefully planned. Courses can include lectures filmed in the MITx studio, contributions from external collaborators, access to a digital library of supplemental learning materials like interactive problem sets, and a discussion board where learners can communicate in real time.

“We took the research, tools and knowledge at MIT and made it openly accessible for global audiences to expedite the transition to sustainable energy.”

“For our residential and online courses, our goal is for students to consider how they can engage systems thinking to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate climate change, regardless of the profession they have in mind,” says Elowe. “For the MITx series, we took the research, tools and knowledge at MIT and made it openly accessible for global audiences to expedite the transition to sustainable energy.”

“MITx courses are just as rigorous as on-campus courses, but the people enrolled in them are not full-time students,” Davis says. “By narrowing the focus in these courses, we can maintain the level of academic rigor and make it sustainable. That means there are some concepts that require multiple MITx courses in order to have a strong foundation. In creating a series, we build a path for learners.”

Addressing the greatest scientific and societal challenge of the ages

The Future Energy System XSeries launched at a moment when MIT is focused on climate change research. In her inaugural address, MIT President Sally Kornbluth said climate change was “the greatest scientific and societal challenge of this or any age” and called upon the MIT community to bring all their expertise to bear on the problem.

The first two courses launched in this XSeries — Sustainable Energy and Energy Economics and Policy — have enrolled more than 7,000 learners. In addition to the course content, learners have access to discussion boards where they can share ideas and ask questions of teaching assistants (TAs).

“Students in these courses come from a variety of backgrounds and levels of experience in the energy sector,” says Elowe, who coordinates and supports teaching assistants (TAs) across courses. “TAs can point students to additional resources, like a crash course video on thermodynamics if they are having trouble wrapping their heads around a concept. The courses attract learners who may not be native English speakers, so we are on hand to assist with any issues of translation and ensuring that all learners understand the assignments and expectations.”

Listia Khairunnisa, MITEI graduate education program assistant, adds that being a TA gives her insight into the different motivations people have for enrolling in the courses. “I’m moderating the course on sustainable energy and observing learners who have shifted their careers to focus on energy,” she says. “They enrolled to gain a deeper understanding of renewable energy.”

Testimonials from learners who have enrolled in MITx courses from MITEI since 2020 show that the experience can benefit people at all stages of their careers and across a variety of industries.

“Climate change is an immediate challenge. By making this content available globally we can enable and empower people to better engage with these questions.”

Claude Gerstle SB ’68, a climate activist and retired ophthalmologist who enrolled in a class on transportation planning, says, “I’m always looking for ways to make myself useful in the energy transition. This course is so well-organized, and I especially liked the way the homework was arranged and assisted by having templates you could fill in to organize your answers. Peer reviewing each other’s submissions demonstrated the very high-level understanding of the other students.”

Gerstle, who is also an MIT Open Learning supporter, adds that his course project on a cable car linking the New Jersey Palisades with New York City assisted him in preparing for a meeting with his state senator.

Claire Gotham, an executive with years of experience in the energy industry, found that there is always more to learn. “I particularly enjoyed the real work applicability of the course materials and assignments. Even after so many years of being hands-on in the energy space, I learned an enormous amount during the [Sustainable Energy] course that I expect to leverage and build on for years to come.”

“At MITx, we really believe that everyone should be able to have access to these big ideas.”

Elowe is pleased to see the latest XSeries up and running. “At MITEI, we want to amplify all of the efforts happening here on campus,” he says. “Climate change is an immediate challenge. By making this content available globally we can enable and empower people to better engage with these questions and challenges.”

Davis emphasizes that learners can audit all MITx courses for no fee. “At MITx, we really believe that everyone should be able to have access to these big ideas,” she says. There are no applications, no required prerequisite courses or travel. All learners have to do is hit enroll.

Learn more about Future Energy Systems.

Marisa Demers | MIT Open Learning

A trip to Ghana changed Sofia Martinez Galvez’s life. In 2021, she volunteered at a nonprofit that provides technology and digital literacy training to people in the West African country. As she was setting up computers and connecting cables, Martinez SM ʼ23 witnessed extreme poverty. The experience was transformative. That same year, she left her job in quantum cryptography in Spain and enrolled in the MITx MicroMasters online program in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy (DEDP), which teaches learners how to use data-driven tools to help end global poverty.

By 2023, Martinez completed the MIT DEDP master’s program. Today, she is the co-founder of Learning Alliance, a new nonprofit that will counter sub-Saharan Africa’s learning crisis by introducing evidence-based teaching practices to teachers. She plans to move to Africa this summer.

“If someone told me a few years ago, when I was doing research in quantum physics, that I would be starting my own organization at the intersection of education and poverty, I would have said they were crazy,” Martinez says. “From my first MicroMasters course, I knew I made the right choice. The instructors used mathematics, models, and data to understand society.”

Since 2017, the MicroMasters in DEDP program — jointly led by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and MIT Open Learning — has been bringing together former nurses, lawyers, software developers, and others who are ready to make a career change and an impact on the world.

A new way to combat poverty

The MicroMasters in DEDP curricula is based on the Nobel Prize-winning work of MIT faculty members Esther Duflo, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, and Abhijit Banerjee, the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics.

The pair used a key feature of laboratory science — randomized control trials — and applied it to development economics. For example, to test the efficacy of a new education initiative, researchers could randomly assign individuals to either participate in the program, known as the treatment group, or not, known as the control group. The difference in outcomes can be attributed to the new program.

This approach has fundamentally changed how antipoverty programs are designed and evaluated around the world. It has already boosted immunization rates in India, reduced child marriages in Bangladesh, and increased school attendance in Kenya.

Duflo and Banerjee’s research created a new way forward for poverty alleviation, but there are too few people skilled in evidence-based development economics to bring about meaningful change, says Sara Fisher Ellison, faculty director of the MicroMasters and master’s programs in DEDP and a senior lecturer in the MIT Department of Economics.

“It is vitally important that we have people all over the world who have the skills to run randomized control trials, to read the literature from these trials, and interpret the results to policymakers,” Ellison says.

Andrea Salem was an economics undergraduate student in Switzerland who was unsure about his career when Duflo and Banerjee received their Nobel Prize. Their recognition introduced Salem to a field he barely knew existed, and set him on a path toward using economics to make an impact in the world.

He completed the MicroMasters in DEDP credential and included it in his application for the Paris School of Economics (PSE). Currently taking a gap year from PSE, Salem has an internship with J-PAL’s Morocco Employment Lab. In this role, he works with government officials to evaluate education reforms.

“To get to know the world in all its diversity is a gift,” Salem says. “To live and do research in the same country is a reminder of the important work I’m doing and how much more needs to be done.”

How the DEDP program works

The MicroMasters in DEDP program is open to anyone with a reliable internet connection. Students choose either a track in public policy, which focuses on key issues in high-income countries, or international development, which examines problems prevalent in low- and middle-income countries. They take a rigorous course load in economics, probability and statistics, and data analysis. The program balances flexibility with structure. Students go at their preferred pace in earning the credential, but each course is instructor-led, providing participants with a community of global learners who can regularly participate in webinars and discussion forums.

Students who complete and pass proctored exams in five courses earn a credential. The MicroMasters in DEDP program has awarded more than 10,000 certificates for passed courses and 1,000 DEDP MicroMasters credentials. Credential holders may continue their education by applying to a master’s program at MIT or at one of 19 pathway universities worldwide that either recognize the MicroMasters in DEDP credential in admissions or offer academic credit for the credential as part of an accelerated graduate program. The credential itself is also valuable for professionals as they advance their careers.

The courses are free to audit; there is a fee for each proctored exam. Exam fees are on a sliding scale, ranging from $250 to $1,000, based on a learner’s income and location. DEDP also offers a lottery, available to people who earn less than $10,000 a year, that discounts the price of one course to $100. Martinez was a beneficiary of the lottery in 2021. Without it, she says it would have taken her longer to earn her credential and apply to the master’s program.

Choosing passion and pedigree

Yann Bourgeois SM ʼ22 had a rewarding nursing career working in operating rooms and intensive care units in Belgium. This job gave Bourgeois a firsthand understanding of what happens when human health and needs are neglected. Driven to make a global impact, Bourgeois discovered the master’s in DEDP program while studying public health.

Having overcome personal challenges and socioeconomic adversity, Bourgeois was not sure MIT would consider him for graduate school. When he learned that the MicroMasters credential played an important role in admissions, Bourgeois became hopeful. He enrolled in five MicroMasters in DEDP classes at the same time. It was a bold move for someone who had not taken a math class beyond statistics, but he was eager to submit his graduate school application. By 2022, Bourgeois was an MIT graduate.

“My background doesn't matter,” Bourgeois says. “The fact that I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life at 14 or 15 doesn’t matter. All that matters is the skills and passion.”

Bourgeois now works as a labor economist at the World Bank in Washington. His job focuses on improving labor conditions and promoting equitable economic opportunities. His MIT education equipped Bourgeois with rigorous analytical tools to address complex economic problems on an international scale.

Like Bourgeois, Martinez did not believe she had the qualifications to apply for the master’s in DEDP program. Then, she read students’ profiles online and learned about their wide-ranging experiences. After learning more about the program’s inverted admissions process, which prioritizes performance in relevant courses over traditional credentials, she realized that the opportunity might not be out of reach.

“Evidence-based development needs people from very diverse backgrounds,” Martinez says. “And I’m proof that you don’t need the ‘right’ background to work in development economics. The fight against global poverty needs everyone.”

Sara Feijo | MIT Open Learning

When June Odongo interviewed early-career electrical engineer Cynthia Wacheke for a software engineering position at her company, Wacheke lacked knowledge of computer science theory but showed potential in complex problem-solving.

Determined to give Wacheke a shot, Odongo turned to MIT OpenCourseWare to create a six-month “bridging course” modeled after the classes she once took as a computer science student. Part of MIT Open Learning, OpenCourseWare offers free, online, open educational resources from more than 2,500 courses that span the MIT undergraduate and graduate curriculum.

“Wacheke had the potential and interest to do the work that needed to be done, so the way to solve this was for me to literally create a path for her to get that work done,” says Odongo, founder and CEO of Senga Technologies.

Developers, Odongo says, are not easy to find. The OpenCourseWare educational resources provided a way to close that gap. “We put Wacheke through the course last year, and she is so impressive,” Odongo says. “Right now, she is doing our first machine learning models. It’s insane how good of a team member she is. She has done so much in such a short time.”

Making high-quality candidates job-ready

Wacheke, who holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Nairobi, started her professional career as a hardware engineer. She discovered a passion for software while working on a dashboard design project, and decided to pivot from hardware to software engineering. That’s when she discovered Senga Technologies, a logistics software and services company in Kenya catering to businesses that ship in Africa.

Odongo founded Senga with the goal of simplifying and easing the supply chain and logistics experience, from the movement of goods to software tools. Senga’s ultimate goal, Odongo says, is to have most of their services driven by software. That means employees — and candidates — need to be able to think through complex problems using computer science theory.

“A lot of people are focused on programming, but we care less about programming and more about problem-solving,” says Odongo, who received a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and an MBA from Harvard Business School. “We actually apply the things people learn in computer science programs.”

Wacheke started the bridging course in June 2022 and was given six months to complete the curriculum on the MIT OpenCourseWare website. She took nine courses, including: Introduction to Algorithms; Mathematics for Computer Science; Design and Analysis of Algorithms; Elements of Software Construction; Automata, Computability, and Complexity; Database Systems; Principles of Autonomy and Decision Making; Introduction to Machine Learning; and Networks.

“The bridging course helped me learn how to think through things,” Wacheke says. “It’s one thing to know how to do something, but it’s another to design that thing from scratch and implement it.”

During the bridging course, Wacheke was paired with a software engineer at Senga, who mentored her and answered questions along the way. She learned Ruby on Rails, a server-side web application framework under the MIT License. Wacheke also completed other projects to complement the theory she was learning. She created a new website that included an integration to channel external requests to Slack, a cross-platform team communication tool used by the company’s employees.

Cynthia Wacheke gives a presentation to members of the software team at Senga. Wacheke, who is the first person to complete the "bridging course" program, is now a software developer at Senga. 

Continuous learning for team members

The bridging course concluded with a presentation to Senga employees, during which Wacheke explained how the company could use graph theory for decision-making. “If you want to get from point A to B, there are algorithms you can use to find the shortest path,” Wacheke says. “Since we’re a logistics company, I thought we could use this when we’re deciding which routes our trucks take.”

The presentation, which is the final requirement for the bridging course, is also a professional development opportunity for Senga employees. “This process is helpful for our team members, particularly those who have been out of school for a while,” Odongo says. “The candidates present what they’ve learned in relation to Senga. It’s a way of doing continuous learning for the existing team members.”

After successfully completing the bridging course in November 2022, Wacheke transitioned to a full-time software engineer role. She is currently developing a “machine” that can interpret and categorize hundreds of documents, including delivery notes, cash flows, and receipts.

“The goal is to enable our customers to simply feed those documents into our machine, and then we can more accurately read and convert them to digital formats to drive automation,” Odongo says. “The machine will also enable someone to ask a document a question, such as ‘What did I deliver to retailer X on date Y?’ or ‘What is the total price of the goods delivered?’”

The bridging course, which was initially custom-designed for Wacheke, is now a permanent program at Senga. A second team member completed the course in October 2023 and has joined the software team full time.

“Developers are not easy to find, and you also want high-quality developers,” Odongo says. “At least when we do this, we know that the person has gone through what we need.”

Carolyn Tiernan | Jameel World Education Lab

The Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL) at MIT Open Learning awarded the first Frontiers in Digital Learning awards, a new grant program that curates, activates, and shares insights from MIT Open Learning Digital Learning Lab (DLL) researchers with the world. Selected proposals build on the DLL experience with digital learning innovations at MIT by identifying a transferable, academically-grounded, and field-tested idea that is recommended for further exploration, extension, or testing in a new setting at one of J-WEL’s member institutions.

The DLL grantees are John Harrold, MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) instructor and DLL fellow; Jessica Sandland, DMSE principal lecturer and DLL scientist; and Mary Ellen Wiltrout, MIT Department of Biology director of online and blended learning initiatives, lecturer, and DLL scientist. Their transferable ideas include broadening the scope and application of the xMinor online undergraduate minor certificate program; broadening the impact of the DLL by creating an associate member program; creating experiential lab components for MITx courses; and studying and applying evidence-based approaches to increase engagement in online courses.

“We have long wanted to bring the incredibly varied and innovative work of the MIT Digital Learning Lab to many. The Frontiers in Digital Learning awards will pave the way, and, at the same time, directly support awardees,” said Anjali Sastry, faculty director for J-WEL. “Our goal is to strengthen knowledge of the design, implementation, applicability, and impact of digital learning innovation at MIT and across the world. Instructors and leaders in J-WEL’s network are eager to learn about field-tested insights and to launch their own tests and experimentation. We’re particularly excited about the opportunity to amplify and extend the work of these DLL grantees by facilitating collaborative implementation projects with a number of member institutions in the fall. Such small-scale efforts could reveal new insights about challenges and opportunities in digital learning that could apply everywhere — including on the MIT campus.”

As early as October 2024, grantees may be awarded additional funding for follow-up work that builds upon their initial proposals. Awardees will work directly with one or more J-WEL members to explore a practical and academically-grounded implementation of an idea aligned with their original paper.

“Members of the Digital Learning Lab are committed to advancing digital learning by drawing on their advanced knowledge of their disciplines,” said Christopher Capozzola, senior associate dean for MIT Open Learning. “By strengthening ties between the DLL, J-WEL, and its member institutions, the DLL will expand its visibility and impact. And most importantly, learners around the world will benefit.”

The Digital Learning Lab is a joint program between MIT Open Learning and MIT’s academic departments, where lab experts learn, collaborate, and innovate with digital learning on campus and beyond. The lab is composed of digital learning scientists and digital learning fellows who play a critical role in advancing digital learning initiatives across MIT.

The Frontiers in Digital Learning Awards build on J-WEL’s Education Innovation grants, its flagship grant program for MIT faculty and principal investigators addressing teaching and learning across the student lifecycle, from pK-12 to higher education to workforce learning. To date, J-WEL has awarded more than $5.9 million across all of its grant programs.

Originally published at https://jconnector.mit.edu/.

Maria Segala | Jameel World Education Lab

Through its Education Innovation Grants, the MIT Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL) aspires to develop the building blocks, ideas, and connections that power global transformation in learning. J-WEL grants support educational innovations across a rich variety of fields including: linguistics, mechanical engineering, literature, architecture, physics, management, political science, and more. More than $5 million in funding has been awarded to MIT researchers since 2017.

As part of an ongoing series, we are taking a closer look at each 2023 grantee’s projects. In the spotlight today is Jessica J. Sandland, principal lecturer in the MIT department of Materials Science and Engineering and digital learning scientist with MIT Open Learning. Sandland’s project, “MICRO 2.0: Cultivating students’ STEM identities through a blended learning research and education program,” provides research opportunities to underrepresented undergraduate students. MICRO 2.0 blends online research, mentorship, workshops, and MIT campus visits to foster participants’ identities as STEM researchers and members of the materials science and engineering community. The program also seeks to address the underrepresentation of certain BIPOC groups in U.S. engineering doctoral programs.

What problem or challenge is your project trying to solve?

The overarching goal of our project is to increase access to high-level research experiences, mentoring, and ultimately, access to graduate education for undergraduate students who have historically had more limited access to these kinds of opportunities. We work within the field of Materials Science and Engineering but hope that our program can be a model for a wide variety of science and engineering departments.

More specifically, our focus right now is two-fold. First, we want to understand how the various research, mentoring, and education components of our program influence student identity development as researchers and materials scientists. And second, we want to understand the role that in-person programming could play in student research experiences that have taken place to-date entirely online.


The MICRO internship program, developed by the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE), launched in fall 2021. Now in its third year, the program continues to grow, providing even more opportunities for non-MIT undergraduate students, including the MICRO Summit and the program’s expansion to include Northwestern University. Photo courtesy of DMSE.

What excites you most about your project?

The students, definitely. It’s really a joy to watch their research projects evolve through the years, and it’s exciting to see the successes that our program alumni are having in graduate school. Thanks to J-WEL’s support, we also recently had the opportunity to bring our program participants to MIT for a long weekend of presentations, panel discussions, tours, and social activities. It was exciting to have the chance to meet the students in-person and to engage with them in a variety of activities designed to support their graduate school-related goals.

What role does collaboration play in the development and implementation of your project?

Collaboration is essential. One of the most exciting things that has happened to our program in the last year is that MICRO has expanded beyond MIT for the first time. Dr. Cécile Chazot — program co-founder, MIT alum, and Northwestern University faculty member — has brought the program to the Northwestern Materials Science & Engineering department. This gives us a great opportunity to serve more students and extend the program’s reach beyond what we could in a single department at MIT.

What do you hope the biggest takeaway is for your project?

I would love it if our experience with MICRO inspires even more departments and universities to experiment with similar online research and mentoring programs. I also hope that learning more about our students’ experiences within the program will enable us to develop new programming directed at undergraduates from underserved groups. For example, our current MICRO program is aimed at undergraduates who aspire to go to graduate school, earn a Ph.D. and pursue a career in research. But there are lots of talented undergraduates with different career aspirations, and we hope what we learn through our project will enable us to expand our programming to meet their needs as well.

Originally published at https://www.jwel.mit.edu/. Interested in learning more about grants from the Jameel World Education Lab at MIT Open Learning? Visit the lab’s grants website.

Lauren Rebecca Thacker | MIT Open Learning

Digital technologies, such as smartphones and machine learning, have revolutionized education. At the McGovern Institute for Brain Research’s 2024 Spring Symposium, “Transformational Strategies in Mental Health,” experts from across the sciences — including psychiatry, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and others — agreed that these technologies could also play a significant role in advancing the diagnosis and treatment of mental health disorders and neurological conditions.

Co-hosted by the McGovern Institute, MIT Open Learning, McClean Hospital, the Poitras Center for Psychiatric Disorders Research at MIT, and the Wellcome Trust, the symposium raised the alarm about the rise in mental health challenges and showcased the potential for novel diagnostic and treatment methods.

John Gabrieli, the Grover Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at MIT, kicked off the symposium with a call for an effort on par with the Manhattan Project, which in the 1940s saw leading scientists collaborate to do what seemed impossible. While the challenge of mental health is quite different, Gabrieli stressed, the complexity and urgency of the issue are similar. In his later talk, “How can science serve psychiatry to enhance mental health?,” he noted a 35 percent rise in teen suicide deaths between 1999 and 2000 and, between 2007 and 2015, a 100 percent increase in emergency room visits for youths ages 5 to 18 who experienced a suicide attempt or suicidal ideation.

“We have no moral ambiguity, but all of us speaking today are having this meeting in part because we feel this urgency,” said Gabrieli, who is also a professor of brain and cognitive sciences, the director of the Integrated Learning Initiative (MITili) at MIT Open Learning, and a member of the McGovern Institute. "We have to do something together as a community of scientists and partners of all kinds to make a difference.”

An urgent problem

In 2021, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory on the increase in mental health challenges in youth; in 2023, he issued another, warning of the effects of social media on youth mental health. At the symposium, Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli, a research affiliate at the McGovern Institute and a professor of psychology and director of the Biomedical Imaging Center at Northeastern University, cited these recent advisories, saying they underscore the need to “innovate new methods of intervention.”

Other symposium speakers also highlighted evidence of growing mental health challenges for youth and adolescents. Christian Webb, associate professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, stated that by the end of adolescence, 15-20 percent of teens will have experienced at least one episode of clinical depression, with girls facing the highest risk. Most teens who experience depression receive no treatment, he added.

Adults who experience mental health challenges need new interventions, too. John Krystal, the Robert L. McNeil Jr. Professor of Translational Research and chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, pointed to the limited efficacy of antidepressants, which typically take about two months to have an effect on the patient. Patients with treatment-resistant depression face a 75 percent likelihood of relapse within a year of starting antidepressants. Treatments for other mental health disorders, including bipolar and psychotic disorders, have serious side effects that can deter patients from adherence, said Virginie-Anne Chouinard, director of research at McLean OnTrackTM, a program for first episode psychosis at McLean Hospital.

New treatments, new technologies

Emerging technologies, including smartphone technology and artificial intelligence, are key to the interventions that symposium speakers shared.

In a talk on AI and the brain, Dina Katabi, the Thuan and Nicole Pham Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, discussed novel ways to detect Parkinson’s and Alzheimer's, among other diseases. Early-stage research involved developing devices that can analyze how movement within a space impacts the surrounding electromagnetic field, as well as how wireless signals can detect breathing and sleep stages.

“I realize this may sound like la-la land,” Katabi said. “But it’s not! This device is used today by real patients, enabled by a revolution in neural networks and AI.”

Parkinson’s disease often cannot be diagnosed until significant impairment has already occurred. In a set of studies, Katabi’s team collected data on nocturnal breathing and trained a custom neural network to detect occurrences of Parkinson’s. They found the network was over 90 percent accurate in its detection. Next, the team used AI to analyze two sets of breathing data collected from patients at a six-year interval. Could their custom neural network identify patients who did not have a Parkinson’s diagnosis on the first visit, but subsequently received one? The answer was largely yes: Machine learning identified 75 percent of patients who would go on to receive a diagnosis.

Detecting high-risk patients at an early stage could make a substantial difference for intervention and treatment. Similarly, research by Jordan Smoller, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Center for Precision Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, demonstrated that AI-aided suicide risk prediction model could detect 45 percent of suicide attempts or deaths with 90 percent specificity, about two to three years in advance.

Other presentations, including a series of lightning talks, shared new and emerging treatments, such as the use of ketamine to treat depression; the use of smartphones, including daily text surveys and mindfulness apps, in treating depression in adolescents; metabolic interventions for psychotic disorders; the use of machine learning to detect impairment from THC intoxication; and family-focused treatment, rather than individual therapy, for youth depression.

Advancing understanding

The frequency and severity of adverse mental health events for children, adolescents, and adults demonstrate the necessity of funding for mental health research — and the open sharing of these findings.

Niall Boyce, head of mental health field building at the Wellcome Trust — a global charitable foundation dedicated to using science to solve urgent health challenges — outlined the foundation’s funding philosophy of supporting research that is “collaborative, coherent, and focused” and centers on “What is most important to those most affected?” Wellcome research managers Anum Farid and Tayla McCloud stressed the importance of projects that involve people with lived experience of mental health challenges and “blue sky thinking” that takes risks and can advance understanding in innovative ways. Wellcome requires that all published research resulting from its funding be open and accessible in order to maximize their benefits.

Whether through therapeutic models, pharmaceutical treatments, or machine learning, symposium speakers agreed that transformative approaches to mental health call for collaboration and innovation.

“Understanding mental health requires us to understand the unbelievable diversity of humans,” Gabrieli said. “We have to use all the tools we have now to develop new treatments that will work for people for whom our conventional treatments don’t.”