Friends of MIT OpenCourseWare,

This April marks the 20th anniversary of OCW. For two decades you’ve learned with us, shared your stories with us, shared our resources with others, tuned in to course videos and podcast conversations, connected with our online community, donated, and helped us make OCW even better for you and your fellow learners.

Through your support, your trust, and your engagement with OCW, you’ve become caretakers of the vision that began in 2001 to share knowledge from MIT openly and freely. Thanks to your commitment and curiosity, we are able to mark 20 years of open sharing with an even more ambitious vision for the future of OCW as we work to develop the NextGen OCW platform and program.

In short, it’s taken a community to bring OCW to this moment and we want you to be part of the celebrations! Over the next few weeks we’re inviting OCW learners, fans, and contributors near and far to reflect on this journey and help us get ready for what comes next—all leading up to a live virtual celebration of OCW’s impact, community, and the future of open sharing on Wednesday, April 7 at 12 pm ET.

Here are a few ways to join the festivities:

• Watch the video from our virtual anniversary event on April 7 — Watch the recording of our live community event and subscribe to OCW’s YouTube channel.
• Sign our virtual birthday card — share your message to OCW and read messages from the community.
• Tell us your story — Call +1-617-715-2517 to leave a voicemail telling us how you’ve used OCW to change your life or those of others in your schools or communities. We’ll share some of your most inspiring messages on a special episode of our Chalk Radio podcast. Or, complete this quick survey to share your experience with us.
• Test NextGen OCW — Sign up to receive the latest on NextGen OCW and hear about future opportunities to help beta test the new platform.
• Support our future — If you’re in a position to donate, make a gift in honor of 20 years of OCW.

We’re so grateful to share this exciting moment in our history with you!

With appreciation,

The MIT OpenCourseWare Team

The 2021 MacVicar Faculty Fellows are (clockwise from top left): Michael Short, Larry Guth, Elsa Olivetti, and Michael Yaffe.
Photo credits (clockwise from top left): Gretchen Ertl, Bryce Vickmark, Travis Gray, Bryce Vickmark

By Peter Chipman, OCW Digital Publication Specialist and OCW Educator Assistant

For the past 29 years, the MacVicar Faculty Fellows Program has honored several MIT professors each year who have made outstanding contributions to undergraduate teaching, educational innovation, and mentoring.

This year’s awardees are Professors Larry Guth (mathematics), Elsa Olivetti (materials science and engineering), Michael Short (nuclear science and engineering), and Michael Yaffe (biology and biological engineering).

OCW is honored to share courses from two of this year’s fellows:

Larry Guth

• • 18.S997 The Polynomial Method
  • 18.156 Differential Analysis II: Partial Differential Equations and Fourier Analysis

Michael Short

• • 22.033 Nuclear Systems Design Project
  • 22.S902 Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Geiger Counters
  • 22.14 Materials in Nuclear Engineering
  • 22.THT Undergraduate Thesis Tutorial
  • 22.01 Introduction to Nuclear Engineering and Ionizing Radiation

The OCW sites for 22.033, 22.S902, 22.THT, and 22.01 feature Instructor Insights sections in which Prof. Short discusses his approach to teaching; the Insights section for 22.01 also includes an embedded audio interview with him from MIT OpenCourseWare’s Chalk Radio podcast.

Interested in Instructor Insights from past MacVicar fellows? Visit our OCW Educator portal and search for “Insights from MIT Teaching Award Recipients.” Delve into the minds of John Essigmann, Dennis Freeman, Jeffrey Grossman, Hazel Sive, and many other MIT professors advancing teaching and learning in their fields.

An Immediate Love Affair with OpenCourseWare

MIT alumnus Eugene “Gene” Stark was an early supporter of OpenCourseWare. As OCW approaches its twentieth anniversary this year, Stark reflects on OCW’s early days, how it’s shaped his relationship with MIT, and why it’s still important for him to support today.

When Gene Stark ‘68, SM ‘69, ScD ‘72 first heard about OpenCourseWare over fifteen years ago, he was instantly drawn to his alma mater’s bold new undertaking. “Not knowing more than the two sentence summary,” Gene said, he was in.

It was 2004. The official OCW site was just a year old, and home to about 500 courses. That same year OCW adopted the game-changing Creative Commons license that allows users to freely and openly share, remix, and build upon course materials [learn more about OCW’s Creative Commons license]. “I immediately said that really sounded like an MIT thing, not only doing it but making it available free,” Gene says, “That’s something I can really support.”

It was the start of what Gene called an immediate love affair with OCW that has lasted through the years. Gene became one of the program’s early and most loyal supporters.

A new era for MIT

What Gene saw in those early days was the potential for public service at a scale that was unique for the Institute. Indeed, OCW’s very existence reflected a change in how MIT related to the world since his days as an undergraduate studying electrical engineering in the 1960s.

“Over the last five decades MIT has become far more engaged with the rest of the world. The entire Institute has become such an important part of the world’s economic and technological process. This just fit in with it beautifully,” he says. OCW “goes along with humanization of MIT in my view.” More than anything, he says, seeing how MIT faculty have bought in and sustained their commitment to OCW over the years speaks volumes of the community OCW has created.

This effort has also made his own relationship with the Institute much more personal, allowing him to share MIT with young learners in his life. From attempting to tackle Intro to Biology with his thirteen-year-old grandson, to sharing OCW with his grandchildren’s teachers and classmates, it’s given him the chance to connect others with the type of thoughtful intellectual stimulation he remembers from his own time at MIT. The variety of readings, videos, and problem sets available on OCW give you what you need to master a subject—without ever making it boring, Gene says.

Eugene “Gene” Stark ‘68, SM ‘69, ScD ‘72 has been an OCW supporter for over fifteen years.

Looking to the future, Gene sees OCW’s capacity to usher in further change. It’s already paved the way for other investments in the future of open and online learning, from MITx, which launched in 2011, to MIT Open Learning, a hub of teaching and learning innovations across MIT, and home to both OCW and MITx.

OCW itself continues to embrace change. Understanding the importance of multimedia content to learners, for example, OCW has grown its library of video and audio lectures in recent years. Other new resources, like the podcast Chalk Radio, take visitors behind the scenes of their favorite courses, increasing access to instructors and their insights.

“All good deeds seem to percolate around the world in ways that none of us could have imagined,” says Gene “Open learning is really important, and there’s still a lot to be done.”

By Cheryl Siegel, Publication Manager/Social Media Coordinator & Yvonne Ng, Annual Giving & Donor Relations Officer

Falling in love. Maybe it’s sudden. Or maybe it’s a slow burn that ignites into full blown euphoria and amazement. Sometimes it’s inexplicable and other times you might need convincing, so here are 10 reasons to fall in love with OCW.

1. It doesn’t cost a thing. You heard that right—everything on OCW is free! There are more than 2,500 MIT courses and supplemental resources that span both the undergraduate and graduate levels in 34 disciplines all for $0.00.
2. Lose yourself in hours of video. Have you already watched everything on Netflix? Whether you’re into math, science, economics, or even music, you will find tons of videos to watch on our YouTube channel. Our fans watched 26 million minutes of video last month!
3. Don’t just play video games—create them. Learn game design methods, how to develop video games, and how to build video games using the Unity game engine, and Arduino microcontrollers. 
4. Food glorious food! OCW has so many courses about food! Whether you want to Speak Italian with Your Mouth Full, learn about the history of cookbooks, test the microstructure of cheese, or cook up a little kitchen chemistry, we have something to whet your appetite.
5. We have our own nerdy reality show. The reality series “ChemLab Bootcamp” follows 14 first-year students as they learn the ins and outs of working in a chemistry lab. Hijinks and broken glass ensue.  
6. Sharing is caring. MIT really wants you to use, distribute, remix, and share all of these educational materials far and wide (with our Creative Commons License). And when you share OCW with your loved one, you show them you believe they can learn anything.
7. Learn from some of the most brilliant educators in the world. You think Tom Brady is the G.O.A.T.? Check out our amazing MIT faculty, who are some of the most accomplished educators in their fields. Check out the OCW Educator portal to gain insights into the minds of MIT faculty who want to share how they teach.
8. Become a Scholar. OCW Scholar is a collection of 16 introductory-level courses that provide you with ALL the resources you need for independent study. We’ll bring the materials, you bring the zest for learning!
9. Chalk Radio podcast. Listen to host Sarah Hansen and her guests talk about what inspires them to teach. It is both illuminating and inviting. Grab your favorite beverage and listen happily for hours.
10. Overcome your fear of public speaking. In case you are ready to profess your love out loud and maybe even publicly, you can check out this one-hour master class, “How to Speak,” by the late Prof. Patrick Winston. 

P.S. Do you want to read a good love story?  Check out our post about MIT alum Gene Stark and his love affair with MIT OCW.

Free open educational resources from MIT offer useful background on the topics covered in a popular new podcast.

By Peter Chipman, OCW Digital Publication Specialist and OCW Educator Assistant

Eric Lander, Professor of Biology at MIT and the founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, is hosting a new podcast, Brave New Planet. The episodes are beautifully produced and rich in content, generally running slightly over an hour in length and providing articulate, accessible overviews of the ethical questions surrounding new technologies in the 21st century. If, after listening to one of the episodes, you find yourself hungry for more information, you’re in luck: the following resources from OpenCourseWare and other MIT initiatives may be just what you’re looking for.

Episode 1: “What’s at Stake”

In the opening episode, Professor Lander talks with journalist Malcolm Gladwell about the changing position of science in society. The OCW supplemental resource RES.STP-001 Science Policy Bootcamp explores the factors that drive national science and technology policy. The course WGS.160J Science Activism: Gender, Race, and Power examines the role scientists have played as activists in social movements in the United States. And STS.081 Innovation Systems for Science, Technology, Energy, Manufacturing, and Health provides an overview of the federal government’s role in nurturing the development of new technologies.

Episode 2: “Deepfakes and the Future of Truth”

This episode delves into the application of artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as generative adversarial networks in the creation of fake images and video. Listeners who want to develop a broader understanding of basic AI concepts might want to check out Patrick Henry Winston’s popular course 6.034 Artificial Intelligence on OCW; to learn more about the work of episode guest Francesca Panetta and the people at MIT’s Center for Advanced Virtuality, check out their eerily plausible video of a real speech that Richard Nixon never actually gave.

Episode 3: “A Radical Approach to Climate Change”

Solar geoengineering is a fairly simple technology and could be implemented at relatively low cost to offset global warming. But as the conversations in this episode reveal, it’s extremely controversial, both for its potential practical side effects and for the ethical questions it raises. Learn more about the topic in these three OCW courses: 1.84J Atmospheric Chemistry, which includes lecture notes from two lectures on the role of atmospheric chemistry on climate; 12.340 Global Warming Science, which covers the evidence for anthropogenic climate change as well as proposed mitigation techniques; and 12.085 Seminar in Environmental Science, which focuses specifically on geoengineering and provides an extensive reading list on the topic along with students’ summaries and analyses of the readings. You can also find a treasure trove of valuable information at MIT’s Climate Portal.

Episode 4: “Robots and the Future of War”

This episode focuses on military applications of AI-driven robotics. For a fuller understanding of how artificial intelligence can allow real-world robots to function autonomously, look at the OCW course 16.412J Cognitive Robotics. The ethical questions behind these technologies, and behind artificial intelligence in general, are explored in more detail in one of OCW’s newest courses, 10.01 Ethics for Engineers: Artificial Intelligence.

Episode 5: “What Algorithms Say About You”

Predictive algorithms developed through machine learning can be astoundingly effective at spotting trends and making judgments based on vast aggregations of individually unremarkable data. These algorithms have been embraced for their potential applications in health care, law enforcement, insurance, and commerce, but they may also encode subtle biases based on the data used in training them. You can learn more about the technical side of the topic in the OCW course 6.S897 Machine Learning for Healthcare and the supplemental resource RES.LL-005 Mathematics of Big Data and Machine Learning, or delve into problems of algorithmic bias in the resource RES.EC-001 Exploring Fairness in Machine Learning for International Development.

Episode 6: “Reshaping Nature through Gene Drives”

The season’s final episode examines the applications and potential drawbacks of gene drives, a set of techniques that can cause genes artificially inserted into the DNA of individual organisms to spread preferentially throughout entire populations of a species. The basics of DNA, genes, and gene editing are explained in the OCW course 7.016 Introductory Biology and in Prof. Lander’s own MITx course Introduction to Biology – The Secret of Life. (If you’ve already forgotten the biology you learned in high school, you might also find it useful to run through Pre-7.01 Getting Up to Speed in Biology, a new offering at MIT’s Open Learning Library!) And genetic engineering forms a large part of the content in OCW’s 24.06J Bioethics, a philosophy course on how to recognize moral or ethical problems in biological science and medicine and how to think productively about those problems.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In a recent episode of the Chalk Radio podcast, Prof. David Thorburn, who has spent his career challenging conventional assumptions about what kinds of works have artistic merit, speaks eloquently about why popular art forms like film and television belong in the classroom.

TRANSCRIPT

EPISODE NOTES

What would Shakespeare have made of today’s popular television shows? He might or might not like them, but he wouldn’t dismiss them simply because they’re popular. In this episode, Professor David Thorburn, who has spent his career challenging conventional assumptions about what kinds of works have artistic merit, speaks eloquently about why popular art forms like film and television belong in the classroom. He explains that in his course 21L.011 The Film Experience, which he has taught at MIT for over 35 years, he strives to reframe classic works for modern audiences—with “classic works” in this context meaning everything from Charlie Chaplin comedies to Technicolor musicals, Hitchcock thrillers, and Japanese samurai movies. Professor Thorburn hopes that his lectures, which are available in full on MIT OpenCourseWare, will help as many students as possible to know how to enjoy the movies more richly, regardless of their intended major. In passing, he talks about topics as various as the usefulness of lectures as an educational technique, the difficulty of imagining a world without iPads, the universality of “All in the Family,” and his admiration for Claude Monet’s paintings of Rouen Cathedral.

Relevant Resources:

MIT OpenCourseWare

The OCW Educator Portal 

Professor Thorburn’s course on OCW

A profile of Professor Thorburn

Knots, Professor Thorburn’s first book of poetry

Wikipedia article on Jean Renoir

Wikipedia article on Claude Monet’s cathedral paintings

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions

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