Instructor Interview
Below, Professor Michael Short describes various aspects of how he teaches 22.01 Introduction to Nuclear Engineering and Ionizing Radiation.
OCW: After many years of teaching 22.01, this year you switched the course to a flipped-classroom format. How has that new format worked in practice?
Michael Short: Really well, and better than the students expected! I noticed that it seemed fewer and fewer students were doing the readings before class. My informal polls showed this to be very true—ten years ago, 70% to 80% of the students did the reading, whereas now it was down to 10% to 20%. There was a really sudden generational shift in how primary information is first absorbed, so I decided to meet the audience where they were. Making the videos to flip the classroom was, in hindsight, the single best and most effective use of my time as an MIT instructor. I’ve reached millions (approaching 3 million by YouTube metrics) this way through OCW and the videos, and now I hear that the lectures are required watching for interns and new recruits at a few startup nuclear companies. I never would have imagined that going into this.
OCW: Do you still use the “context first, theory second, then revisit the context” approach that you described in the syllabus of the 2016 version of the course?
Michael Short: Absolutely. As someone who does not learn well by being lectured at, I and many of my students need a scaffold on which to graft new information. The personalized, multi-sensory learning which takes place with context-first helps the theory to stick tremendously well. And for those few who learn best by lectures (I’ve read anywhere from 5% to 20% of learners are like this), they will get just what they need as soon as the theory arrives.
OCW: Your policy on late work is now both stricter than it was before—the per-day penalty for late work is 33% of the given assignment’s value, rather than 10%—and more flexible, in that you promise to be very accommodating in granting extensions if students contact you about it in advance. Do you notice changes in your students’ behavior under the new policy?
Michael Short: Absolutely. Far fewer assignments get marked as late, because I teach the students to take personal responsibility. I always tell them, “if you’re going to be late, tell me early. Do this with every single thing in your life.” It’s about teaching the students to pre-manage the expectations of their colleagues, their friends, their bosses, their mentors, and their mentees. The strictness is to really drive people to tell me if they’re going to be late, but they don’t have to give a reason. Oversharing is a huge problem with the current generation—the number of medical details I’ve heard in excuses probably violates the HIPAA act or similar. I want to push them to be proactive, but not to disclose personal details, as it’s not necessary to do so. They may think that disclosing more will elicit greater leniency, but I show them that this is not the case. There’s no need to violate your own privacy when it comes to work.
OCW: What would you like to share about teaching 22.01 that we haven’t yet addressed?
Michael Short: Personalization, to me, is the key to effective teaching. Create situations where you can learn about your students as whole people, and situations in which they learn about themselves through the lens of your course. The toenail problem set exemplifies this—students isotopically analyze their own bodies in a non-invasive manner, and appear far more motivated to learn. This also drills the process of problem solving, not getting the answer, as everyone’s answers are completely different. It sure makes things harder to grade, but that’s our job after all. Students also get to obtain dual energy x-ray analysis (DEXA) scans as a pretext for setting up systems of simultaneous equations to solve for photon attenuation, compute the amount of radiation they would get from spending the night together compared to living near a nuclear power plant, and quantify the most radioactive publicly accessible place in the city of Boston. For those who don’t wish to create such personal information, or have body image issues, I make default data available for their problem set analysis—knowing that some students have these issues is part of getting to know them and accommodating for them. Finally, it is key to remove barriers to student success not by making accommodations, but by structuring the course, especially the exams, so barriers are not presented which require accommodating. For example, I give untimed exams, taken at home during a 24 hour period of the student’s choice. This removes the need to ask for “time and a half,” quiet rooms, distraction-free environments, or anything else, as it lets each student pick the time and place when one feels at one’s best. This requires writing exams with more open-ended questions to more easily detect cheating, but so far this hasn’t been detected, and I have looked. Students often laud this policy, noting that it requires them to face themselves independently from required accommodations, and helps them to focus on areas in the course in which they need more extra help.
Podcast Episode
It’s a safe bet that 22.01 Introduction to Nuclear Engineering and Ionizing Radiation is the only course at MIT where students are encouraged to bring their toenail clippings to class. In the episode of the Chalk Radio podcast embedded below, Prof. Short discusses one of the core principles of his teaching philosophy: the importance of making abstract concepts tangible by means of hands-on activities. Want to know how much gold or arsenic is in your body? Bombard the aforementioned toenail clippings with neutrons in a reactor and see what gamma rays they give off! Want to know whether the stone in your ring is a genuine diamond or just a cubic zirconia? Put it under the electron microscope! Prof. Short also emphasizes the value of opening “knowledge gaps”—awakening his students’ curiosity by focusing on interesting questions they don’t yet know the answer to. Later, Prof. Short describes how he designed the course with a built-in mechanism for collecting real-time feedback so that he can respond immediately to students’ concerns. As a bonus, near the end of the podcast, Prof. Short answers various nuclear science questions posed by actual OpenCourseWare users.
Curriculum Information
Prerequisites
This course, which is the first subject in the Nuclear Science and Engineering undergraduate degree sequence, has no prerequisites. It is generally taken in the first semester of sophomore year, after two semesters of freshman calculus and physics.
Requirements Satisfied
Offered
Every fall semester
Assessment
Grade Breakdown
The students’ grades were based on the following activities:
- 40% Nine problem sets
- 60% Three quizzes
Student Information
Enrollment
14 students
Breakdown by Year
Primarily second-, third-, and fourth-year undergraduates, along with a few first-year students.
Breakdown by Major
In the past the class typically consisted entirely of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) majors; it is now about one-third to one-half NSE majors, with the remainder of the students concentrating in other fields such as Electrical Engineering and Computer Science or Mechanical Engineering.
Typical Student Background
The course is designed for those with no background at all in the topic, and almost all have none going in.
How Student Time Was Spent
During an average week, students were expected to spend 12 hours on the course, roughly divided as follows:
In Class
Met 3 times per week for 1 hour per session; 36 sessions total; mandatory attendance
Out of Class
In preparation for the class sessions, students watched prerecorded lectures, read assigned textbook chapters, completed problem sets that typically included a number of simpler questions as well as more complex questions or lab exercises, and prepared for quizzes.
