Instructor Interview
Below, Professor Rafael Jaramillo describes various aspects of how he taught 3.020 Thermodynamics of Materials in 2021.
OCW: Who took this course in Spring 2021, and how much background did they have in the topic of the course?
Rafael Jaramillo: I expect that nobody had background in the topic of the course—it’s designed as an introduction to thermodynamics, and it’s quite rare that students come in with directly relevant background. Often they have seen some of the concepts before, at a very high level, for instance in high school or in 3.091 (our chemistry GIR). However, this level of background doesn’t extend far beyond the first or second lecture of the term.
OCW: You taught this iteration of the course in the spring of what you jocularly refer to on the syllabus as the “Year of our Zoom 2.” What are your thoughts on the lasting impact the Covid-19 pandemic has had on your teaching and on your students’ learning?
Rafael Jaramillo: It’s very hard to answer this with any confidence. One of the many bad outcomes of Covid is that, as an instructor, I fell quite out of touch with students’ progress in the material. So, during the Spring 2021 term, my teaching didn’t change by very much, largely because I had very little feedback that could be used to inform and guide useful changes. Also, my own bandwidth to create substantial change was nonexistent. My wife and I were both working with young kids at home, and many days just getting by. In that context, I was happy to deliver the curriculum more or less as we had planned before Covid hit.
With respect to the students’ outcomes, I have heard anecdotes, both negative and neutral, of how our sophomores experienced the curriculum that year, and how prepared they felt returning to campus. To really understand the impact, we need to look to the data over the years since, holistically, across the department. That said, I do strongly suspect that some essential and healthy study habits were unlearned, and that different, unhealthy study habits were learned. To the extent this is true, it’s truly damaging. Speaking from my own experience as a student, I developed study habits during high school and through the start of college. These became essential skills as I moved on into grad school and beyond, as problems got harder and competition more intense, and support structures fell away. Without those study habits, I would not have had the confidence needed to continue in a line of work as uncertain as research. But that is just another anecdote!
OCW: The teaching roster for 3.020 included yourself, one lab professor, four lab instructors, two WRAP writing coaches, and four teaching assistants. How does teaching in such a large team work?
Rafael Jaramillo: We had essential coordination meetings in the months and weeks before the start of term, to make sure our goals and curricular plans were aligned, as best we could. Once the semester started, this planning paid off, and we operated fairly independently. Everyone did their job professionally and well. I know that we did miss certain opportunities for better cohesion, and could have produced a somewhat better experience for the students if we had coordinated more tightly throughout the term. For instance, I should have better motivated the first lab project during the preceding lectures. However, from my perspective, this is another casualty of the incredible pressures that Covid created for many families. The friction that comes with only virtual interactions was also a contributing factor. After a long and busy day in building 13, I am often still happy and excited to meet with another co-worker, for instance to touch base on an upcoming assignment. But, as Zoom-only days drag on, I feel quite the opposite.
OCW: For this course, attendance was optional (but encouraged) and the exams were conducted open-book. How do these policies affect students’ experience in the course?
Rafael Jaramillo: Attendance has always been optional. I don’t think it helps to make it otherwise. It’s incumbent on us, as instructors, to make the class experience worth the cost of tuition. It’s up to students to decide how they are going to use this time in college, that they have paid so dearly for, in money, time, effort, and stress. In 3.020 (and its predecessor, 3.012), the outcome has been a fairly full and active class, even during Zoom.
I don’t think switching to open-book exams made much difference. By design, 3.020 is a difficult class, and the exams are intended to push boundaries. Even in cases when we asked questions almost directly out of a textbook, a student needs to have worked the text beforehand to be able to take advantage of these little gifts. So, I think that we were still able to recognize and reward good learning outcomes, despite open book exams taken over Zoom.
OCW: You devoted two class sessions to discussing the social and personal aspects of working in your field. What motivated you to write these two class sessions into the syllabus for the course?
Rafael Jaramillo: The experience of living through 2020 brought to the surface many important topics that had been ignored for a long time. Police violence and structural racism are prominent examples—neither was new or substantially changed in 2020, but they came to the fore in a collective way that was new. In creating these new sessions, I was responding to a somewhat different set of issues: questions of individual purpose and motivation for pursuing careers in science and engineering, and of how to understand the impact of our work on the wider world. Our individual motivations for applying ourselves to STEM careers are often left unevaluated, beyond bromides like wanting to slow global warming or to help people in need. But individual motivations are deeper and more complex, and these details make a tremendous difference to our individual experiences in life, and in how we impact others.
Devoting two lectures to these topics was intended as a signal of how important it is to question our motivations, to strive to know ourselves, and to be clear-eyed in assessing our impacts on others. I also wanted to deliver an engaging experience that the students would enjoy. On that point, I don’t know how well it worked, as feedback was so very hard to get during Covid.
OCW: What would you like to share about teaching 3.020 that we haven’t yet addressed?
Rafael Jaramillo: This course is a work in progress, like any other, and I am happy to continue the work.
Curriculum Information
Prerequisites
Students in 3.020 should have previously taken one of the following courses to fulfill MIT’s General Institute Requirement (GIR) in Chemistry:
- 3.091 Introduction to Solid-State Chemistry or 3.091SC*
- 5.111 Principles of Chemical Science or 5.111SC*
- 5.112 Principles of Chemical Science
One of the following courses should be taken as a corequisite:
- 18.03 Differential Equations
- 18.032 Differential Equations
*“SC” denotes an OCW Scholar version of a course.
Requirements Satisfied
Offered
- Every spring semester
Assessment and Grading
65% of the grade is based on the lecture component of the course:
- 50% Problem sets: 10 problem sets, with equal weighting
- 50% Exams: 3 exams, of equal length and weighting (including the final)
35% of the grade is based on laboratory & communication components of the course:
- 20% Lab reports: short virtual student-recorded videos summarizing key lab results, to be submitted
for each of the three lab experiments - 35% Oral presentation
- 45% Written review article
Student Information
Enrollment
- 31 students.
Breakdown by Year
- Mostly second-year undergraduates.
Breakdown by Major
- About 2/3 materials science and engineering students, 1/3 other majors or undecided.
How Student Time Was Spent
- During an average week, students were expected to spend 12 hours on the course, roughly divided as follows:
Lectures
- Met twice per week for 1.5 hours per session; 26 sessions total; mandatory attendance.
Recitations
- Met once per week for 1 hour per session; mandatory attendance.
- In recitations, the teaching assistant fielded questions from students and helped them work through sample problems.
Labs
- Met once per week for 2 hours per session.
Out of Class
- Outside of class, students completed weekly problem sets, produced lab report videos and written review articles, prepared for oral presentations, and studied for exams.
