In this section, Prof. Ariel White offers advice to educators who might want to reuse and remix the open educational resources from 17.271 that she is sharing on MIT OpenCourseWare.
In 2010, protestors rallied against a proposal to charge prisoners money for their stays in Massachusetts county jails. (Image courtesy of openmediaboston. License: CC BY NC SA.)
"I used many examples from Massachusetts and the Boston area because that’s where I am."
Students always want to tie the topics they learn about in class back to current events, and that’s especially true in a class like this. There are a lot of places where the class materials could be modified to allow for an activity or a class discussion about current news stories or policy proposals. There’s also room for local specificity: as I taught the class, I used many examples from Massachusetts and the Boston area because that’s where I am, and I encouraged students to learn and share information about the places where they lived. We also heard from local guest speakers: the director of MIT’s ESG Prison Initiative joined us to talk about teaching in prison, along with two students (one incarcerated and one not) who had taken his class. Another instructor might want to focus on issues and programs that were relevant to their own campus and surrounding community.
