| Your OpenCourseWare Newsletter | April 2025 |
|
| Chalk Radio Season 7 Launches – with Video! |
|
| Photo by MIT OpenCourseWare. |
|
| MIT OpenCourseWare’s Chalk Radio® podcast launches its seventh season—with video! Tune in to the first episode with MIT economist Prof. Andrew W. Lo, who describes MIT OpenCourseWare as “the great equalizer” that makes knowledge available for free to anyone, anywhere in the world. Indeed, his finance lectures on our YouTube channel have received millions of views! Discover the secrets to his success in this episode on AI, finance, and human behavior, which is both on YouTube and the Chalk Radio website. Learn more about Chalk Radio and how it takes a deep dive into how MIT educators teach in this Medium article by MIT Open Learning, Chalk Radio Season 7 Unlocks New Ways of Understanding One’s Potential. |
|
| News from MIT OpenCourseWare |
|
| We Need Your Help! Take Our Learner Survey |
|
| Image by MIT OpenCourseWare.
|
|
| Please take this short survey to help shape the future of MIT OpenCourseWare! We are committed to providing free, high-quality educational resources for all, and we want to hear from you about how we’re doing! Something you love about MIT OpenCourseWare? Anything you’d like to see improved? Please tell us in this five-minute survey—responses are anonymous. Read more about the MIT OpenCourseWare Learner Survey in this Open Matters blog post. |
|
| MIT OpenCourseWare as the Start of a Life-Changing Journey |
|
| Photo courtesy of Ana Trišović.
|
|
| For this computer scientist, MIT OpenCourseWare was the start of a life-changing journey. Ana Trišović now studies the democratization of AI, but her career path began in 2012 as an undergraduate in Serbia where she downloaded MIT OpenCourseWare’s RES.6-009 How to Process, Analyze and Visualize Data. “That course changed my life,” she says. “Throughout my career, I have considered myself a Python coder, and MIT OpenCourseWare made it possible. I was in my hometown on another continent, learning from MIT world-class resources. When I reflect on my path, it’s incredible.” Get to know Ana in this MIT News story. |
|
| New Courses and Resources |
|
| Cover image from the Facilitative Leadership in the Public Sector (Trailer) on MIT OpenCourseWare, licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA. |
|
2.785J Cell-Matrix Mechanics
This graduate-level course focuses on the effects of mechanical forces (strains) on cells and on how cells generate mechanical forces by their contraction. Critical to both topics is the mechanical behavior of the extracellular matrix (ECM), which the cells have synthesized and remodeled. The ECM affects cell behavior by mediating exogenous mechanical strains, which stimulate certain cellular processes. The course materials, which are expected to be updated and expanded over time and which presuppose a basic grounding in biology, chemistry, and materials science, includes external links to lecture slides, readings, and supplementary resources.
14.01 Principles of Microeconomics
How do we decide what to buy or sell, at what price, and when? This introductory undergraduate course examines the economic decision-making behavior of both individual humans and companies. Course topics include supply and demand, market equilibrium, consumer theory, production and the behavior of firms, monopoly, oligopoly, welfare economics, public goods, and externalities. The course, which presupposes no prior background other than a grounding in single-variable calculus, includes a full set of 26 lecture videos, supplemented by PDFs of the lecture handouts as well as eight problem sets and two exams (all with solutions!).
14.126 Game Theory
Game theory isn’t just about play. It’s a serious field of study with implications extending far beyond recreation: psychology, ecology, economics, international relations, and even nuclear military strategy are among the fields in which the insights of game theory have been fruitfully applied. In this graduate-level course, which investigates equilibrium and non-equilibrium solution concepts and their foundations as the result of learning or evolution, you can access an extensive reading list and lecture slides, covering topics such as equilibria of supermodular games, global games, repeated games, signaling games, and models of bargaining, cheap talk, and reputation.
24A.S01 Anthro-Engineering: Decarbonization at the Million-Person Scale
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia is the coldest capital on Earth and one of the world’s most polluted cities, largely as a result of coal combustion. This holistic and interdisciplinary undergraduate-level course, part of a larger project at MIT to promote the development of clean energy devices, uses Ulaanbaatar as a field site, seeking to design and implement a molten salt heat bank that could be used there as an alternative to coal for household heating. To do that, the course combines anthropology and engineering to address the social, environmental, material, economic, and political conditions that shape energy and sustainability dilemmas in Mongolia.
|
|
MAS.S60 How to AI (Almost) Anything
This page on MIT OpenCourseWare directs you to an open-access collection of materials from this graduate-level MIT course on the basic principles of AI, with a focus on modern deep learning and foundation models, and aims to answer the question of how we can apply AI to novel real-world data modalities. The course also introduces the principles of multimodal AI that can process many modalities at once, such as connecting language and multimedia, music and art, sensing and actuation, and more. Among the materials available in the collection are a hyperlinked reading list and PDFs of the lecture slides from the course.
RES.11-004 Facilitative Leadership in the Public Sector
This four-part workshop was created by Prof. Lawrence Susskind at the request of a group of students in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) who felt the need for a graduate-level leadership course attuned specifically to the needs of public sector professionals. The sessions of the workshop were recorded on video; each session includes preliminary remarks by Prof. Susskind, a period of small-group discussion or role-playing by the participants, and a debriefing in which participants shared their observations with Prof. Susskind and the larger group. Also included is a brief trailer providing an introduction to the series.
RES.TLL-010 Syllabus Checklist to Support Student Belonging and Achievement
When students walk into class on the first day, the syllabus powerfully shapes their first impressions of the course, the instructor, and whether they will succeed. Recognizing how important the syllabus is for students and for instructors’ intentional design of the course, members of MIT’s Teaching + Learning Lab developed a syllabus checklist to guide instructors in their construction of conscientious course design, assessment descriptions, teaching practices, and policies in their syllabi. This checklist, which includes concrete, actionable checklist items as well as exemplars from MIT instructors—with many examples from MIT OpenCourseWare itself—can now be freely accessed from the MIT OpenCourseWare website via an external link. |
|
| Image courtesy of solut_rai on Wikimedia Commons. License: Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. |
|
17.55 Field Seminar in Comparative Politics
A few months ago, MIT OpenCourseWare published the materials from Prof. Chappell Lawson’s graduate-level seminar on comparative politics, including the syllabus, calendar, reading list, discussion questions, and writing assignments. The course site has now been enhanced by the addition of an Instructor Insights page, providing further information on how Prof. Lawson taught the seminar, along with his thoughts on why it’s important for students to read classic and even ancient texts along with contemporary ones.
RES.18-010 A Vision of Linear Algebra
Prof. Gilbert Strang has taught some of the most popular courses at MIT, and the lecture videos he has recorded are among the most frequently viewed on MIT OpenCourseWare and our associated YouTube channel. In 2020, Prof. Strang created the resource “A Vision of Linear Algebra” to demonstrate a completely new way of teaching linear algebra at the undergraduate level. Each year since, he has expanded on the resource with new content; this year’s update includes the addition of two new videos, one on “The Four Fundamental Subspaces and Least Squares” and the other on “Elimination and Factorization A = CR.” |
|
| Further MIT OpenCourseWare Materials |
|
| Learn from the MacVicar Faculty Fellows |
|
| Photos of Paloma Duong (left, by Allegra Boverman), Frank Schilbach (center, by Teresa Marenzi and Daniel Bachler), and Justin Steil (right, by Sarah Culver), courtesy of MIT News. |
|
| For the past 33 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. Among this year’s three honorees are two who have generously shared their course materials with the world on MIT OpenCourseWare. Read this Open Matters blog post to learn more about the courses by Frank Schilbach and Justin Steil, as well as about the many current and former MacVicar fellows who have contributed Instructor Insights as part of the MIT OpenCourseWare Educator initiative. |
|
| Live, Online Events with MIT Open Learning |
|
| AI + Open Education Initiative Speaker Series |
|
| Image by Sarah Schwettmann. |
|
MIT Open Learning is fueling a global dialogue on the future of open education in an AI-driven world. You are invited to the AI + Open Education Initiative Speaker Series, organized by the MIT OpenCourseWare Collaborations Program, that will shine a light on recently published papers about professional education, the judicious use of AI, and open education practices.
First, we’ll discuss professional education and the judicious use of AI for open education on April 30, 2:00 - 3:00 p.m. EDT. Learn more and register: https://bit.ly/4lrKwCZ
Then, we’ll address AI literacies and evaluation for open education practices on May 12, 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. EDT. Learn more and register: https://bit.ly/42Ke3jJ
Read more about the AI + Open Education Initiative and speaker series in this Medium article by MIT Open Learning, MIT Open Learning Speaker Series Bridges AI and Open Education. |
|
| Alleviating Poverty and Sharing Knowledge Globally |
|
| Image by MIT Open Learning. |
|
| MIT Open Learning’s Open Conversation Series continues! Join us for “Alleviating Poverty and Sharing Knowledge Globally with Esther Duflo” on May 21, 2025 at 4:00 p.m. Eastern. MIT professor of economics and Nobel laureate Esther Duflo will be in conversation with MIT Open Learning’s senior associate dean Christopher Capozzola. You can register and submit your questions here on AddEvent, and prepare for the conversation by visiting some of Prof. Duflo’s courses on MIT OpenCourseWare, including 14.310x Data Analysis for Social Scientists, 14.771 Development Economics, 14.73 The Challenge of World Poverty, and 14.74 Foundations of Development Policy. You can also read about the previous Open Conversation in this series in this Medium article by MIT Open Learning. |
|
| Your Support is More Important Than Ever |
|
Free and open access to reliable educational materials is more important than ever. Support from MIT OpenCourseWare learners, educators, and friends like you makes it possible for us to continue sharing course content from leading faculty and researchers, including National Academy of Engineering electees, MacVicar Fellows, and more.
If you’re in the position to give, please consider joining OCW’s community of supporters. |
|
| Newsletter edited by Shira Segal with contributions from Peter Chipman, production assistance from Stephanie Hodges, and resource development by Duyen Nguyen and Yvonne Ng. |
|
| We want to hear from you! How can MIT OpenCourseWare help you in your educational endeavors? Write to us at ocw@mit.edu with questions or suggestions. |
|
|
| More free resources from MIT Open Learning are available at: |
|
|
| | | | |
|
