Recap of the Big Things I did at work in 2011-2012

I wrote these for OEIT’s contribution to the President’s Report (an annual report on our activities). These correspond pretty well to the “Completed Major Achievements” category that I track for my work related activities and accomplishments (which ones I report for a given time period is kinda wacky having to do with when we do reviews as compared to the fiscal calendar).

MITCET Modularity Experiments

I project managed two of the MIT Council on Education Technology’s modularity experiments for 2011-2012. We did writeups on them:

• i2.002: Mechanical Engineering: “Teaching a core required [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][mechanical engineering] class to students at any distance”
• Chemistry Bridge: “Modules for self-paced learning and review of complex and recurring core concepts”

iCampus Student Prize

OEIT, on behalf of the Council on Education Technology, awarded the 2012 iCampus Student Prize to Danny Ben-David, ’15 for CourseRoad a user-friendly page where students can map out their classes through their undergraduate careers. OEIT is working with Danny Ben-David to further develop CourseRoad, and to develop it as a service for MIT students. The 2012 competition saw sixteen submissions and resulted in five first round winners, the grand prize winner, and a runner-up (Dormbase). Endowed from the iCampus research collaboration between Microsoft Research and MIT, the iCampus Student Prize is an annual competition that recognizes the innovative and creative application of technology that improves living and learning at MIT.

Bridge to Success

OEIT collaborated with the Open University, Anne Arundel Community College and the University of Maryland University College on Bridge to Success. Funded by an Educause Next Generation Learning Challenges grant, Bridge to Success brings the Open University’s introductory courses to United States community colleges. Two courses, Learning to Learn and Succeed with Math, were pilot tested and shown to be effective in helping students transition into college and college-level math, and persist to the next course. OEIT provided expert guidance on the impact of these courses in open education, and built a relationship with and understanding of the community college audience; OEIT is using this opportunity to inform MIT initiatives including educational outreach, OpenCourseWare and MITx.

Conversations on Quality

OEIT collaborated with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to host Conversations on Quality: A Symposium on Online Learning in K-12 in January 2012. MIT faculty, along with over 75 national experts, discussed the challenges of online learning environments. Convening experts from around the country, these conversations promoted the exploration of shared issues and solutions related to quality in online learning for grades K-12, including: learning outcomes, deep learning, accelerated learning, learning access/success of underrepresented students, more flexible learning, and relevance and quality of learning. The participants leveraged and learned from each other’s successes and challenges, realized higher goals for online and blended learning through collaboration and interaction, and energized the national discourse on K-12 online course quality. Many of the same issues explored in the symposium are of interest to higher education, OEIT used the opportunity to identify critical areas to explore as MIT moves into online learning.

CaPRéT: Cut and Paste Reuse Tracking

OEIT developed a simple tool to help educational content providers, such as OpenCourseWare, better track how their content is being reused. CaPRéT tracks text as it is copied from a web page containing an open educational resource and can follow that text through to where it is pasted on other sites. CaPRéT was funded by a grant from JISC in the United Kingdom.

OpenCourseWare Consortium Global 2011

OEIT collaborated with MIT OpenCourseWare, Tufts University and the University of Massachusetts Boston to host the 2011 OpenCourseWare Consortium Global conference in May 2011. The conference celebrated the first 10 years of the OpenCourseWare movement, and included a panel reflecting on MIT’s institutional decision to launch OpenCourseWare with Charles M. Vest, Lawrence S. Bacow, Robert A. Brown, Hal Abelson and Shigeru Miyagawa.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]