Every year, we submit a report that shares the highlights of our unit activities at MIT. For a number of years now I’ve been the primary author of this “record” of our collective work. Drawing nearly verbatim from this report, below is a list of the major activities I was involved with for the last fiscal year (running July-June). You can also look back on reports from 2019-2020, 2018-2019, 2017-2018, 2016-2017, 2015-2016, 2014-2015, 2013-2014, 2012-2013 and 2011-2012.

Open Learning Projects – July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021

Projects supports initiatives between MIT and other universities, foundations and trusts, non-governmental organizations, and national governments in their efforts to advance and transform educational opportunity through digital learning. Through these initiatives, MIT is furthering its mission to advance learning worldwide.

Summary and Highlights

In FY21 (2020-2021), Projects focused on two international projects that shared MIT’s expertise and approach to teaching and learning with university undergraduate and graduate students and faculty. Projects promoted MIT’s unique approaches to learning with these international audiences:

• Projects completed its work with the CoLAB Program in Data Science in December 2020. Through the two years of the project, Projects supported the program’s first cohort of 58 learners as they completed the MITx MicroMasters® Program in Statistics and Data Science facilitated (recitation) sessions, workshops and exam prep. Thus far 68% of the first cohort have successfully earned the MicroMasters program credential, with another 25% expected to take the exam in FY22 (2021-2022).
• Projects and the Al-Ghurair Foundation for Education co-published a whitepaper, Charting a Path Forward: A Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration to Promote Blended Learning in the Arab World in October 2020. The whitepaper describes the three-year project that enabled faculty from the American University in Cairo and American University of Beirut to use course materials from sub-licensed MITx courses (6.00x, 7.00x, 7.28x and 18.03x) to support the educational needs of 1,196 learners. For more information and to read the whitepaper visit: https://openlearning.mit.edu/agfemit-white-paper-enhancing-blended-learning-arab-world

Goals and Objectives

For FY 21, Projects’ broad goals were to:

• Execute and complete existing projects: CoLAB and Open Learning Scholars.
• Identify (and execute) new digital learning and education transformation projects, including the forthcoming project to Implement a STEAM Lab School in Belize, in support of the Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab, MIT Open Learning, and the Institute.
• Integrate findings from science of learning into project activities.

Addendum to the President’s Report

CoLAB Program in Data Science

CoLAB is a project between MIT and a collaboration of primarily Centro Ceibal and the Universidad Tecnológica del Uruguay (UTEC) in Uruguay to create a community of data scientists in the region and build the capacity to teach data science at UTEC and other Uruguayan universities. Projects provides support for a generation (cohort) of learners concurrently enrolled in a UTEC Master’s degree program and the MITx MicroMasters in Statistic and Data Science program. The project involves workshops focused on data science, entrepreneurship and study strategies, as well as MIT-led facilitated (recitation) sections to support individual learning in the courses that make up the MicroMasters program.

FY21 key accomplishments [I was involved with]:

• Supported learners in completing the final of four required courses and preparing for the capstone exam for the MITx program.
• Concluded the project with a closing workshop focusing on data communications, ethics, fairness, bias and privacy.

STEAM Lab School

The Belize Ministry of Education Youth, Sports & Culture through the Interamerican Development Bank approached the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab pK-12 Collaborative and Projects to develop a conceptual design for a new STEAM Lab School in Belize. The Lab School is envisioned as a combined high school and technical / vocational school serving up to 300 students in four Forms (grades) be located in Belize City, Belize with enrollment beginning in 2022.

FY21 key accomplishments [I was involved with]:

• Projects and the MIT J-WEL pK-12 Collaborative team negotiated the agreement to establish the STEAM Lab School with the project scheduled to begin in FY22.

Open Learning Scholars (OLS)

OLS is a collaboration between MIT and the Abdulla Al Ghurair Foundation for Education aimed at expanding access to and use of digital learning environments in STEM for learners worldwide. The goal is to make some of the best STEM education in the world available to Arab youth through innovative online and blended learning offerings.

OLS is engaged with:

• Leveraging digital (online) learning in the Arab world, especially for displaced populations, with an initial focus on the professionally focused MIT MicroMasters program.
• Supporting educational transformation and capacity building through blended learning utilizing curriculum from MITx courses.

FY21 key accomplishments [I was involved with]:

• Co-authored a whitepaper, Charting a Path Forward: A Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration to Promote Blended Learning in the Arab World in October 2020. The whitepaper describes the three-year project that enabled faculty from the American University in Cairo and American University of Beirut to use course materials from sub-licensed MITx courses (6.00x, 7.00x, 7.28x and 18.03x) to support the educational needs of 1,196 learners. For more information and to read the whitepaper visit: https://openlearning.mit.edu/agfemit-white-paper-enhancing-blended-learning-arab-world.