GUNTHER ROLAND: So over the last few, last couple
of years, Sean Robinson and I have made a few changes
to the 8.14 curriculum to really are differentiate it more
from 8.13 But I mean, a change that happened a number of years
ago, five years ago, was sort of the introduction
of this exploratory project.
But then in the last few years, what we decided to do
was add yet another communication component,
namely, the poster session.
As the students move on to graduate school,
posters are one of the communication forms
they will have to use at conferences, et cetera.
And I think, like for the papers and the presentations
in 8.13, the poster, I mean, when
you have to start for the first time with a blank slate,
I think it is very different to find the appropriate form.
So we thought it would be very good to practice that in 8.14.
And the reason we made this change is that 8.14 competes
for the students' time with many other things they can do,
including taking UROPs, which they feel, correctly,
are important for their future career.
And we felt that we need to revamp 8.14 a little bit
to really make it worth the students' time,
to give them something on which they
can build for their graduate school
applications and their work as graduate students.
And I think many of the--
essentially, all of the students that take 8.14 in the end,
move on to graduate school in physics.
And the new components, I think, really help them,
in both rounding out their application
and in developing some tools that they will use later
on as graduate students.