At MIT Open Learning, we believe in the transformative power of education — globally accessible, freely shared, and deeply human. This belief fuels our commitment to sharing MIT’s knowledge with the world through the efforts across our vibrant teaching and learning ecosystem. It’s a mission made possible by the dedication of MIT faculty and staff, the generosity of donors, and the passion of learners around the world.
Throughout this past academic year, we continued to grow and evolve, and our collective efforts focused on:
Expanding access to high-quality educational experiences and resources and locating them on one platform — MIT Learn. We also are putting generative AI to work in the service of our learners by creating “AskTIM”, an AI-powered recommendation feature that helps learners quickly find courses and resources aligned with their personal and professional goals.
Innovating in teaching and learning through research and practice that explores the personal and social dimensions of education, honoring educators and designing tools that support meaningful learning.
Fostering global dialogue on the future of learning, especially in the age of generative AI, through summits, hackathons, and work that challenge us to think critically and ethically.
In each of these areas, we are inspired each day by the stories of people who actively engage with knowledge to creatively solve problems and help their communities. We are equally moved by the hundreds of thousands who choose to grow with MIT, bringing curiosity, ambition, and a commitment to lifelong learning.
Thank you for believing that open education is a vital and important effort for the good of humanity and the world. These milestones would have not been possible without your belief in our mission and your unwavering support. As we look ahead, we remain focused on driving innovation and educating one billion learners over the next ten years. I hope you’ll continue to learn with and from MIT and look forward to keeping you posted on our efforts.
Sincerely, Dimitris
Dimitris Bertsimas Vice Provost for Open Learning
MIT Learn offers "a whole new front door to the Institute"
MIT Learnis a new dynamic AI-enabled website, spearheaded by Open Learning, that opens the door to thousands of non-degree learning opportunities from MIT — making it easier for people to discover the courses and resources available on MIT’s various learning platforms. 98% of the content is free.
In addition to serving all learners on one platform, MIT Learn’s growing AI features (affectionately known as “AskTIM”) include a guidance system that advises learners on custom learning journeys, a dynamic syllabus chatbot that answers course-specific questions, a conversational teaching assistant that reinforces concepts from course materials, and a tutor that helps learners in select offerings.
Open Learning also recently launched a Universal AI pilot program. It’s the first offering in a new collection of curricula from Open Learning called Universal Learning, which is designed to meet a growing need of students and professionals and takes a unique and cross-disciplinary approach to problems. Sign up for more on our expanding educational opportunities.
Read more about MIT Learn, the AI-enabled platform that serves as a hub for MIT’s lifelong learning opportunities
Sara Feijo | MIT Open Learning
In 2001, MIT became the first higher education institution to provide educational resources for free to anyone in the world. Fast forward 24 years: The Institute has now launched a dynamic AI-enabled website for its non-degree learning opportunities, making it easier for learners around the world to discover the courses and resources available on MIT’s various learning platforms.
MIT Learn enables learners to access more than 12,700 educational resources — including introductory and advanced courses, courseware, videos, podcasts, and more — from departments across the Institute. MIT Learn is designed to seamlessly connect the existing Institute’s learning platforms in one place.
“With MIT Learn, we’re opening access to MIT’s digital learning opportunities for millions around the world,” says Dimitris Bertsimas, vice provost for open learning. “MIT Learn elevates learning with personalized recommendations powered by AI, guiding each learner toward deeper understanding. It is a stepping stone toward a broader vision of making these opportunities even more accessible to global learners through one unified learning platform.”
The goal for MIT Learn is twofold: to allow learners to find what they want to fulfill their curiosity, and to enable learners to develop a long-term relationship with MIT as a source of educational experiences.
“By fostering long-term connections between learners and MIT, we not only provide a pathway to continued learning, but also advance MIT’s mission to disseminate knowledge globally,” says Ferdi Alimadhi, chief technology officer for MIT Open Learning and the lead of the MIT Learn project. “With this initial launch of MIT Learn, we’re introducing AI-powered features that leverage emerging technologies to help learners discover the right content, engage with it more deeply, and stay supported as they shape their own educational journeys.”
With its sophisticated search, browse, and discovery capability, MIT Learn allows learners to explore topics without having to understand MIT’s organizational structure or know the names of departments and programs. An AI-powered recommendation feature called “Ask Tim” complements the site’s traditional search and browsing tools, helping learners quickly find courses and resources aligned with their personal and professional goals. Learners can also prompt “Ask Tim” for a summary of a course’s structure, topics, and expectations, leading to more-informed decisions before enrolling.
In select offerings, such as Molecular Biology: DNA Replication and Repair, Genetics: The Fundamentals, and Cell Biology: Transport and Signaling, learners can interact with an AI assistant by asking questions about a lecture, requesting flashcards of key concepts, and obtaining instant summaries. These select offerings also feature an AI tutor to support learners as they work through problem sets, guiding them toward the next step without giving away the answers. These features, Alimadhi says, are being introduced in a limited set of courses and modules to allow the MIT Open Learning team to gather insights and improve the learning experience before expanding more broadly.
“MIT Learn is a whole new front door to the Institute,” says Christopher Capozzola, senior associate dean for open learning, who worked with faculty across the Institute on the project. “Just as the Kendall Square renovations transformed the way that people interact with our physical campus, MIT Learn transforms how people engage with what we offer digitally.”
Learners who choose to create an account on MIT Learn receive personalized course recommendations and can create and curate lists of educational resources, follow their specific areas of interest, and receive notifications when new MIT content is available. They can also personalize their learning experience based on their specific interests and choose the format that is best suited to them.
"From anywhere and for anyone, MIT Learn makes lifelong learning more accessible and personalized, building on the Institute’s decades of global leadership in open learning,” says MIT Provost Anantha Chandrakasan.
MIT Learn was designed to account for a learner’s evolving needs throughout their learning journey. It highlights supplemental study materials for middle schoolers, high schoolers, and college students, upskilling opportunities for early-career professionals, reskilling programs for those considering a career shift, and resources for educators.
“MIT has an amazing collection of learning opportunities, covering a wide range of formats,” says Eric Grimson, chancellor for academic advancement, who oversaw the initial development of MIT Learn during his time as interim vice president for open learning. “The sheer size of that collection can be daunting, so creating a platform that brings all of those offerings together, in an easily searchable framework, greatly enhances our ability to serve learners.”
According to Peter Hirst, senior associate dean for executive education at MIT Sloan School of Management, one of the Institute's incredible strengths is its sheer volume and diversity of expertise, research, and learning opportunities. But it can be challenging to discover and follow all those opportunities — even for people who are immersed in the on-campus experience. MIT Learn, he says, is a solution to this problem.
“MIT Learn gathers all the knowledge and learning resources offered across all of MIT into a learner-friendly, curatable repository that enables anyone and everyone, whatever their interests or learning needs, to explore and engage in the wide range of learning resources and public certificate programs that MIT has to offer and that can help them achieve their goals,” Hirst says.
MIT Learn was spearheaded by MIT Open Learning, which aims to transform teaching and learning on and off the Institute’s campus. MIT Learn was developed with the direction of former provost Cynthia Barnhart, and in cooperation with MIT Sloan Executive Education and MIT Professional Education. During the design phase, OpenCourseWare Faculty Advisory Committee Chair Michael Short and MITx Faculty Advisory Committee Chair Caspar Hare contributed key insights, along with other numerous faculty involved with Open Learning’s product offerings, including OpenCourseWare, MITx, and MicroMasters programs. MIT Learn is also informed by the insights of the Ad Hoc Committee on MITx and MITx Online.
“For over 20 years, MIT staff and faculty have been creating a wealth of online resources, from lecture videos to practice problems, and from single online courses to entire credential-earning programs,” says Sara Fisher Ellison, a member of the Ad Hoc Committee on MITx and MITx Online and the faculty lead for the online MITx MicroMasters Program in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy. “Making these resources findable, searchable, and broadly available is a natural extension of MIT’s core educational mission. MIT Learn is a big, important step in that direction. We are excited for the world to see what we have to offer.”
Looking ahead, MIT Learn will also feature selected content from the MIT Press. As MIT Learn continues to grow, Open Learning is exploring collaborations with departments across the Institute with the goal of offering the fullest possible range of educational materials from MIT to learners around the world.
“MIT Learn is the latest step in a long tradition of the Institute providing innovative ways for learners to access knowledge,” Barnhart says. “This AI-enabled platform delivers on the Institute’s commitment to help people launch into learning journeys that can unlock life-changing opportunities.”
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Expanding access
Programs that support students, educators, and independent learners with transformational teaching and learning materials is another way we expand access to high-quality educational experiences and resources. Whether it is best practices for using generative AI in the classroom, or publishing the educational resources that facilitate self discovery or benefit communities, Open Learning continues to serve learners and provide access to free knowledge. These stories are examples of how we are expanding access to education.
Martina Solano Soto wants to solve the mysteries of the universe, and MIT Open Learning is part of her plan
The 17-year-old student from Spain uses MIT resources to deepen her understanding of math and physics.
Thanks to the classes you offer in AI, I could improve my knowledge. I worked as a C-Level manager until I retired in 2021. The day after my retirement I had a plan on my table to rebuild my knowledge in AI that has totally changed since the 80's when I studied it. I am grateful to these professors I don't know and probably will never know for building the knowledge I have today of AI.
Alessandro
Lifelong learner, Italy
An anomaly detection framework anyone can use
PhD student Sarah Alnegheimish wants to make machine learning systems accessible
Saeed Miganeh’s work at MIT is helping him answer important questions about designing effective programs for poverty mitigation and economic growth in African countries.
A series of short videos highlighting great moments from MIT — from cool demonstrations to interesting course snapshots to examples of applied learning.
HUGE. I can't stress that enough. First, it reinforced essential skills that I had learned on the job and wished to provide some structure to. I also learned new skills or refreshed some courses I had taken a very long time ago in high school or college (e.g. stat 101). It gave me confidence about my capacity to follow online courses independently, and also about my capacity to follow MIT level courses. I am now applying to a graduate degree at an Ivy League, and it is partly thanks to my journey on Edx and OCW. Thank you and your team.
At Open Learning, we are passionate about teaching and learning particularly because we see the real life advantages knowledge affords. We also feel a deep responsibility in ensuring and improving effective educational experiences because that’s how current and future problem solvers can be best positioned to tackle global challenges. These stories illustrate some of the pathways toward progress.
Day of Climate inspires young learners to take action
Featuring a diverse lineup of speakers, including Jaylen Brown of the Boston Celtics and an interactive projects showcase, the event empowered youth to tackle big challenges together.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Esther Duflo discusses how sharing research and knowledge through resources like MIT Open Learning can help effect change.
Two MIT films nominated for New England Emmy Awards
Films produced by MIT Video Productions and the Department of Mechanical Engineering highlight some of MIT’s global conversations about the environment and climate change.
These courses have helped me explore new fields, and helped me decide on my possible major for university. Previously, I was completely ignorant about biology but after learning with Prof. Eric Lander in introduction to biology on edX, I was fascinated with biology and decided to pursue further biology courses offered by MIT and other universities. I am currently attending an introduction to mechanics course offered by another university, but many of the concepts were not particularly well explained, and I was struggling to keep on. Then I found MIT's mechanics course on Open Learning Library, which explained the concept better, and helped me keep on with my university course.
Fostering global dialogue on the future of learning
Fostering global dialogue on the future of learning
Generative AI, technology, access, and design thinking are some of the forces shaping the future of learning. To be prepared for the ever changing needs of mastering knowledge, students, learners, and educators must enhance their skills, broaden their thinking, and strengthen their creativity for problem solving. For Open Learning, we want to ensure that our content is as accessible as possible so that people can meet these challenges and demands in their educational journey.
First AI + Education Summit is an international push for “AI fluency”
The three-day, hands-on conference hosted by the MIT RAISE Initiative welcomed youths and adults from nearly 30 countries.
Q&A: A STEAM framework that prepares learners for evolving careers and technologies
MIT pK-12 at Open Learning co-created a secondary school learning architecture that’s available for adoption and adaptation by educational practitioners worldwide.
Katherine Ouellette|MIT Open Learning
As educators are challenged to balance student learning and well-being with planning authentic and relevant course materials, MIT pK-12 at Open Learning developed a framework that can help. The student-centered STEAM learning architecture, initially co-created for Itz’at STEAM Academy in Belize, now serves as a model for schools worldwide.
Three core pillars guide MIT pK-12’s vision for teaching and learning: social-emotional and cultural learning, transdisciplinary academics, and community engagement. Claudia Urrea, principal investigator for this project and senior associate director of MIT pK-12, says this innovative framework supports learners’ growth as engaged and self-directed students. Joining these efforts on the pK-12 team are Joe Diaz, program coordinator, and Emily Glass, senior learning innovation designer.
Now that Itz’at has completed its first academic year, the MIT pK-12 team reflects on how the STEAM learning architecture works in practice and how it could be adapted to other schools.
Q: Why would a new school need a STEAM learning architecture? How is this framework used?
Glass: In the case of Itz’at STEAM Academy, the school aims to prepare its students for careers and jobs of the future, recognizing that learners will be navigating an evolving global economy with significant technological changes. Since the local and global landscape will continue to evolve over time, in order to stay innovative, the STEAM learning architecture serves as a reference document for the school to reflect, iterate, and improve its program. Learners will need to think critically, solve large problems, embrace creativity, and utilize digital technologies and tools to their benefit.
Q: How do you begin developing a school from scratch?
Urrea: To build a school that reflected local values and aspired towards global goals, our team knew we needed a deep understanding of the strengths and needs of Belize’s larger education ecosystem and culture. We collaborated with Belize's Ministry of Education, Culture, Science, and Technology, as well as the newly hired Itz’at staff.
Next, we conducted an extensive review of research, drawing from MIT pK-12’s own work and outside academic studies on competency-based education, constructionism, and other foundational pedagogies. We gathered best practices of innovative schools through interviews and global site visits.
MIT’s collective team experience included the creation of schools for the NuVuX network, constructionist pedagogical research and practice, and the development of STEAM-focused educational materials for both formal and informal learning environments.
Q: Why was co-creation important for this process?
Urrea: MIT pK-12 could not imagine doing this project without strong co-creation. Everyone involved has their own expertise and understanding of what works best for learners and educators, and collaborating ensures that all stakeholders have a voice in the school’s pedagogy. We co-designed an innovative framework that’s relevant to Belize.
However, there’s no one-size-fits-all pedagogy that will be successful in every context. This framework allows educators to adapt their approaches. The school and the ministry can sustain Itz’at’s experimental nature with continual reflection, iteration, and improvement.
Q: What was the reasoning behind the framework’s core pillars?
Glass: MIT pK-12 found that many successful schools had strong social-emotional support, specific approaches to academics, and reciprocal relationships with their surrounding communities.
We tailored each core pillar to Itz’at. To better support learners’ social-emotional well-being, Belizean cultural identity is an essential part of the learning needed to anchor this project locally. A transdisciplinary approach most clearly aligns with the school’s focus on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, encouraging learners to ask big questions facing the world today. And to engage learners in real-world learning experiences, the school coordinates internships with the local community.
Q: Which areas of learning science research were most significant to the STEAM architecture? How does this pedagogy differ from Itz’at educators’ previous experiences?
Urrea: Learning at the Itz'at STEAM Academy focuses on authentic learning experiences and concrete evidence of concept mastery. Educators say that this is different from other schools in Belize, where conventional grading is based on rote memorization in isolated academic subjects.
Together as a team, Itz’at educators shifted their teaching to follow the foundational principles from the STEAM learning architecture, both bringing in their own experiences and implementing new practices.
Glass: Itz’at’s competency-based approach promotes a more holistic educational experience. Instead of traditional subjects like science, history, math, and language arts, Itz’at classes cover sustainable environments, global humanities, qualitative reasoning, arts and fabrication, healthy living, and real-world learning. Combining disciplines in multiple ways allows learners to draw stronger connections between different subjects.
Diaz: When the curriculum is relevant to learners’ lives, learners can also more easily connect what happens inside and outside of the classroom. Itz’at educators embraced bringing in experts from the local community to enrich learning experiences.
Q: How does the curriculum support learners with career preparation?
Diaz: To ensure learners can transition smoothly from school to the workforce, Itz’at offers exposure to potential careers early in their journey. Internships with local businesses, community organizations, and government agencies provide learners with real-world experience in professional environments.
Students begin preparing for internships in their second year and attend seminars in their third year. By their fourth and final year, they are expected to begin internships and capstone projects that demonstrate academic rigor, innovative thinking, and mastery of concepts, topics, and skills of their choosing.
Q: What do you hope the impact of the STEAM architecture will be?
Glass: Our hope is that the STEAM learning architecture will serve as a resource for educators, school administrators, policymakers, and researchers beyond Belize. This framework can help educational practitioners respond to critical challenges, including preparation for life and careers, thinking beyond short-term outcomes, learners’ mental health and well-being, and more.
Read the complete stories of our amazing community
Martina Solano Soto wants to solve the mysteries of the universe, and MIT Open Learning is part of her plan
The 17-year-old student from Spain uses MIT resources to deepen her understanding of math and physics.
“I found MIT resources by chance, and it’s one of the biggest things that has happened to me,” says Martina Solano Soto, a high school student from Spain who is using free course materials from MIT Open Learning to pursue her passion for physics. Photo courtesy of Martina Solano Soto.
Martina Solano Soto is on a mission to pursue her passion for physics and, ultimately, to solve big problems. Since she was a kid, she has had a lot of questions: Why do animals exist? What are we doing here? Why don’t we know more about the Big Bang? And she has been determined to find answers.
“That’s why I found MIT OpenCourseWare,” says Solano, of Girona, Spain. “When I was 14, I started to browse and wanted to find information that was reliable, dynamic, and updated. I found MIT resources by chance, and it’s one of the biggest things that has happened to me.”
In addition to OpenCourseWare, which offers free, online, open educational resources from more than 2,500 courses that span the MIT undergraduate and graduate curriculum, Solano also took advantage of the MIT Open Learning Library. Part of MIT Open Learning, the library offers free courses and invites people to learn at their own pace while receiving immediate feedback through interactive content and exercises.
Solano, who is now 17, has studiedquantum physicsvia OpenCourseWare — also part of MIT Open Learning — and she has taken Open Learning Library courses onelectricity and magnetism,calculus,quantum computation, andkinematics. She even created her own syllabus, complete with homework, to ensure she stayed on track and kept her goals in mind. Those goals include studying math and physics as an undergraduate. She also hopes to study general relativity and quantum mechanics at the doctoral level. “I really want to unify them to find a theory of quantum gravity,” she says. “I want to spend all my life studying and learning.”
Solano was particularly motivated byBarton Zwiebach, professor of physics, whose coursesQuantum Physics IandQuantum Physics IIare available on MIT OpenCourseWare. She took advantage of all of the resources that were provided: video lectures, assignments, lecture notes, and exams.
“I was fascinated by the way he explained. I just understood everything, and it was amazing,” she says. “Then, I learned about his book, ‘A First Course in String Theory,’ and it was because of him that I learned about black holes and gravity. I’m extremely grateful.”
While Solano gives much credit to the variety and quality of Open Learning resources, she also stresses the importance of being organized. As a high school student, she has things other than string theory on her mind: her school, extracurriculars, friends, and family.
For anyone in a similar position, she recommends “figuring out what you’re most interested in and how you can take advantage of the flexibility of Open Learning resources. Is there a half-hour before bed to watch a video, or some time on the weekend to read lecture notes? If you figure out how to make it work for you, it is definitely worth the effort.”
“If you do that, you are going to grow academically and personally,” Solano says. “When you go to school, you will feel more confident.”
And Solano is not slowing down. She plans to continue using Open Learning resources, this time turning her attention to graduate-level courses, all in service of her curiosity and drive for knowledge.
“When I was younger, I read the book ‘The God Equation,’ by Michio Kaku, which explains quantum gravity theory. Something inside me awoke,” she recalls. “I really want to know what happens at the center of a black hole, and how we unify quantum mechanics, black holes, and general relativity. I decided that I want to invest my life in this.”
She is well on her way. Last summer, Solano applied for and received a scholarship to study particle physics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. This summer, she’s applying for opportunities to study the cosmos. All of this, she says, is only possible thanks to what she has learned with MIT Open Learning resources.
“The applications ask you to explain what you like about physics, and thanks to MIT, I’m able to express that,” Solano says. “I’m able to go for these scholarships and really fight for what I dream.”
MIT researchers explore how technologies like ChatGPT can be best harnessed to enhance learning and creativity.
Illustration: Nhung Le
By Steve Nadis
After its release in November 2022, ChatGPT became the fastest-growing application in history, attracting 100 million users within a few months.
People were understandably intrigued by this powerful new tool — the highest-profile exemplar of so-called generative AI — which can, within a few seconds and after a few prompts, create text, images, music, and computer programs.
Even before ChatGPT became part of the popular discourse, MIT was looking to the future of AI. Building on that experience, the Institute provided exploratory funding in the fall of 2023 for more than two dozen research proposals aimed at determining how this new technology might be utilized for societal good and identifying potential pitfalls to be avoided. Four MIT researchers — Hal Abelson PhD ’73, the Class of 1922 Professor of computer science and engineering; Cynthia Breazeal SM ’93, ScD ’00, MIT dean for digital learning and professor of media arts and sciences; Eric Klopfer, professor and director of the Scheller Teacher Education Program and The Education Arcade at MIT; and Justin Reich, associate professor of digital media in MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing and director of the Teaching Systems Lab — received a grant to explore the implications of generative AI on K–12 education.
Fear of the unknown
“A lot of the initial perspectives focused on worries about students using generative AI to cheat on papers,” says Klopfer, who leads the MITComparative Media Studies/Writing program. Although that concern must be addressed, he maintains, “we are trying to change that conversation. Schools are not walled gardens separate from the rest of the world. Since the rest of the world has access to these tools, students need to know how to use these tools effectively.”
“Banning technology doesn’t work well,” adds Reich. “It just encourages students to figure out ways of getting around those bans.” Nevertheless, there are ways of walling off technology, at least temporarily. Teachers, for instance, can prevent students from using calculators in class until they establish proficiency in arithmetic. Once they’ve done so, students can use calculators to free up time for more intellectually challenging math problems.
Writing assignments can teach students to not only write but also to think. “So we need to be careful about introducing technology that enables students to bypass the kind of thinking we want them to do,” Reich says. The challenge for teachers, he observes, is to figure out what things we should let ChatGPT do and what things we should prevent it from doing.
New technology, familiar challenges
This dilemma is by no means novel. Schools had to devise policies governing the use of calculators, indicating when their use is permissible and even desirable. With the internet widely accessible in US schools for the last 25 years, educators like Reich, who taught high school history from 2003 to 2007, worried about whether students were cutting and pasting material from online into their papers. Yet this technology also brought obvious advantages: students could quickly gather information from books, newspapers, and journals, providing more time for reading and processing information, rather than rummaging through library stacks or poring over microfilm.
The hope is that generative AI can — if properly applied — offer benefits to K–12 education that greatly outweigh its potential downside. In the road map the MIT researchers have prepared for schools, they have spelled out what a “brighter future” for AI in education could look like, detailing the key steps needed to achieve that vision.
“Kids learn by creating things,” says Klopfer, and generative AI can help them do that in myriad ways. He points toAptly, a software platform recently developed by Abelson along with an MIT software engineer and two undergraduates, “as representative of the kind of things we want to point children toward.” Aptly makes the chore of designing apps for a smartphone easy. “You can speak to your browser and say: ‘Make me a smartphone app with a few buttons, each corresponding to a different language,’” Abelson explains. “When I press a button, translate what I speak to that language.”
The range of apps you can make is essentially unlimited, Abelson says. “If a computer can make any kind of program you want, we then have to decide what to teach our kids in terms of computing. And once you make what you wanted, how would that benefit the world?”
Teen uses pharmacology learned through MIT OpenCourseWare to extract and study medicinal properties of plants
Inspired by traditional medicine, 17-year-old Tomás Orellana is on a mission to identify plants that can help treat students’ health issues.
“I dream of becoming a university academic to have an even greater impact on current affairs in my country and internationally,” says MIT OpenCourseWare learner Tomás Orellana. “Take advantage of MIT's free digital technologies and tools,” he encourages others. “Keep an open mind as to how the knowledge can be applied.”
Credits: Photo courtesy of Tomás Orellana.
Sara Feijo | MIT Open Learning
Tomás Orellana, a 17-year-old high school student in Chile, had a vision: to create a kit of medicinal plants for Chilean school infirmaries. But first, he needed to understand the basic principles of pharmacology. That’s when Orellana turned to the internet and stumbled upon a gold mine of free educational resources and courses on the MIT OpenCourseWare website.
Right away, Orellana completed class HST.151 (Principles of Pharmacology), learning about the mechanisms of drug action, dose-response relations, pharmacokinetics, drug delivery systems, and more. He then shared this newly acquired knowledge with 16 members of his school science group so that together they could make Orellana’s vision a reality.
“I used the course to guide my classmates in the development of a phyto-medicinal school project, demonstrating in practice the innovation that the OpenCourseWare platform offers,” Orellana says in Spanish. “Thanks to the pharmacology course, I can collect and synthesize the information we need to learn to prepare the medicines for our project.”
OpenCourseWare, part of MIT Open Learning, offers free educational resources on its website from more than 2,500 courses that span the MIT curriculum, from introductory to advanced classes. A global model for open sharing in higher education, OpenCourseWare has an open license that allows the remix and reuse of its educational resources, which include video lectures, syllabi, lecture notes, problem sets, assignments, audiovisual content, and insights.
After completing the Principles of Pharmacology course, Orellana and members of his science group began extracting medicinal properties from plants, such as cedron, and studying them in an effort to determine which plants are best to grow in a school environment. Their goal, Orellana says, is to help solve students’ health problems during the school day, including menstrual, mental, intestinal, and respiratory issues.
“There is a tradition regarding the use of medicinal plants, but there is no scientific evidence that says that these properties really exist,” the 11th-grader explains. “What we want to do is know which plants are the best to grow in a school environment.”
Orellana’s science group discussed their scientific project on “Que Sucede,” a Chilean television show, and their interview will air soon. The group plans to continue working on their medicinal project during this academic year.
Next up on Orellana’s learning journey is the mysteries of the human brain. He plans to complete class 9.01 (Introduction to Neuroscience) through OpenCourseWare. His ultimate goal? To pursue a career in health sciences and become a professor so that he may continue to share knowledge — widely.
“I dream of becoming a university academic to have an even greater impact on current affairs in my country and internationally,” Orellana says. “All that will happen if I try hard enough.”
Orellana encourages learners to explore MIT Open Learning's free educational resources, including OpenCourseWare.
“Take advantage of MIT's free digital technologies and tools,” he says. “Keep an open mind as to how the knowledge can be applied.”
PhD student Sarah Alnegheimish wants to make machine learning systems accessible.
“Before I came to MIT, I used to think that the crucial part of research was to develop the machine-learning model itself or improve on its current state. With time, I realized that the only way you can make your research accessible and adaptable for others is to develop systems that make them accessible,” says PhD student Sarah Alnegheimish. “During my graduate studies, I’ve taken the approach of developing my models and systems in tandem.” Photo: Gretchen Ertl
Sarah Alnegheimish’s research interests reside at the intersection of machine learning and systems engineering. Her objective: to make machine learning systems more accessible, transparent, and trustworthy.
Alnegheimish is a PhD student in Principal Research Scientist Kalyan Veeramachaneni’s Data-to-AI group in MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS). Here, she commits most of her energy to developing Orion, an open-source, user-friendly machine learning framework and time series library that is capable of detecting anomalies without supervision in large-scale industrial and operational settings.
Early influence
The daughter of a university professor and a teacher educator, she learned from an early age that knowledge was meant to be shared freely. “I think growing up in a home where education was highly valued is part of why I want to make machine learning tools accessible.” Alnegheimish’s own personal experience with open-source resources only increased her motivation. “I learned to view accessibility as the key to adoption. To strive for impact, new technology needs to be accessed and assessed by those who need it. That’s the whole purpose of doing open-source development.”
Alnegheimish earned her bachelor’s degree at King Saud University (KSU). “I was in the first cohort of computer science majors. Before this program was created, the only other available major in computing was IT [information technology].” Being a part of the first cohort was exciting, but it brought its own unique challenges. “All of the faculty were teaching new material. Succeeding required an independent learning experience. That’s when I first time came across MIT OpenCourseWare: as a resource to teach myself.”
Shortly after graduating, Alnegheimish became a researcher at the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Saudi Arabia’s national lab. Through the Center for Complex Engineering Systems (CCES) at KACST and MIT, she began conducting research with Veeramachaneni. When she applied to MIT for graduate school, his research group was her top choice.
Creating Orion
Alnegheimish’s master thesis focused on time series anomaly detection — the identification of unexpected behaviors or patterns in data, which can provide users crucial information. For example, unusual patterns in network traffic data can be a sign of cybersecurity threats, abnormal sensor readings in heavy machinery can predict potential future failures, and monitoring patient vital signs can help reduce health complications. It was through her master’s research that Alnegheimish first began designing Orion.
Orion uses statistical and machine learning-based models that are continuously logged and maintained. Users do not need to be machine learning experts to utilize the code. They can analyze signals, compare anomaly detection methods, and investigate anomalies in an end-to-end program. The framework, code, and datasets are all open-sourced.
“With open source, accessibility and transparency are directly achieved. You have unrestricted access to the code, where you can investigate how the model works through understanding the code. We have increased transparency with Orion: We label every step in the model and present it to the user.” Alnegheimish says that this transparency helps enable users to begin trusting the model before they ultimately see for themselves how reliable it is.
“We’re trying to take all these machine learning algorithms and put them in one place so anyone can use our models off-the-shelf,” she says. “It’s not just for the sponsors that we work with at MIT. It’s being used by a lot of public users. They come to the library, install it, and run it on their data. It’s proving itself to be a great source for people to find some of the latest methods for anomaly detection.”
Repurposing models for anomaly detection
In her PhD, Alnegheimish is further exploring innovative ways to do anomaly detection using Orion. “When I first started my research, all machine-learning models needed to be trained from scratch on your data. Now we’re in a time where we can use pre-trained models,” she says. Working with pre-trained models saves time and computational costs. The challenge, though, is that time series anomaly detection is a brand-new task for them. “In their original sense, these models have been trained to forecast, but not to find anomalies,” Alnegheimish says. “We’re pushing their boundaries through prompt-engineering, without any additional training.”
Because these models already capture the patterns of time-series data, Alnegheimish believes they already have everything they need to enable them to detect anomalies. So far, her current results support this theory. They don’t surpass the success rate of models that are independently trained on specific data, but she believes they will one day.
Accessible design
Alnegheimish talks at length about the efforts she’s gone through to make Orion more accessible. “Before I came to MIT, I used to think that the crucial part of research was to develop the machine learning model itself or improve on its current state. With time, I realized that the only way you can make your research accessible and adaptable for others is to develop systems that make them accessible. During my graduate studies, I’ve taken the approach of developing my models and systems in tandem.”
The key element to her system development was finding the right abstractions to work with her models. These abstractions provide universal representation for all models with simplified components. “Any model will have a sequence of steps to go from raw input to desired output. We’ve standardized the input and output, which allows the middle to be flexible and fluid. So far, all the models we’ve run have been able to retrofit into our abstractions.” The abstractions she uses have been stable and reliable for the last six years.
The value of simultaneously building systems and models can be seen in Alnegheimish’s work as a mentor. She had the opportunity to work with two master’s students earning their engineering degrees. “All I showed them was the system itself and the documentation of how to use it. Both students were able to develop their own models with the abstractions we’re conforming to. It reaffirmed that we’re taking the right path.”
Alnegheimish also investigated whether a large language model (LLM) could be used as a mediator between users and a system. The LLM agent she has implemented is able to connect to Orion without users needing to know the small details of how Orion works. “Think of ChatGPT. You have no idea what the model is behind it, but it’s very accessible to everyone.” For her software, users only know two commands: Fit and Detect. Fit allows users to train their model, while Detect enables them to detect anomalies.
“The ultimate goal of what I’ve tried to do is make AI more accessible to everyone,” she says. So far, Orion has reached over 120,000 downloads, and over a thousand users have marked the repository as one of their favorites on Github. “Traditionally, you used to measure the impact of research through citations and paper publications. Now you get real-time adoption through open source.”
Part of MIT Open Learning, MIT OpenCourseWare offers free, online, open educational resources from more than 2,500 courses that span the MIT undergraduate and graduate curriculum.
Closing knowledge gaps with MIT Open Learning resources
In a new conversation series, entrepreneur June Odongo and MIT’s Christopher Capozzola discuss how open educational resources support professionals.
Lauren Thacker | MIT Open Learning
“It’s no longer about credentials,” says June Odongo, the founder and CEO of Senga Technologies. In talking about building her Kenya-based logistics software and services company, she says she’s finding that “folks who are self-directed and have a deep interest…they have passion, and they opt in. That’s when something like Open Learning becomes very powerful.”
Odongo’s comments came in a livestreamed conversation with Christopher Capozzola, senior associate dean for Open Learning. The talk, “How opening learning can close knowledge gaps,” covered resources for learning, entrepreneurship, and embedding education in daily life and is the first event in a new MIT Open Learning series, An Open Conversation. The series highlights people who have used Open Learning courses and materials to improve their own lives, empower members of their communities, and work toward change.
Odongo founded Senga Technologies after a career that saw her working in engineering and business leadership roles at companies including Hewlett Packard, Dell-EMC, and Cisco Meraki, and earning degrees from University of Massachusetts at Lowell and Harvard Business School. In her days as an undergraduate studying computer science, she realized that many of her professors were MIT graduates. Wondering how MIT students were learning about the same concepts that she was, she turned to Open Learning to supplement her coursework. And she has turned to it many times since, including to prepare Senga employees to take on their challenging work.
Closing gaps and continuous knowledge
Odongo shared that MIT Open Learning entered Senga’s story in an unintentional but powerful way. Because Senga is a startup with limited resources, Odongo found it difficult to compete with major companies to attract senior developers. Instead, she looked for recent graduates in computer science and other related fields who showed potential and an eagerness to tackle complex problems. Using MIT OpenCourseWare resources within Open Learning, Odongo created a 6-month curriculum to train employees and ensure their skills are comprehensive and up to date. In addition to an electrical engineer who used these courses to delve into software construction, database systems, and machine learning, among other topics, Senga has hired someone who did not complete college but had completed a coding bootcamp. That employee used OpenCourseWare courses to get himself up to speed.
“That’s exactly the kind of story that makes us excited at Open Learning and motivates the faculty at MIT who share these materials,” Capozzola says.
In addition to taking OpenCourseWare courses and completing assignments, Odongo says that a final presentation is essential to processing information and demonstrating understanding. Being able to present on a topic and answer questions is an important way to measure progress, but for Senga employees, the truest demonstration is how they construct, articulate, and generate solutions.
“Our ultimate intention is that the way of thinking about a problem is reshaped, so the proof of learning is in the pudding, right?” Odongo says. “What is your output once you start solving problems in the team?”
Odongo makes clear that she counts herself among the Senga employees who have more to learn.
“I have absolutely no choice but to continue learning… We’re trying to apply technologies that have advanced significantly in the two decades since I’ve been out of school,” she says. ‘I actually go through my old curriculum and introduce new concepts on top of that. Learning has to be embedded in what we are trying to do.”
Entrepreneurship and the power of going for it
When asked about what motivates her and what advice she might give to students, Odongo reflects on her desire to solve problems and minimize regret. Senga started not because she had a passion for logistics, but because she hated moving and felt like there had to be a better, less frustrating way. She also founded a nonprofit that provides schools and community centers with computers and educational materials, not because she had a fully developed plan, but because she heard about computers that could be recycled. In that moment, she remembered her late father, an engineer with a passion for computers and education, and thought she could do something.
“Sometimes, ideas for our problems latch on to me so viscerally that I feel I have no choice but to pursue it,” she says.” My advice is to go for it, even if you don’t know where it’s going to end up.”
After hearing about Odongo’s open learning and entrepreneurship journey, participants had the opportunity to ask questions. Questions covered topics including how engineers can practice communications and leadership skills, how to stay informed as technology grows, and how to stick to learning goals.
Odongo’s response to the question about sticking to goals sums up her answers overall: “Learning is a muscle.” Whether it is listening to podcasts about founders, reading an article on AI that happens to be on her LinkedIn feed, or picking up a book on behavioral economics, Odongo is always open to new information and seeing where it may take her.
MIT Open Learning aims to transform teaching and learning on campus and around the world by opening the innovations of MIT to learners and educators across all levels of education. Through programs such as OpenCourseWare, MITx courses, MITx MicroMasters Programs, and xPRO, Open Learning provides lifelong learning opportunities to advance skills, capabilities, careers, and organizations.
Saeed Miganeh’s work at MIT is helping him answer important questions about designing effective programs for poverty mitigation and economic growth in African countries.
Saeed Miganeh wants to dig deeper into understanding and answering developing African countries’ political economy questions. “Africa is the new battleground for fighting global poverty in the 21st century,” he says. Photo: Hanley Valentin
Benjamin Daniel | MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
“Enrolling at MIT fed my interest in investigating the political economy questions surrounding the development of African countries,” he says. “It boils down to promoting pro-poor, evidence-based policymaking in the developing world.”
Miganeh earned a bachelor of business administration from the University of Hargeisa and completed coursework in Open University Malaysia’s master of business administration program. Before enrolling at MIT full time, he spent 14 years as an accountant with the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration. His work with the IOM fed his curiosity about intent and impact, particularly how political agendas can affect policy adoption, how safeguarding human rights strengthens peace and prevents conflict, how climate change adaptation policies affect the poor, and how promoting intra-African trade spurs economic growth in the continent.
“My journey to DEDP began when I earned a certificate in Monitoring and Evaluation offered by the International Training Center of the International Labour Organization,” he recalls. “Our course coach recommended taking MITx courses, which led me to the MicroMasters program.”
Saeed grew up and completed his early education in the self-declared Republic of Somaliland during the reconstruction period after a decade-long civil war with Somalia. He was inspired by his country’s development of a functioning democracy and economy after conflict. Miganeh’s work is all the more impressive for someone who has lived almost exclusively there — with the exception of four years as a child spent in Ethiopia due to the civil war in Somalia — and whose studies have taken place entirely in the republic.
“Africa is the new battleground for fighting global poverty in the 21st century,” he says.
Practices and progress toward measurable improvement
Before pursuing graduate study at MIT, Miganeh worked in youth development programs with the Somaliland National Youth Organization. “I was the coordinator for one of their youth networks that worked on health,” he says. “After completing my undergraduate study, I assumed the position of finance officer for the organization.”
Later during his tenure with IOM, Miganeh learned that, while the organization has a central evaluation function that evaluates projects and programs, Somaliland’s governmental institutions lacked the capacity to effectively evaluate public policies and programs effectively. His work with the IOM helped him discover the practice areas where he might benefit from partnering with others possessing expertise he’d need to make a difference. “During my work with IOM, I was involved in development projects’ administrative and accounting functions,” he remembers. “I was interested in knowing how projects were impacting beneficiaries’ lives.
Miganeh wants to dig deeper into understanding and answering developing African countries’ political economy questions, noting that “development projects can consume lots of resources from design through implementation.” Ensuring these programs’ effectiveness is crucial to maximizing their impact and societal benefit. “Every country needs to have the necessary human capital to undertake evidence-based policy design to avoid wasting resources,” he says.
He returned to Somaliland to complete a capstone project that will allow him to put his newly acquired skills and knowledge to work. The project is an important part of his master’s program. “I’m [working] with the Somaliland Ministry of Education & Science, assisting in institutionalizing evidence-based policymaking in the education sector,” he says.
A unique vision to drive effective change
Miganeh is already planning to use the skills he’s acquiring at MIT to facilitate change at home. “I must discover and produce policy insights using my research and, with the guidance of the top academics and professionals at MIT and other institutions, translate them into effective policies that can make a demonstrable impact,” he says.
Miganeh reports that MITx’s MicroMasters and DEDP master’s programs help students develop the unique blend of skills — including the ability to leverage data-driven insights to design, implement, and evaluate public policies that improve societal outcomes — that can help them become effective agents of social change.
“My early enthusiasm for mathematics in high school and my later work in development organizations gave me the right combination to excel in the rigorous developmental economics coursework at MIT,” he says. “Once I’ve completed the program, I will establish a consultancy to advise government agencies, nonprofits, and the private sector’s corporate social responsibility departments on designing, implementing, and evaluating policies and programs.”
Miganeh lauded the faculty and students he encountered while continuing his studies. “I have developed professionally and personally,” he reports. He saved his highest praise for the Institute, however.
“Pursuing this master’s degree at MIT, where modern economics education has been reinvented and is home to faculty including Nobel laureates and other distinguished professors and scholars, was an enriching lifetime experience, personally and professionally,” he says.
“Looking back on discussions of how to tackle the world’s development challenges is a memory that will stay with me for the rest of my life.”
Day of Climate inspires young learners to take action
Featuring a diverse lineup of speakers, including Jaylen Brown of the Boston Celtics and an interactive projects showcase, the event empowered youth to tackle big challenges together.
Jaylen Brown speaks on the importance of climate and climate action for Day of Climate at the MIT Museum. Photo: Chris McIntosh
“Close your eyes and imagine we are on the same team. Same arena. Same jersey. And the game is on the line,” Jaylen Brown, the 2024 NBA Finals MVP for the Boston Celtics, said to a packed room of about 200 people at the recent Day of Climate event at the MIT Museum.
“Now think about this: We aren’t playing for ourselves; we are playing for the next generation,” Brown added, encouraging attendees to take climate action.
The inaugural Day of Climate event brought together local learners, educators, community leaders, and the MIT community. Featuring project showcases, panels, and a speaker series, the event sparked hands-on learning and inspired climate action across all ages.
The event marked the celebration of the first year of a larger initiative by the same name. Led by the pK-12 team at MIT Open Learning, Day of Climate has brought together learners and educators by offering free, hands-on curriculum lessons and activities designed to introduce learners to climate change, teach how it shapes their lives, and consider its effects on humanity.
Cynthia Breazeal, dean of digital learning at MIT Open Learning, notes the breadth of engagement across MIT that made the event, and the larger initiative, possible with contributions from more than 10 different MIT departments, labs, centers, and initiatives.
“MIT is passionate about K-12 education,” she says. “It was truly inspiring to witness how our entire community came together to demonstrate the power of collaboration and advocacy in driving meaningful change.”
From education to action
Day of Climate inspires young learners to take action Video: MIT Open Learning
The event kicked off with a showcase, where the Day of Climate grantees and learners invited attendees to learn about their projects and meaningfully engage with lessons and activities. Aranya Karighattam, a local high school senior, adapted the curriculum Urban Heat Islands — developed by Lelia Hampton, a PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, and Chris Rabe, program director at the MIT Environmental Solution Initiative — sharing how this phenomenon affects the Boston metropolitan area.
Karighattam discussed what could be done to shield local communities from urban heat islands. They suggested doubling the tree cover in areas with the lowest quartile tree coverage as one mitigating strategy, but noted that even small steps, like building a garden and raising awareness for this issue, can help.
Day of Climate echoed a consistent call to action, urging attendees to meaningfully engage in both education and action. Brown, who is an MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow, spoke about how education and collective action will pave the way to tackle big societal challenges. “We need to invest in sustainability communities,” he said. “We need to invest in clean technology, and we need to invest in education that fosters environmental stewardship.”
Part of MIT’s broader sustainability efforts, including The Climate Project, the event reflected a commitment to building a resilient and sustainable future for all. Influenced by the Climate Action Through Education (CATE), Day of Climate panelist Sophie Shen shared how climate education inspired her civic life. “Learning about climate change has inspired me to take action on a wider systemic level,” she said.
Shen, a senior at Arlington High School and local elected official, emphasized how engagement and action looks different for everyone. “There are so many ways to get involved,” she said. “That could be starting a community garden — those can be great community hubs and learning spaces — or it could include advocating to your local or state governments.”
Becoming a catalyst for change
Learners engage with the Day of Climate curriculum, Climate Change Happens Below Water, at the grantee showcase. Photo: Chris McIntosh
The larger Day of Climate initiative encourages young people to understand the interdisciplinary nature of climate change and consider how the changing climate impacts many aspects of life. With curriculum available for learners from ages 4 to 18, these free activities range from Climate Change Charades — where learners act out words like “deforestation” and “recycling” — to Climate Change Happens Below Water, where learners use sensors to analyze water quality data like pH and solubility.
Many of the speakers at the event shared personal anecdotes from their childhood about how climate education, both in and out of the classroom, has changed the trajectory of their lives. Addaline Jorroff, deputy climate chief and director of mitigation and community resilience in the Office of Climate Resilience and Innovation for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, explained how resources from MIT were instrumental in her education as a middle and high schooler, while Jaylen Brown told how his grandmother helped him see the importance of taking care of the planet, through recycling and picking up trash together, when he was young.
Claudia Urrea, director of the pK-12 team at Open Learning and director of Day of Climate, emphasizes how providing opportunities at schools — through new curriculum, classroom resources and mentorship — are crucial, but providing other educational opportunities also matter: in particular, opportunities that support learners in becoming strong leaders.
“I strongly believe that this event not only inspired young learners to take meaningful action, both large and small, towards a better future, but also motivated all the stakeholders to continue to create opportunities for these young learners to emerge as future leaders,” Urrea says.
The team plans to hold the Day of Climate event annually, bringing together young people, educators, and the MIT community. Urrea hopes the event will act as a catalyst for change — for everyone.
“We hope Day of Climate serves as the opportunity for everyone to recognize the interconnectedness of our actions,” Urrea says. “Understanding this larger system is crucial for addressing current and future challenges, ultimately making the world a better place for all.”
The Day of Climate event was hosted by the Day of Climate team in collaboration with MIT Climate Action Through Education (CATE) and Earth Day Boston.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Esther Duflo discusses how sharing research and knowledge through resources like MIT Open Learning can help effect change.
Christopher Capozzola (left) and Esther Duflo (right) speaking during MIT Open Learning’s Open Conversation talk, “Alleviating poverty and sharing knowledge globally.” Courtesy of MIT Open Learning.
Duyen Nguyen | MIT Open Learning
“Never, never, never assume that the person in front of you is not ultra sharp and ultra smart and cannot understand what you’re telling them,” says Esther Duflo, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT. Whether teaching MIT students, or an auditorium of 2,000 people who have never studied economics, or online learners from different parts of the world, Duflo says “anything can be approached.”
Duflo shared how this philosophy has informed both her teaching and research in a recent conversation with Christopher Capozzola, senior associate dean for Open Learning. The talk, “Alleviating poverty and sharing knowledge globally,” is the second in MIT Open Learning’s Open Conversation series, which highlights how access to knowledge can change lives, communities, and the world. Duflo is also the co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a research center with affiliates from universities around the world. In 2019, she received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, commonly known as the Nobel Prize in Economics, for her contributions to an experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.
The metric of success: Changing the world
Duflo’s engagement with Open Learning programs began with MIT OpenCourseWare, which publishes materials from over 2,500 MIT courses. “This is great — this is more people than I will ever teach in person,” she remembers thinking when recordings of her class lectures were first shared on OpenCourseWare.
With the launch of MITx, an initiative at Open Learning that offers free massive open online courses (MOOCs) drawn from the MIT classroom, Duflo saw the opportunity to create a more engaging online learning experience. “I felt I can basically now almost teach the same way,” she says, adding that, while the MITx courses share the same core as the on-campus classes, “the spokes are different in different parts of the world.” Learners can enroll in courses for free or, for a low fee, earn a certificate for each completed course.
Through MITx, learners beyond campus can apply the knowledge they gain to make an impact within their particular contexts. And more than 360,000 people have — in part motivating Duflo to create the MITx MicroMasters program in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy (DEDP). Designed to equip learners with both practical skills and theoretical knowledge to tackle U.S. and global challenges like poverty, the program’s core curriculum includes graduate-level courses in essential topics such as microeconomics, probability and statistics, data analysis, and designing and running randomized evaluations to assess the effectiveness of social programs, key to Duflo’s Nobel Prize-winning approach.
Individuals who receive the DEDP MicroMasters credential by earning five course certificates become eligible to apply to MIT’s DEDP master’s program, as well as to several other pathway universities worldwide. This innovative admissions model prioritizes applicants’ performance in the online courses over traditional credentials, such as prior degrees or standardized test scores.
“If we can select people to come to MIT based on what we want them to do once they are at MIT, we could break the mold of admissions,” Duflo says, describing the DEDP MicroMasters’ launch as both a learning experience and a gamble. “We had to shepherd it through the process, get it approved in the faculty committee, and every step, people were like, ‘Are you sure this can work?’”
Today, DEDP MicroMasters and master’s alumni are pursuing careers in government, non-profits, and multilateral organizations around the world, or doctoral degrees at leading institutions including MIT, Harvard University, and the Paris School of Economics. With countless alumni equipped to positively impact the world, the gamble has paid off.
“When they come, we tell them they have to change the world — that’s the metric of success,” Duflo says. “And now they really are busy doing that.”
More powerful together
Sharing knowledge is also a critical part of Duflo’s work as a researcher. “Almost the minute I started teaching at MIT, I was convinced that what we needed to do is to not just run trials, but set up an infrastructure to make it easier for others to do it,” she says. The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), which Duflo co-founded in 2003 with Abhijit Banerjee, the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at MIT and a co-recipient of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics, has grown into a network of more than 1,000 researchers around the world working to reduce poverty by rigorously evaluating social programs. Over 850 million people have been reached by programs and policies that have been informed by J-PAL affiliated researchers’ evaluations.
“Together, the research is so much more powerful,” says Duflo.
The Open Conversation talk “Alleviating poverty and sharing knowledge globally” was live-streamed with more than 6,000 people tuning in. In response to a question from several audience members about how open education can effect change, Duflo emphasized the importance of sharing learning and teaching resources in multiplying the impact of any program. “Many more people need to be able to do this work, and many more policymakers need to understand it and understand why they need to do it,” she says. “And for that, we need many more people trained.”
Duflo urges learners to be similarly persistent in their pursuit of knowledge, explaining that when “you manage to go above that step [of overcoming a hurdle] suddenly the perspective really opens.”
Courses include: Microeconomics; Designing and Running Randomized Evaluations, Data Analysis for Social Scientists; and electives from: The Challenges of Global Poverty (Intro), Foundations of Development Policy: Advanced Development Economics (Advanced), Political Economy and Economic Development (Advanced), Good Economics for Hard Times (Intro), Microeconomic Theory and Public Policy (Advanced)
MIT Open Learning’s Open Conversation series launched in 2024 with a conversation focused on how open educational resources support professionals by closing knowledge gaps.
Enhancing the future of teaching and learning at MIT
The MIT Festival of Learning sparked discussions on better integrating a sense of purpose and social responsibility into hands-on education.
From left to right, MIT panelists Susan Silbey, Amitava “Babi” Mitra, Adam Martin, and Chris Capozzola share their perspectives of the strengths and challenges of an MIT education. Photo: Chris McIntosh
As technology rapidly propels society forward, MIT is rethinking how it prepares students to face the world and its greatest challenges. Generations of educators have shared knowledge at MIT by connecting lessons to practical applications, but what does the Institute’s motto “mens et manus” (“mind and hand”), referring to hands-on learning, look like in the future?
This was the guiding question of the annual Festival of Learning, co-hosted by MIT Open Learning and the Office of the Vice Chancellor. MIT faculty, instructors, students, and staff engaged in meaningful discussions about teaching and learning as the Institute critically revisits its undergraduate academic program.
“Because the world is changing, we owe it to our students to reflect these realities in our academic experiences,” said Daniel E. Hastings, Cecil and Ida Green Education Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and then-interim vice chancellor. “It’s in our DNA to try new things at MIT.”
2025 Festival of Learning: Highlights
Fostering a greater sense of purpose
MIT emphasizes hands-on learning much like many engineering schools. What deeply concerned panelists like Susan Silbey, the Leon and Anne Goldberg Professor of Humanities, Sociology, and Anthropology, is that students are not engaging in enough intellectual thinking via significant reading, textual interpretation, or involvement with uncertain questions.
Christopher Capozzola, senior associate dean for open learning, echoed this, saying, “We have designed a world in which [students] feel enormous pressure to maximize their career outcomes at the end” of their undergraduate education.
Students move in systems of explicit incentives, he said, such as grades and the General Institute Requirements, but also respond to unwritten incentives, like extracurriculars, internships, and prestige. “That’s our fault, not theirs,” Capozzola said, and identified this as an opportunity to improve the MIT curriculum.
How can educators encourage students to connect more with course material, instead of treating it as a means to an end? Adam Martin, professor of biology, always asks his students to challenge the status quo by incorporating test questions with data arguing against the models from the textbook.
“I want them to think,” Martin said. “I want them to challenge what we think is the frontier of the field.”
Considering context
One of the most significant topics of discussion was the importance of context in education. For example, class 7.102 (Introduction to Molecular Biology Techniques) uses story-based problem-solving to show students how the curriculum fits into real-world contexts.
The fictional premise driving 7.102 is that a child fell into the Charles River and caught an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection. To save the child, students must characterize the bacteria and identify phages that could kill it.
“It really shows the students not only basic techniques, but what it’s like to be in a team and in a discovery situation,” said Martin.
This hands-on approach — collecting water, isolating the phages within, and comparing to more reliable sources — unlocks students’ imaginations, Martin said. In an environment intentionally designed to give students room to fail, the narrative incentivizes students to persist with repeated experimentation.
But Silbey, who is also a professor of behavioral and policy sciences at MIT Sloan School of Management, has noticed the reluctance of students to engage with nontechnical contexts. Students, she concluded, “have minimal understanding of how the action of any individual becomes part of something larger, durable, consequential through invisible but powerful mechanisms of aggregation.”
Educators agreed that contextual understanding was equally important to a STEM curriculum as technical instruction. “Teaching and thinking at that interface between technology and society is really crucial for making technologists feel responsible for the things that they create and the things that they use,” added Capozzola.
Amitava Mitra, founding executive director of MIT New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET), highlighted an example where students developed an effective technical solution to decarbonize homes in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Or so they thought.
“Once we saw what was on the ground and understood the context — the social model, the social processes — we realized we had no clue,” the students told Mitra.
One way MIT is trying to bridge these gaps is through the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing program. This curriculum integrates ethical considerations alongside computing courses to help students envision the social and moral consequences of their actions.
In one technical machinery lecture, Silbey’s students had trouble envisioning the negative impacts of autonomous vehicles. But after she shared the history of the regulation of dangerous products, she said many students became more open to examining potential ripple effects.
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MIT instructors and students discuss how they have collaborated to improve their subject via MIT’s Canvas Innovation Fund. Pictured from left to right are panelists Paola Rebusco, Cory Romanov, Maria Khotimsky, McKenzie Dinesen, and Sean Robinson. Photo: Chris McIntosh
Creating interdisciplinary opportunities
The panelists viewed interdisciplinary education as critical preparation for the complexities of the real world.
“Whether it’s tackling climate change, creating sustainable infrastructure, creating cutting-edge technologies in life sciences or robotics, we need our engineers, social scientists, and scientists to work in teams cutting across disciplines to create solutions today,” said Mitra.
To expand opportunities for undergraduates to collaborate across academic departments and other campus units, NEET was launched in 2017. NEET is a project-based experiential learning curriculum that requires technical and social expertise. One student group, for example, is designing, building, and installing a solar-powered charging station at MIT Open Space. To introduce a project like this into MIT’s infrastructure, students must coordinate with a variety of Institute offices — such as Campus Planning, Engineering & Energy Management, and Insurance — and city groups, like the Cambridge Fire Department.
“Students put in enormous amounts of time and effort for things that shape them, that speak to their passion and this deep engagement,” Capozzola said. “This is a special area where I think MIT parti
The MIT community gathered to listen and engage in the conversation about what “mens et manus,” or “mind and hand,” looks like in the future at MIT. Photo: Chris McIntosh
Moving forward together
In a panel featuring both MIT instructors and students, educators recognized that designing an effective curriculum requires balancing content across subjects or core topics while organizing materials on Canvas — MIT’s learning management system — in a way that’s intuitive for students. Instructors collaborated directly with students and staff via MIT’s Canvas Innovation Fund to make these improvements.
“There are things that the novice students see in what I’m teaching that I don’t see,” said Sean Robinson, lecturer in physics and associate director of the Helena Foundation Junior Laboratory. “Our class is aimed at taking people who think of themselves as physics students and getting them to think of themselves as physicists. I want junior colleagues.”
The biggest takeaway from student panelists was the importance of minimizing logistical struggles by structuring Canvas to guide students toward learning objectives. Cory Romanov ’24, technical instructor of physics, and McKenzie Dinesen, a senior in aerospace engineering and Russian and Eurasian studies, emphasized that explaining learning goals and organizing course content with clear deadlines were simple improvements that went a long way to enhance the student experience.
Emphasizing the benefit of feedback like this, Capozzola said, “It’s important to give people at MIT — students, staff, and others who are often closed out of conversations — a more democratic voice so that we can be a model for the university that we want to be in 25 years.”
As MIT continues to enhance its educational approach, the insights from the Festival of Learning highlight a crucial evolution in how students engage with knowledge. From rethinking course structures to integrating interdisciplinary and experiential learning, the panelists underscored the need for a curriculum that balances technical expertise with a deep understanding of social and ethical contexts.
“It’s important to equip students on the ‘mens’ side with the kinds of civic knowledge that they need to go out into the world,” said Capozzola, “but also the ‘manus,’ to be able to do the everyday work of getting your hands dirty and building democratic institutions.”
When she was a child, Mary Ellen Wiltrout PhD ’09 didn’t want to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a K-12 teacher. Growing up in southwestern Pennsylvania, Wiltrout was studious with an early interest in science — and ended up pursuing biology as a career.
But following her doctorate at MIT, she pivoted toward education after all. Now, as the director of blended and online initiatives and a lecturer with the Department of Biology, she’s shaping biology pedagogy at MIT and beyond.
Establishing massive open online courses at MIT
To this day, E.C. Whitehead Professor of Biology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator emeritus Tania Baker considers creating a permanent role for Wiltrout one of the most consequential decisions she made as department head.
Since launching the very first MITxBio massive online open course 7.00x (Introduction to Biology — the Secret of Life) with professor of biology Eric Lander in 2013, Wiltrout’s team has worked with MIT Open Learning and biology faculty to build an award-winning repertoire of MITxBio courses.
MITxBio courses are currently hosted on the learning platform edX, established by MIT and Harvard University in 2012, which today connects 86 million people worldwide to online learning opportunities. Within MITxBio, Wiltrout leads a team of instructional staff and students to develop online learning experiences for MIT students and the public while researching effective methods for learner engagement and course design.
“Mary Ellen’s approach has an element of experimentation that embodies a very MIT ethos: applying rigorous science to creatively address challenges with far-reaching impact,” says Darcy Gordon, instructor of blended and online initiatives.
Mentee to motivator
Wiltrout was inspired to pursue both teaching and research by the late geneticist Elizabeth “Beth” Jones at Carnegie Mellon University, where Wiltrout earned a degree in biological sciences and served as a teaching assistant in lab courses.
“I thought it was a lot of fun to work with students, especially at the higher level of education, and especially with a focus on biology,” Wiltrout recalls, noting she developed her love of teaching in those early experiences.
Though her research advisor at the time discouraged her from teaching, Jones assured Wiltrout that it was possible to pursue both.
Jones, who received her postdoctoral training with late Professor Emeritus Boris Magasanik at MIT, encouraged Wiltrout to apply to the Institute and join American Cancer Society and HHMI Professor Graham Walker’s lab. In 2009, Wiltrout earned a PhD in biology for thesis work in the Walker lab, where she continued to learn from enthusiastic mentors.
“When I joined Graham’s lab, everyone was eager to teach and support a new student,” she reflects. After watching Walker aid a struggling student, Wiltrout was further affirmed in her choice. “I knew I could go to Graham if I ever needed to.”
Wiltrout (left) with former Department of Biology head Tania Baker at Wiltrout’s doctoral graduation celebration. To this day, Baker considers creating a permanent role for Wiltrout at MIT one of the most consequential decisions she made as department head. Image courtesy of Mary Ellen Wiltrout.
After graduation, Wiltrout taught molecular biology at Harvard for a few years until Baker facilitated her move back to MIT. Now, she’s a resource for faculty, postdocs, and students.
“She is an incredibly rich source of knowledge for everything from how to implement the increasingly complex tools for running a class to the best practices for ensuring a rigorous and inclusive curriculum,” says Iain Cheeseman, the Herman and Margaret Sokol Professor of Biology and associate head of the biology department.
Stephen Bell, the Uncas and Helen Whitaker Professor of Biology and instructor of the Molecular Biology series of MITxBio courses, notes Wiltrout is known for staying on the “cutting edge of pedagogy.”
“She has a comprehensive knowledge of new online educational tools and is always ready to help any professor to implement them in any way they wish,” he says.
Gordon finds Wiltrout’s experiences as a biologist and learning engineer instrumental to her own professional development and a model for their colleagues in science education.
“Mary Ellen has been an incredibly supportive supervisor. She facilitates a team environment that centers on frequent feedback and iteration,” says Tyler Smith, instructor for pedagogy training and biology.
Wiltrout helped create a high school internship program in collaboration with Empowr, a nonprofit organization that strengthens the school-to-career pipeline. Wiltrout is proud to report that one of these interns is now a student at MIT in the class of 2028. Photo courtesy of Empowr.
Prepared for the pandemic, and beyond
Wiltrout believes blended learning, combining in-person and online components, is the best path forward for education at MIT. Building personal relationships in the classroom is critical, but online material and supplemental instruction are also key to providing immediate feedback, formative assessments, and other evidence-based learning practices.
“A lot of people have realized that they can’t ignore online learning anymore,” Wiltrout noted during an interview on The Champions Coffee Podcast in 2023. That couldn’t have been truer than in 2020, when academic institutions were forced to suddenly shift to virtual learning.
“When Covid hit, we already had all the infrastructure in place,” Baker says. “Mary Ellen helped not just our department, but also contributed to MIT education’s survival through the pandemic.”
For Wiltrout’s efforts, she received a COVID-19 Hero Award, a recognition from the School of Science for staff members who went above and beyond during that extraordinarily difficult time.
“Mary Ellen thinks deeply about how to create the best learning opportunities possible,” says Cheeseman, one of almost a dozen faculty members who nominated her for the award.
Recently, Wiltrout expanded beyond higher education and into high schools, taking on several interns in collaboration with Empowr, a nonprofit organization that teaches software development skills to Black students to create a school-to-career pipeline. Wiltrout is proud to report that one of these interns is now a student at MIT in the class of 2028.
Looking forward, Wiltrout aims to stay ahead of the curve with the latest educational technology and is excited to see how modern tools can be incorporated into education.
“Everyone is pretty certain that generative AI is going to change education,” she says. “We need to be experimenting with how to take advantage of technology to improve learning.”
Ultimately, she is grateful to continue developing her career at MIT biology.
“It’s exciting to come back to the department after being a student and to work with people as colleagues to produce something that has an impact on what they’re teaching current MIT students and sharing with the world for further reach,” she says.
As for Wiltrout’s own daughter, she’s declared she would like to follow in her mother’s footsteps — a fitting symbol of Wiltrout’s impact on the future of education.
Why peer review benefits online learners socially and academically
Recent research from MIT Open Learning reveals three key ways peer assessment and discussions reinforce online learning.
MIT Open Learning Digital Learning Scientists John Liu (center) and Jessica Sandland (right) accept the Best Paper Award at IEEE DEMOcon 2024 from Alex Duncan (left), technical program chair.
Katherine Ouellette | MIT Open Learning
Did you know that peer review not only helps online learners feel less isolated, but it enables them to understand the material better, too? Recent research from MIT Open Learning revealed three benefits from peer assessments and discussions.
In “Exploring the integration of social practice into massive open online courses (MOOC) peer assessment,” learners self-reported that 1) giving and receiving feedback; 2) seeing each other’s work; and 3) applying knowledge helped improve their online educational experience. The article was recognized as Best Paper Award at 2024 IEEE Digital Education and Massive Open Online Courses Conference.
Meghan Perdue, research affiliate in political science at MIT, Jessica Sandland, principal lecturer in materials science and engineering and digital learning scientist at Open Learning, John Liu, lecturer in mechanical engineering and digital learning scientist, and Aditi Joshi, production lead and course moderator for the MITx MicroMasters Program in Principles of Manufacturing, analyzed 250 learner reflections across five different MOOCs to uncover information that would help them design valuable and effective peer review experiences.
Here, Sandland dives into why fostering connections between learners reinforces learning.
What problem(s) were you trying to solve with this research?
Since MOOCs began, they have been criticized for being unable to provide the expert feedback that a student can get in a good university classroom. And I’m not going to try to counter this argument. There are undoubtedly some learning experiences that are better in a high-quality university classroom than in a MOOC environment. However, we believe that evaluating MOOCs based on the fact that they’re not a university classroom is simply the wrong framework to use. Rather, we want to understand the benefits that MOOCs provide to their learners taken as their own unique type of learning experience.
Hearing directly from learners who have been asked a broad, open-ended question gives us the best opportunity to hear feedback that we wouldn’t necessarily have anticipated. If we ask learners more constrained questions, the learners’ answers will already be based on some of our preconceptions.
What were the most important takeaways from the results and why?
Learners report that this experience has helped them develop their communication skills, broaden their perspectives, and learn how to learn. This is where it gets really interesting, because the learners tell stories about their educational experience that are distinctly different from those you’d expect from a traditional university student.
For example, learners comment on the value of seeing how their classmates from all over the world apply the course material to their local contexts, allowing the learner to understand that a solution that works in one context or geographical area may not effectively work in another. This kind of learning experience is much harder to reproduce in a university classroom with a fairly homogeneous selection of students, but the diverse population of MOOC learners makes these experiences much more readily available in a MOOC environment.
How does this fit into the larger context of education and learning?
One thing we found was that the kinds of skill building that learners were reporting — developing communication skills, broadening perspectives, and learning how to learn — corresponded very closely to the sorts of skills people talk about when they talk about essential 21st century skills. In our paper, we did a comparison to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s key competency areas, but there are many different frameworks that define the knowledge and skills that a person needs to be an effective citizen in the 21st century. We observe many overlaps between these skills and those that learners reported developing through the peer review assignments.
Six MIT faculty and instructors receive awards for exemplary teaching with digital technology
The student-nominated and student-judged awards recognize faculty and instructor innovations in teaching with technology.
The 2024 Teaching with Digital Technology Award winners include: (top row, left to right) Josh Angrist, Cong Cong, Ben Fry; (second row, left to right) Michael Maune, Rama Ramakrishnan, Nancy Rose.
Jovi Nazareno | MIT Open Learning
Six MIT faculty and instructors have received the 2024 Teaching with Digital Technology Awards. The student-nominated and student-judged awards recognize faculty and instructors who have effectively used digital technology to improve teaching and learning at MIT.
Co-sponsored by MIT Open Learning and the Office of the Vice Chancellor, the awards recognize MIT educators for their innovations and give the Institute’s community the opportunity to learn from their practices. The 2024 awardees join the ranks of 96 previous recipients since 2016, all of whom demonstrate commitment to improving teaching and student learning.
This year, students submitted 136 nominations. “Students wrote nominations for faculty and instructors who used technology — ranging from R coding, different programming languages, and demos with iPads, to playlists, exemplary slides, and Plickers cards,” says Daniel Hastings, interim vice chancellor for undergraduate and graduate education, “all in ways that engaged students and aided their learning.”
The winners of the 2024 Teaching with Digital Technology Awards are:
Josh Angrist
Ford Professor of Economics
In 14.32 (Econometric Data Science) Josh Angrist used simple yet effective tools to support lectures and presentations. A student shared, “[He uses a] digital tablet instead of chalkboard when lecturing, so that resulting notes can be shared with students.” Marking up graphics such as tables and figures and writing out theoretical derivations are all possible using an iPad, and support student engagement with real data.
Cong Cong
Lecturer in Urban Studies and Planning
Students expressed deep appreciation for how Cong Cong helps them learn to code and visualize data in 11.S954 (Applied Data Science for Cities). She ensured students had necessary equipment and supported them through R workshops and office hours. A student said, “She served as a profound inspiration, instilling in us the belief that despite lacking technical backgrounds, we are capable of achieving remarkable things.”
Ben Fry
Lecturer in Architecture
Ben Fry developed his own course website to engage students in their projects for 4.032 (Information Design and Visualization). “He uses p5.js and other programming languages to make the design interactive, creating a dynamic and engaging user experience,” shared a student. “This approach not only showcases the versatility of students’ work but also emphasizes the practical application of coding and design skills in contemporary digital environments.”
Michael Maune
Lecturer in Comparative Media Studies/Writing
Students expressed appreciation for the variety of tools used by Michael Maune to present content and streamline student tasks in 21W.747 (Rhetoric). “The way information was presented made the content much easier to learn and [was] a great visual aid to lecturing. It was so clear to me that he put a lot of effort into those slides, and also his running of the class in general,” said a student.
Rama Ramakrishnan
Professor of the Practice in Management
Rama Ramakrishnan used live demos and incorporated generative AI in 15.773 (Hands-on Deep Learning) and 15.060 (Data, Models, and Decisions). A student said, “Professor Ramakrishnan has used a combination of real-time Colab notebooks, real-time sketching on iPad and PPT slides to enhance his students’ learning. He combines all three mediums and uses each in a way that best suits the message he is getting across to his students.”
Nancy L. Rose
Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics
Students remarked that Nancy Rose’s use of Plickers cards facilitated engaging discussions in 14.20 (Industrial Organization: Strategy & Public Policy). “She would ask a question in class, and have us hold up these cards to vote,” a student described, and “she knew which student voted which way, so she could cold-call students to explain their reasoning which kept us engaged and facilitated discussion.”
Dimitris Bertsimas receives the 2025-2026 Killian Award
The professor of operations research is honored for his intellectual achievements and educational leadership.
Peter Dizikes | MIT News
Dimitris Bertsimas SM ’87, PhD ’88, a leading figure in operations research, has been named the recipient of the 2025-26 James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award. It is the highest honor the MIT faculty grants to its own professors.
Bertsimas is the Boeing Professor of Operations Research at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he has made substantial contributions to business practices in many fields. He has also been a prolific advisor of graduate students and an enterprising leader of academic programs, serving as the inaugural faculty director of the Master of Business Analytics (MBAn) program since 2016, associate dean of business analytics since 2019, and vice provost for open learning since 2024.
“To be recognized among the group of Killian Award winners is a very humbling experience,” Bertsimas says. “I love this institution. This is where I have spent the last 40 years of my life. We don’t do things at MIT to get awards; we do things here because we believe they are important. It’s definitely something I’m proud of, but I’m also humbled to be in the company of many of my heroes.”
The Killian Award citation states that Bertsimas, “through his remarkable intellectual breadth and accomplishments, incredible productivity, outstanding contributions to theory and practice, and educational leadership, has made enormous contributions to his profession, the Institute, and the world.” It also notes that his “scholarly contributions are both vast and groundbreaking.”
Bertsimas received his BS in electrical engineering and computer science from the National Technical University of Athens in Greece. He moved to MIT in 1985 for his graduate work, earning his MS in operations research and his PhD in applied mathematics and operations research. After completing his doctoral work in 1988, Bertsimas joined the MIT faculty, and has remained at the Institute ever since.
A powerhouse researcher, Bertsimas has tackled a wide range of problems during his career. One area of his work has focused on optimization, the development of mathematical tools to help business operations be as efficient and logical as possible. Another focus of his scholarship has been machine learning and its interaction with optimization as well as stochastic systems. Overall, Bertsimas has developed the concepts and tools of “robust optimization,” allowing people to make better decisions under uncertainty.
At times in his career, Bertsimas has focused on health care issues, examining how machine learning can be used to develop more tools for personalized medical care. But all told, Bertsimas’ work has long been applied across many industries, from medicine to finance, energy, and beyond. The fingerprints of his research can be found in financial portfolios, school bus routing, supply chain logistics, energy use, medical data mining, diabetes management, and more.
“My strategy has been to address significant challenges that the world faces, and try to make progress,” Bertsimas says.
A dedicated educator, Bertsimas has been the principal doctoral thesis advisor to 103 MIT PhD students as of this spring. Lately he has been advising about five doctoral students per year, a remarkable number.
“Working with my doctoral students is my principal and most favorite activity,” Bertsimas says. “Second, in my research, I’ve tried to address problems that I think are important. If you solve them, something changes, in what we teach or in industry, and in short order. Not in 50 years, but in two years. Third, I feel it’s my obligation to educate — not only to create new knowledge, but to transmit it.”
As such, Bertsimas has been the founder and driving force behind MIT Sloan’s leading-edge MBAn program, and has thrown himself into leading MIT’s Open Learning efforts over the past year. He has also founded 10 data analytics companies during his career, while co-authoring hundreds of papers and eight graduate-level textbooks on data analytics.
The Killian Award was founded in 1971 in recognition of “extraordinary professional accomplishments by full-time members of the MIT faculty,” as the citation notes.The award is named after James R. Killian Jr., who served as president of MIT from 1948 to 1959 and as chair of the MIT Corporation from 1959 to 1971.
By tradition, Bertsimas will give a lecture in spring 2026 about his work.
The Killian Award is the latest honor in Bertsimas’ career. In 2019, he received the John von Neumann Theory Prize from INFORMS, the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science, for his contributions to the theory of operations research and the management sciences. He also received the INFORMS President’s Award in 2019 for his contributions to societal welfare. Bertsimas was elected to be a member of the National Academy of Engineering at age 43.
Reflecting on his career so far, Bertsimas emphasizes that he operates on a philosophy centered around positive thinking, high aspirations, and a can-do attitude applied to making a difference in the world for other people. Bertsimas praised MIT Sloan and the Operations Research Center as ideal places for him to pursue his work, due to its interdisciplinary nature, the quality of the students, and its openness to founding firms based on breakthrough work.
“I have been very happy at Sloan,” Bertsimas says. “It gives me the opportunity to work on things that are important with exceptional students predominantly from the Operations Research Center, and encourages my entrepreneurial spirit. Being at MIT Sloan and at the Operations Research Center has made a material difference in my career and my life.”
TIME names MIT Open Learning’s Cynthia Breazeal one of the “100 Most Influential People in AI”
Breazeal, dean for digital learning, founded MIT RAISE to help kids thrive in the age of AI.
MIT Open Learning
Cynthia Breazeal, dean for digital learning at MIT Open Learning, was named one of the “100 Most Influential People in AI” by TIME.
This morning, TIME named Cynthia Breazeal, dean for digital learning at MIT Open Learning and director of MIT RAISE, to its 2025 list of the 100 most influential people in AI. She joins fellow MIT faculty Priya Donti and Regina Barzilay, alongside leaders like Sam Altman, top scientists, government officials, and Pope Leo XIV.
Breazeal SM ’93, ScD ’00 is a professor of media arts and sciences at MIT. She founded and directs the Personal Robots group in the MIT Media Lab, as well as the MIT-wide Initiative on Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE). The RAISE team works with kids to prepare them for an AI-powered future.
Breazeal is acutely aware of how design decisions shape our relationship to technology: nearly 30 years ago, her research on human-machine interaction helped to launch the field of social robotics. Her hope is that equipping the next generation with a deep understanding of how design impacts experience will enable them to build safe, pro-social tech. “We are deeply social, emotional, cognitive, multidimensional creatures,” she says. “The more that we can design technologies that support all of us, the more deeply we can engage, and not surprisingly, the more successful we are.” — TIME
Two MIT films nominated for New England Emmy Awards
Films produced by MIT Video Productions and the Department of Mechanical Engineering highlight some of MIT’s global conversations about the environment and climate change.
Katherine Ouellette | Anne Wilson | MIT Open Learning | Department of Mechanical Engineering
Two films produced by MIT were honored with Emmy nominations by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Boston/New England Chapter. Both “We Are the Forest” and “No Drop to Spare” illustrate international conversations the MIT community is having about the environment and climate change.
“We Are the Forest,” produced by MIT Video Productions (MVP) at MIT Open Learning, was one of six nominees in the Education/Schools category. The documentary highlights the cultural and scientific exchange of the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble, MIT Wind Ensemble, and MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble in the Brazilian Amazon. The excursion depicted in the film was part of the ongoing work of Frederick Harris Jr., MIT director of wind and jazz ensembles and senior lecturer in music, to combine Brazilian music and environmental research.
“No Drop to Spare,” created by the Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE), was nominated in the Environment/Science and Video Essayist categories. The film, produced by John Freidah, MechE senior producer and creative lead, follows a team of researchers from the K. Lisa Yang Global Engineering and Research (GEAR) Center working in Kenya, Morocco, and Jordan to deploy affordable, user-driven smart irrigation technology.
“We Are the Forest” tells the story of 80 MIT student musicians who traveled to Manaus, Brazil in March 2023. Together with Indigenous Brazilian musicians and activists, the students played music, created instruments with found objects from the rainforest, and connected their musical practice to nature and culture. The trip and the documentary culminated with the concert “Hearing Amazônia: Art and Resistance.”
“We have an amazing team who are excited to tell the stories of so many great things that happen at MIT,” says Clayton Hainsworth, director for MVP. “It’s a true pleasure when we get to partner with the Institute’s community on these video projects — from Fred [Harris], with his desire for outreach of the music curriculum, giving students new perspectives and getting beyond the lab; to students getting to experience the world and seeing how that affects their next steps as they go out and make an impact.”
The documentary was produced by Hainsworth, directed by Jean Dunoyer, staff editor at MVP, and filmed by Myles Lowery, field production videographer at MVP. Hainsworth credits Dunoyer with refining the story’s main themes: the universality of music as a common human language, and the ways that Indigenous communities can teach and inform the rest of the globe about the environment and the challenges we are all facing.
“The film highlights the reach of how MIT touches the world and, more importantly, how the world touches MIT,” says Hainsworth, adding that the work was generously supported by A. Neil Pappalardo ’64 and Jane Pappalardo.
“No Drop to Spare” evoked a similar sentiment from Freidah. “What I liked about this story was the potential for great impact,” says Freidah, discussing the MechE film’s production process. “It was global, it was being piloted in three different places in the world, with three different end users, and had three different applications. You sort of go in with an idea in mind of what the story might be, then things bubble up. In this story, as with so many stories, what rose to the top was the students and the impact they were having on the real world and end users.”
Freidah has worked with Amos Winter SM ’05, PhD ’11, associate professor of mechanical engineering and MIT GEAR Center principal investigator, to highlight other impact global projects in the past, including producing a video in 2016. That film, “Water is Life,” explores the development of low-cost desalination systems in India.
While the phrase “it’s an honor to be nominated” might seem cliched, it remains often used because the sentiment almost always rings true. Although neither film triumphed at this year’s awards ceremony, Freidah says there’s much to be celebrated in the final product.
“Seeing the effect this piece had, and how it highlighted our students, that’s the success story — but it’s always nice also to receive recognition from outside.”
The 47th Boston/New England Emmy Awards Ceremony took place on June 8 at the Marriott Boston Copley Place. A list of nominees and winners can be found on the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Boston/New England Chapter website.
First AI + Education Summit is an international push for “AI fluency”
The three-day, hands-on conference hosted by the MIT RAISE Initiative welcomed youths and adults from nearly 30 countries.
Andrew Whitacre | Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education
This summer, 350 participants came to MIT to dive into a question that is, so far, outpacing answers: How can education still create opportunities for all when digital literacy is no longer enough — a world in which students now need to have AI fluency?
The AI + Education Summit was hosted by the MIT RAISE Initiative (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with speakers from the App Inventor Foundation, the Mayor’s Office of the City of Boston, the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, and more. Highlights included an onsite “Hack the Climate” hackathon, where teams of beginner and experienced MIT App Inventor users had a single day to develop an app for fighting climate change.
In opening remarks, RAISE principal investigators Eric Klopfer, Hal Abelson, and Cynthia Breazeal emphasized what new goals for AI fluency look like. “Education is not just about learning facts,” Klopfer said. “Education is a whole developmental process. And we need to think about how we support teachers in being more effective. Teachers must be part of the AI conversation.” Abelson highlighted the empowerment aspect of computational action, namely its immediate impact, that “what’s different than in the decades of people teaching about computers [is] what kids can do right now.” And Breazeal, director of the RAISE Initiative, touched upon AI-supported learning, including the imperative to use technology like classroom robot companions as something supplementary to what students and teachers can do together, not as a replacement for one another. Or as Breazeal underlined in her talk: “We really want people to understand, in an appropriate way, how AI works and how to design it responsibly. We want to make sure that people have an informed voice of how AI should be integrated into society. And we want to empower all kinds of people around the world to be able to use AI, harness AI, to solve the important problems of their communities.”
MIT AI + Education Summit 2024: Welcome Remarks by MIT RAISE Leaders, Abelson, Breazeal, and Klopfer Video: MIT Open Learning
The summit featured the invited winners of the Global AI Hackathon. Prizes were awarded for apps in two tracks: climate and sustainability, and health and wellness. Winning projects addressed issues like sign-language-to-audio translation, moving object detection for the vision impaired, empathy practice using interactions with AI characters, and personal health checks using tongue images. Attendees also participated in hands-on demos for MIT App Inventor, a “playground” for the Personal Robots Group’s social robots, and an educator professional development session on responsible AI.
By convening people of so many ages, professional backgrounds, and geographies, organizers were able to foreground a unique mix of ideas for participants to take back home. Conference papers included real-world case studies of implementing AI in school settings, such as extracurricular clubs, considerations for student data security, and large-scale experiments in the United Arab Emirates and India. And plenary speakers tackled funding AI in education, state government’s role in supporting its adoption, and — in the summit’s keynote speech by Microsoft’s principal director of AI and machine learning engineering Francesca Lazzeri — the opportunities and challenges of the use of generative AI in education. Lazzeri discussed the development of tool kits that enact safeguards around principles like fairness, security, and transparency. “I truly believe that learning generative AI is not just about computer science students,” Lazzeri said. “It’s about all of us.”
Trailblazing AI education from MIT
Critical to early AI education has been the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, a longtime collaborator that helped MIT deploy computational action and project-based learning years before AI was even a widespread pedagogical challenge. A summit panel discussed the history of its CoolThink project, which brought such learning to grades 4–6 in 32 Hong Kong schools in an initial pilot and then met the ambitious goal of bringing it to over 200 Hong Kong schools. On the panel, CoolThink director Daniel Lai said that the trust, MIT, Education University of Hong Kong, and the City University of Hong Kong did not want to add a burden to teachers and students of another curriculum outside of school. Instead, they wanted “to mainstream it into our educational system so that every child would have equal opportunity to access these skills and knowledge.”
MIT worked as a collaborator from CoolThink’s start in 2016. Professor and App Inventor founder Hal Abelson helped Lai get the project off the ground. Several summit attendees and former MIT research staff members were leaders in the project development. Educational technologist Josh Sheldon directed the MIT team’s work on the CoolThink curriculum and teacher professional development. Karen Lang, then App Inventor’s education and business development manager, was the main curriculum developer for the initial phase of CoolThink, writing the lessons and accompanying tutorials and worksheets for the three levels in the curriculum, with editing assistance from the Hong Kong education team. And Mike Tissenbaum, now a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, led the development of the project’s research design and theoretical grounding. Among other key tasks, they ran the initial teacher training for the first two cohorts of Hong Kong teachers, consisting of sessions totaling 40 hours with about 40 teachers each.
The ethical demands of today’s AI “funhouse mirror”
Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, delivered the closing keynote. He described the current state of AI as a “funhouse mirror” that “distorts the world around us” and framed it as yet another technology that has presented humans with ethical demands to find its positive, empowering uses that complement our intelligence but also to mitigate its risks.
“One of the areas I’m most excited about personally,” Huttenlocher said, “is people learning from AI,” with AI discovering solutions that people had not yet come upon on their own. As so much of the summit demonstrated, AI and education is something that must happen in collaboration. “[AI] is not human intellect. This is not human judgment. This is something different.”
Empowering students to tackle big problems through design thinking
Twenty students explore design thinking at MIT, envisioning a better future for their communities.
Mariah Rawding | MIT Open Learning
Twenty high school students recently visited MIT for a packed three-day in-person program part of MIT Admissions’ inauguralsmall town and rural students (STARS)fly-in program. From exploring the Institute’s underground tunnels to workshops, the students had a weekend highlighting the hands-on, project-based learning MIT is known for.
One of their stops was at MIT Open Learning, where they attended a design thinking workshop led by thepK-12 team, focused on helping young people understand how this problem-solving approach can help them solve challenges in their communities and beyond.
“My biggest takeaway from the workshop is that big problems require creative solutions,” says Elle, a student from Watkinsville, Georgia. “In order to address issues in our community, we have to think about new ways to use things in order to minimize costs and resources and that requires a lot of creativity.”
From problem to prototype
As a methodology, design thinking encourages a focus on iteration and learning from failure in quick succession. During the workshop students were encouraged to apply this framework while taking part in a team and project-based activity.
“In these sessions, we want students to understand that failure is part of the design process. Designing a working solution to a challenge isn’t likely to happen on the first try, and learning that the process is less than linear with multiple iterations, tweaks, and changes in perspective can be frustrating,” says Joe Diaz, a STEAM educator and program manager at MIT pK-12. “One of our learning goals is that by both becoming comfortable with this discomfort and collaborating with others, learners realize that they have the ability to develop novel solutions that can actually become a reality.”
Using theUN Sustainable Development Goalsas a guide, Diaz sparked conversations with students on a variety of topics, from the impacts to well water to lack of infrastructure in order to help jumpstart the brainstorming process. In a quick sprint, students broke into teams and built a look-like prototype to tackle the design challenge “No Chill,” where they focused on solutions for climate change and the reality of a hotter planet.
With imaginative designs, from a cooling lunch box to an underground cooling system for roads, students brought forward inspirational ideas about how to cope with climate change and built prototypes that could have real impacts.
“The most memorable moment from the workshop was having to figure out our solution and then actually build a prototype of it,” says Elle.
In just under two hours, her team used a variety of easily accessible materials like cardboard, pipe cleaners, batteries, hot glue guns, and sensors to build an electric vehicle that uses solar power to recharge.
Impact for the next generation
MIT’s educational philosophy highlights that the best education occurs when learners are engaged in a dynamic community combined with rigorous academics and a learn by doing methodology. This is known as MIT’s unique minds-on, hands-on approach to learning. With greater exposure to this approach and mindset for young people, groups at MIT hope to nurture students to solve big challenges across the globe.
“I’m proud to host a program so vital to these students’ college search and application journey,” says Nicole Cooper, assistant director of MIT admissions for rural outreach and a first-generation college student from rural Wyoming. “As a founding member of the STARS College Network, MIT is committed to expanding access to higher education for students from small towns. By bringing these students to campus, we offer first-hand exposure to MIT’s learning environment and provide tools they can take back to benefit their communities.”
For Tate, a student from Canadian, Texas, the design thinking workshop at MIT pK-12 was eye-opening. “The workshop just gave me an entirely new way of looking at problems.” Tate says. “The new approach should help me see problems in different ways and create better solutions to the challenges facing my community.”
With war continuing to disrupt education for millions of Ukrainian high school and college students, many are turning to online resources, including MIT OpenCourseWare, a part of MIT Open Learning offering educational materials from more than 2,500 MIT undergraduate and graduate courses.
For Ukrainian high school senior Sofiia Lipkevych and other students, MIT OpenCourseWare has provided valuable opportunities to take courses in key subject areas. However, while multiple Ukrainian students study English, many do not yet have sufficient command of the language to be able to fully understand and use the often very technical and complex OpenCourseWare content and materials.
“At my school, I saw firsthand how language barriers prevented many Ukrainian students from accessing world-class education,” says Lipkevych.
She was able to address this challenge as a participant in theUkrainian Leadership and Technology Academy(ULTA), established by Ukrainian MIT students Dima Yanovsky and Andrii Zahorodnii. During summer 2024 at ULTA, Lipkevych worked on a browser extension that translated YouTube videos in real-time. Since MIT OpenCourseWare was a main source of learning materials for students participating in ULTA, she was inspired to translate OpenCourseWare lectures directly and to have this translation widely available on the OpenCourseWarewebsiteandYouTube channel. She reached out to Professor Elizabeth Wood, founding director of the MIT Ukraine Program, who connected her with MIT OpenCourseWare Director Curt Newton.
Although there had been some translations of MIT OpenCourseWare’s educational resources available beginning in 2004, these initial translations were conducted manually byseveral global partners, without the efficiencies of the latest artificial intelligence tools, and over time the programs couldn’t be sustained, and shut down.
“We were thrilled to have this contact with ULTA,” says Newton. “We’ve been missing having a vibrant translation community, and we are excited to have a ‘phase 2’ of translations emerge.”
A screenshot of an MIT OpenCourseWare YouTube video on “Multiplication and Inverse Matrices” depicts the captions settings menu option for Ukrainian translations. Image courtesy of Sofiia Lipkevych.
The ULTA team developed multiple tools to help break language barriers. For MIT OpenCourseWare’s PDF content available through the ULTA program, they created a specialized tool that uses optical character recognition to recognize LaTeX in documents — such as problem sets and other materials — and then used a few large language models to translate them, all while maintaining technical accuracy. The team built a glossary of technical terms used in the courses and their corresponding Ukrainian translations, to help make sure that the wording was correct and consistent. Each translation also undergoes human review to further ensure accuracy and high quality.
For video content, the team initially created a browser extension that can translate YouTube video captions in real-time. They ultimately collaborated with ElevenLabs, implementing their advanced AI dubbing editor that preserves the original speaker’s tone, pace, and emotional delivery. The lectures are translated in the ElevenLabs dubbing editor, and then the audio is uploaded to the MIT OpenCourseWare YouTube channel.
The team is currently finalizing the translation of the audio for class9.13 (The Human Brain), taught by MIT Professor Nancy Kanwisher, which Lipkevych says they selected for its interdisciplinary nature and appeal to a wide variety of learners.
Introduction to the Human Brain Video: MIT OpenCourseWare
This Ukrainian translation project highlights the transformative potential of the latest translation technologies, building upon a 2023 MIT OpenCourseWare experiment using the Google Aloud AI dubbing prototype on a few courses, including MIT Professor Patrick Winston’sHow to Speak. The advanced capabilities of the dubbing editor used in this project are opening up possibilities for a much greater variety of language offerings throughout MIT OpenCourseWare materials.
“I expect that in a few years we’ll look back and see that this was the moment when things shifted for OpenCourseWare to be truly usable for the whole world,” says Newton.
Community-led language translations of MIT OpenCourseWare materials serve as a high-impact example of the power of OpenCourseWare’sCreative Commons licensing, which grants everyone the right to revise materials to suit their particular needs and redistribute those revisions to the world.
While there isn’t currently a way for users of the MIT OpenCourseWare platform to quickly identify which videos are available in which languages, MIT OpenCourseWare is working toward building this capability into its website, as well as expanding its number of offerings in different languages.
“This project represents more than just translation,” says Lipkevych. “We’re enabling thousands of Ukrainians to build skills that will be essential for the country’s eventual reconstruction. We’re also hoping this model of collaboration can be extended to other languages and institutions, creating a template for making high-quality education accessible worldwide.”
Begin your learning journey into artificial intelligence with MIT Open Learning.
MIT Open Learning
As artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes industries, powers innovation, and redefines how we live and work, understanding its core principles is increasingly important. We curated a list of 13 foundational AI courses and resources from MIT Open Learning — most of them free — to help you grasp the basics of AI, machine learning, machine vision, and algorithms.
AI 101:Get an introduction to artificial intelligence that’s designed for those with little to no background in the subject.
Introduction to Algorithms:Explore mathematical modeling of computational problems, common algorithms, algorithmic paradigms, and data structures used to solve these problems.
Artificial Intelligence:Examine the power of AI with MIT’s foundational course about the basic knowledge representation, problem solving, and learning methods of artificial intelligence.
AI and Algorithms:Get an introduction to principles, algorithms, and applications of machine learning.
Foundation Models and Generative AI:Discover the secret sauce behind the recent breakthroughs within AI — foundation models and generative AI.
Driving Innovation with Generative AI:Get the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate the intricate world of generative AI in this six-week course, which leverages industry case studies, hands-on work with generative AI tools, and the latest thinking from 12 faculty members from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab.
These courses and materials are available through MIT OpenCourseWare, MITx, and MIT xPRO, which are part of MIT Open Learning.MIT OpenCourseWareoffers free, online, open educational resources from more than 2,500 courses that span the MIT undergraduate and graduate curriculum.MITxoffers hundreds of high-quality massive open online courses adapted from the MIT classroom for learners worldwide.MIT xPROoffers paid courses designed using cutting-edge research in the neuroscience of learning; its online learning programs leverage vetted content from world-renowned experts to make learning accessible anytime, anywhere.
Explore the origins of quantum mechanics and quantum computing.
Sara Feijo | MIT Open Learning
What is quantum mechanics? When did it originate? What does quantum computing look like today?
In the video below, Will Oliver, professor of physics and director of the MIT Center for Quantum Computing, and Jeff Grover, research scientist at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT, explore the origins of quantum mechanics and the state of quantum computing today.
“We do have quantum computers today. We’re still learning how to build them, and we’re still learning how to use them,” Oliver says. “But the promise is that quantum computers could, for certain problems, vastly outperform what we can do with our conventional computers. Here at MIT, we cover all aspects of quantum — from algorithms and the design of those algorithms that we would run on quantum computers, to developing these various hardware platforms that we would use to realize quantum computers.”
Learn more about quantum computing with online courses and programs available through the MIT Open Learning Library, MIT OpenCourseWare,MITx, and MIT xPRO.
The MIT Open Learning Library, MIT OpenCourseWare, MITx, and MIT xPRO are part of MIT Open Learning, whose mission is to transform teaching and learning at the Institute and around the globe through the innovative use of digital technologies.
TheOpen Learning Libraryis a collection of free, open resources from the MIT classroom.OpenCourseWareoffers free, online, open educational resources from more than 2,500 courses that span the MIT undergraduate and graduate curriculum.MITxoffers hundreds of high-quality massive open online courses adapted from the MIT classroom for learners worldwide.MIT xPROoffers paid courses designed using cutting-edge research in the neuroscience of learning; its online learning programs leverage vetted content from world-renowned experts to make learning accessible anytime, anywhere.
MIT recognizes exemplary educators annually through its MacVicar Faculty Fellows Program.
By MIT Open Learning
Three outstanding educators have been named MIT’s 2025 MacVicar Faculty Fellows: Paloma Duong, associate professor in comparative media studies/writing, Frank Schilbach, associate professor of economics, and Justin Steil, associate professor of urban studies and planning. Through MIT Open Learning, you can learn online from Schilbach and Steil for free.
Frank Schilbach: Bringing energy and excitement to the curriculum
Frank Schilbach’s connection and dedication to undergraduates, combined with his efforts in communicating the importance of economics as a field of study, were key components in the revitalization of economics (Course 14). In addition to bolstering enrollment, Schilbach had a hand in curricular improvements. Among them, he created a “next step” for students completing the Principles of Microeconomics class with a revised class Psychology and Economics that goes beyond classic topics in behavioral economics to explore links with poverty, mental health, happiness, and identity.
Learn with Professor Schilbach:
Psychology and Economics: Explore recent advances in behavioral economics, by reviewing some of the assumptions made in mainstream economic models and discussing how human behavior systematically departs from these assumptions.
Well-being is the Goal with Prof. Frank Schilbach: Reframe your traditional understanding of economics. In this Chalk Radio Podcast episode, Schilbach discusses how psychologically-informed interventions can boost people’s productivity, earnings, and savings, as well as increase their tendency toward benevolence and cooperation.
Justin Steil: Experiential learning meets public service
Justin Steil uses his background as a lawyer, a sociologist, and an urban planner to combine experiential learning with opportunities for public service. In the class Urban Sociology in Theory and Practice, he connects students with incarcerated individuals to examine inequality at one of the state’s largest prisons, MCI Norfolk. Steil is also a paramedic and has volunteered as an EMT for MIT Emergency Medical Service, where he continues to transform routine activities into teachable moments. Since joining MIT in 2015, Steil has received a Committed to Caring award in 2018; the Harold E. Edgerton Award for exceptional contributions in research, teaching, and service in 2021; and a First Year Advising Award from the Office of the First Year in 2022.
Learn with Professor Steil:
Introduction to Housing, Community, and Economic Development: Get an introduction to social and economic inequality in America; equitable development; social capital and community building; and the history, development, and current prospects of housing and economic development.
Environmental Justice, Science and Technology: Explore the environmental justice movement, its history, and how science and technology can be used to tackle environmental challenges and injustice.
Environmental Justice Law and Policy: Dive into the basic principles of environmental justice and frameworks for analyzing and addressing inequalities in the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens.
Urban Sociology in Theory and Practice: Examine the key theoretical paradigms of sociology, assess how and why those paradigms have changed over time, and dive into the implications of these shifts for urban research and planning practice.
About the MacVicar Fellows Program
For more than 30 years, the MacVicar Faculty Fellows Program has recognized exemplary and sustained contributions to undergraduate education at MIT. The program is named in honor of Margaret MacVicar, MIT’s first dean for undergraduate education and founder of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. Fellows are chosen through a highly competitive, annual nomination process. The MIT Registrar’s Office coordinates and administers the award on behalf of the Office of the Vice Chancellor; nominations are reviewed by an advisory committee, and final selections are made by the provost.Get to know the 2025 fellows.
The courses and resources listed in this article are available throughMIT OpenCourseWareandMITx, both 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. MITx offers high-quality massive open online courses adapted from the MIT classroom for learners worldwide.
Jumpstart your learning in 2025 with 16 intro courses from MIT
Explore the fundamentals of chemistry, generative AI, music recording, and more with introductory courses from MIT Open Learning.
Katherine Ouellette | MIT Open Learning
The new year is the perfect time to start learning a new subject. Explore how memory works, whether AI can achieve consciousness, music recording techniques, and more with these 16 introductory courses from MIT Open Learning.
Science courses
Introduction to Biology:Discover the secret of life through the basics of biochemistry, genetics, molecular biology, recombinant DNA, genomics, and rational medicine.
Science of Learning and Memory: Learn how the human brain stores, retrieves, and forgets information with topics like how we learn, classical conditioning, and amnesia.
Technology courses
Minds and Machines: Dive into philosophy of the mind by exploring consciousness, reality, AI, and more.
Introduction to Comparative Politics: Analyze why democracy emerges and survives in some countries rather than in others, how political institutions affect economic development, and how American politics compares to that of other countries.
Principles of Microeconomics: Dive into the fundamentals of microeconomics including topics like supply and demand, market equilibrium, consumer theory, and more in this undergraduate level course. (Looking for a high school level course instead? TryAP® Microeconomics.)
What is Capitalism?: Explore the academic debates, anthropological studies, and implications of capitalism, including how contemporary capitalism plays out in people’s daily lives from family businesses to consumer shopping malls to Wall Street.
Math courses
Calculus 1: Single Variable Calculus: Master the calculus of derivatives, integrals, coordinate systems, and infinite series through fundamental computational skills.
Calculus 1B: Integration: Learn how to compute an integral and use calculus to model real-world phenomena.
These courses are available throughMIT OpenCourseWare,MITx, andMIT xPRO, which are 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. MITx offers high-quality massive open online courses adapted from the MIT classroom for learners worldwide. xPRO provides professional development opportunities to a global audience via online courses and blended programs.
Learn all summer long with 14 books from MIT faculty
After reading the books, deepen your knowledge with free courses and educational resources from MIT Open Learning.
Katherine Ouellette | MIT Open Learning
What’s on your summer reading list? Dive into a selection of books from MIT faculty published in the past year, and let each turned page bring you new insights about technology and innovation, science and engineering, and history and culture.
For extra credit, explore the faculty’s online courses and other resources on MIT OpenCourseWare,MITx, and MIT xPRO, all part of MIT Open Learning.
These courses and resources are available through MIT OpenCourseWare, MITx, and MIT xPRO, which are part of MIT Open Learning.OpenCourseWareoffers free, online, open educational resources from more than 2,500 courses that span the MIT undergraduate and graduate curriculum.MITx, which includes the Open Learning Library, offers hundreds of high-quality massive open online courses adapted from the MIT classroom for learners worldwide.xPROprovides professional development opportunities to a global audience via online courses and blended programs.
Nine free courses from MIT ranked among most popular of all time
Class Central recognized MITx’s free online courses among 100 top free courses.
Sara Feijo | MIT Open Learning
Kickstart your 2025 learning journey with nine online courses offered throughMITx, part of MIT Open Learning, that were recently ranked amongClass Central’s list of 100 top free EdX courses of all time. Class Central compiled this list based on the number of enrollments in the free-to-audit online courses.
Master the core methodologies used in supply chain analysis and modeling, including statistics, regression, optimization, and probability. This 15-week course is part of theMITxMicroMasters program in Supply Chain Management. A session of this course is currently underway; a new session will start April 23.
Get an introduction to computer science as a tool to solve real-world analytical problems using Python 3.5. This nine-week course is the first in a two-course sequence. The next session of this course starts Jan. 22.
Discover the field of machine learning through hands-on Python projects, from linear models to deep learning and reinforcement learning. This 15-week course is part of theMITxMicroMasters program in Statistics and Data Science. The next session of this course starts Jan. 28.
Learn fundamental concepts for logistics and supply chain management. This 13-week course is part of theMITxMicroMasters program in Supply Chain Management. The next sessions of this course start April 2 and Aug. 27.
Understand the principles that underpin statistical inference, including estimation, hypothesis testing, and prediction. This 17-week course is part of theMITxMicroMasters program in Statistics and Data Science. The next session of this course starts May 5.
Explore data science and probabilistic models, including random processes and the basic elements of statistical inference. This 16-week course is part of theMITxMicroMasters program in Statistics and Data Science. The next session of this course starts May 14.
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