#classes and programs

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/entrepreneur-creates-career-pathways-with-mit-opencourseware/

Entrepreneur creates career pathways with MIT OpenCourseWare

When June Odongo interviewed early-career electrical engineer Cynthia Wacheke for a software engineering position at her company, Wacheke lacked knowledge of computer science theory but showed potential in complex problem-solving.

Determined to give Wacheke a shot, Odongo turned to MIT OpenCourseWare to create a six-month “bridging course” modeled after the classes she once took as a computer science student. Part of MIT Open Learning, OpenCourseWare offers free, online, open educational resources from more than 2,500 courses that span the MIT undergraduate and graduate curriculum. 

“Wacheke had the potential and interest to do the work that needed to be done, so the way to solve this was for me to literally create a path for her to get that work done,” says Odongo, founder and CEO of Senga Technologies. 

Developers, Odongo says, are not easy to find. The OpenCourseWare educational resources provided a way to close that gap. “We put Wacheke through the course last year, and she is so impressive,” Odongo says. “Right now, she is doing our first machine learning models. It’s insane how good of a team member she is. She has done so much in such a short time.”

Making high-quality candidates job-ready

Wacheke, who holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Nairobi, started her professional career as a hardware engineer. She discovered a passion for software while working on a dashboard design project, and decided to pivot from hardware to software engineering. That’s when she discovered Senga Technologies, a logistics software and services company in Kenya catering to businesses that ship in Africa. 

Odongo founded Senga with the goal of simplifying and easing the supply chain and logistics experience, from the movement of goods to software tools. Senga’s ultimate goal, Odongo says, is to have most of their services driven by software. That means employees — and candidates — need to be able to think through complex problems using computer science theory.

“A lot of people are focused on programming, but we care less about programming and more about problem-solving,” says Odongo, who received a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and an MBA from Harvard Business School. “We actually apply the things people learn in computer science programs.”

Wacheke started the bridging course in June 2022 and was given six months to complete the curriculum on the MIT OpenCourseWare website. She took nine courses, including: Introduction to Algorithms; Mathematics for Computer Science; Design and Analysis of Algorithms; Elements of Software Construction; Automata, Computability, and Complexity; Database Systems; Principles of Autonomy and Decision Making; Introduction to Machine Learning; and Networks. 

“The bridging course helped me learn how to think through things,” Wacheke says. “It’s one thing to know how to do something, but it’s another to design that thing from scratch and implement it.”

During the bridging course, Wacheke was paired with a software engineer at Senga, who mentored her and answered questions along the way. She learned Ruby on Rails, a server-side web application framework under the MIT License. Wacheke also completed other projects to complement the theory she was learning. She created a new website that included an integration to channel external requests to Slack, a cross-platform team communication tool used by the company’s employees.

Continuous learning for team members

The bridging course concluded with a presentation to Senga employees, during which Wacheke explained how the company could use graph theory for decision-making. “If you want to get from point A to B, there are algorithms you can use to find the shortest path,” Wacheke says. “Since we’re a logistics company, I thought we could use this when we’re deciding which routes our trucks take.”

The presentation, which is the final requirement for the bridging course, is also a professional development opportunity for Senga employees. “This process is helpful for our team members, particularly those who have been out of school for a while,” Odongo says. “The candidates present what they’ve learned in relation to Senga. It’s a way of doing continuous learning for the existing team members.”

After successfully completing the bridging course in November 2022, Wacheke transitioned to a full-time software engineer role. She is currently developing a “machine” that can interpret and categorize hundreds of documents, including delivery notes, cash flows, and receipts.

“The goal is to enable our customers to simply feed those documents into our machine, and then we can more accurately read and convert them to digital formats to drive automation,” Odongo says. “The machine will also enable someone to ask a document a question, such as ‘What did I deliver to retailer X on date Y?’ or ‘What is the total price of the goods delivered?’”

The bridging course, which was initially custom-designed for Wacheke, is now a permanent program at Senga. A second team member completed the course in October 2023 and has joined the software team full time. 

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/mit-student-encourages-all-learners-to-indulge-their-curiosity-with-mit-open-learnings-mitx/

MIT student encourages all learners to indulge their curiosity with MIT Open Learning's MITx

Shreya Mogulothu is naturally curious. As a high school student in New Jersey, she was interested in mathematics and theoretical computer science (TCS). So, when her curiosity compelled her to learn more, she turned to MIT Open Learning’s online resources and completed the Paradox and Infinity course on MITx Online. 

“Coming from a math and TCS background, the idea of pushing against the limits of assumptions was really interesting,” says Mogulothu, now a junior at MIT. “I mean, who wouldn’t want to learn more about infinity?”

The class, taught by Agustín Rayo, professor of philosophy and the current dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and David Balcarras, a former instructor in philosophy and fellow in the Digital Learning Lab at Open Learning, explores the intersection of math and philosophy and guides learners through thinking about paradoxes and open-ended problems, as well as the boundaries of theorizing and the limits of standard mathematical tools.

“We talked about taking regular assumptions about numbers and objects and pushing them to extremes,” Mogulothu says. “For example, what contradictions arise when you talk about an infinite set of things, like the infinite hats paradox?” 

The infinite hats paradox, also known as Bacon’s Puzzle, involves an infinite line of people, each wearing one of two colors of hats. The puzzle posits that each individual can see only the hat of the person in front of them and must guess the color of their own hat. The puzzle challenges students to identify if there is a strategy that can ensure the least number of incorrect answers and to consider how strategy may change if there is a finite number of people. Mogulothu was thrilled that a class like this was available to her even though she wasn’t yet affiliated with MIT. 

“My MITx experience was one of the reasons I came to MIT,” she says. “I really liked the course, and I was happy it was shared with people like me, who didn’t even go to the school. I thought that a place that encouraged even people outside of campus to learn like that would be a pretty good place to study.” 

Looking back at the course, Balcarras says, “Shreya may have been the most impressive student in our online community of approximately 3,900 learners and 100 verified learners. I cannot single out another student whose performance rivaled hers.”

Because of her excellent performance, Mogulothu was invited to submit her work to the 2021 MITx Philosophy Awards. She won. In fact, Balcarras remembers, both papers she wrote for the course would have won. They demonstrated, he says, “an unusually high degree of precision, formal acumen, and philosophical subtlety for a high school student.”

Completing the course and winning the award was rewarding, Mogulothu says. It motivated her to keep exploring new things as a high school student, and then as a new student enrolled at MIT.

She came to college thinking she would declare a major in math or computer science. But when she looked at the courses she was most interested in, she realized she should pursue a physics major. 

She has enjoyed the courses in her major, especially class STS.042J/8.225J (Einstein, Oppenheimer, Feynman: Physics in the 20th Century), taught by David Kaiser, the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and professor of physics. She took the course on campus, but it is also available on Open Learning’s MIT OpenCourseWare. As a student, she continues to use MIT Open Learning resources to check out courses and review syllabi as she plans her coursework. 

In summer 2024, Mogulothu did research on gravitational wave detection at PIER, the partnership between research center DESY and the University of Hamburg, in Hamburg, Germany. She wants to pursue a PhD in physics to keep researching, expanding her mind, and indulging the curiosity that led her to MITx in the first place. She encourages all learners to feel comfortable and confident trying something entirely new. 

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/teen-uses-pharmacology-learned-through-mit-opencourseware-to-extract-and-study-medicinal-properties-of-plants/

Teen uses pharmacology learned through MIT OpenCourseWare to extract and study medicinal properties of plants

Tomás Orellana, a 17-year-old high school student in Chile, had a vision: to create a kit of medicinal plants for Chilean school infirmaries. But first, he needed to understand the basic principles of pharmacology. That’s when Orellana turned to the internet and stumbled upon a gold mine of free educational resources and courses on the MIT OpenCourseWare website.

Right away, Orellana completed class HST.151 (Principles of Pharmacology), learning about the mechanisms of drug action, dose-response relations, pharmacokinetics, drug delivery systems, and more. He then shared this newly acquired knowledge with 16 members of his school science group so that together they could make Orellana’s vision a reality.

“I used the course to guide my classmates in the development of a phyto-medicinal school project, demonstrating in practice the innovation that the OpenCourseWare platform offers,” Orellana says in Spanish. “Thanks to the pharmacology course, I can collect and synthesize the information we need to learn to prepare the medicines for our project.”

OpenCourseWare, part of MIT Open Learning, offers free educational resources on its website from more than 2,500 courses that span the MIT curriculum, from introductory to advanced classes. A global model for open sharing in higher education, OpenCourseWare has an open license that allows the remix and reuse of its educational resources, which include video lectures, syllabi, lecture notes, problem sets, assignments, audiovisual content, and insights.

After completing the Principles of Pharmacology course, Orellana and members of his science group began extracting medicinal properties from plants, such as cedron, and studying them in an effort to determine which plants are best to grow in a school environment. Their goal, Orellana says, is to help solve students’ health problems during the school day, including menstrual, mental, intestinal, and respiratory issues.

“There is a tradition regarding the use of medicinal plants, but there is no scientific evidence that says that these properties really exist,” the 11th-grader explains. “What we want to do is know which plants are the best to grow in a school environment.”

Orellana’s science group discussed their scientific project on “Que Sucede,” a Chilean television show, and their interview will air soon. The group plans to continue working on their medicinal project during this academic year.

Next up on Orellana’s learning journey is the mysteries of the human brain. He plans to complete class 9.01 (Introduction to Neuroscience) through OpenCourseWare. His ultimate goal? To pursue a career in health sciences and become a professor so that he may continue to share knowledge — widely.

“I dream of becoming a university academic to have an even greater impact on current affairs in my country and internationally,” Orellana says. “All that will happen if I try hard enough.”

Orellana encourages learners to explore MIT Open Learning’s free educational resources, including OpenCourseWare.

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/for-developing-designers-theres-magic-in-2-737-mechatronics/

For developing designers, there’s magic in 2.737 (Mechatronics)

The field of mechatronics is multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, occupying the intersection of mechanical systems, electronics, controls, and computer science. Mechatronics engineers work in a variety of industries — from space exploration to semiconductor manufacturing to product design — and specialize in the integrated design and development of intelligent systems. For students wanting to learn mechatronics, it might come as a surprise that one of the most powerful teaching tools available for the subject matter is simply a pen and a piece of paper.

“Students have to be able to work out things on a piece of paper, and make sketches, and write down key calculations in order to be creative,” says MIT professor of mechanical engineering David Trumper, who has been teaching class 2.737 (Mechatronics) since he joined the Institute faculty in the early 1990s. The subject is electrical and mechanical engineering combined, he says, but more than anything else, it’s design.

“If you just do electronics, but have no idea how to make the mechanical parts work, you can’t find really creative solutions. You have to see ways to solve problems across different domains,” says Trumper. “MIT students tend to have seen lots of math and lots of theory. The hands-on part is really critical to build that skill set; with hands-on experiences they’ll be more able to imagine how other things might work when they’re designing them.”

Play video

A lot like magic Video: Department of Mechanical Engineering

Audrey Cui ’24, now a graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science, confirms that Trumper “really emphasizes being able to do back-of-the-napkin calculations.” This simplicity is by design, and the critical thinking it promotes is essential for budding designers.

“Sitting behind a computer terminal, you’re using some existing tool in the menu system and not thinking creatively,” says Trumper. “To see the trade-offs, and get the clutter out of your thinking, it helps to work with a really simple tool — a piece of paper and, hopefully, multicolored pens to code things — you can design so much more creatively than if you’re stuck behind a screen. The ability to sketch things is so important.”

Trumper studies precision mechatronics, broadly, with a particular interest in mechatronic systems for demanding resolutions. Examples include projects that employ magnetic levitation, linear motors for driving precision manufacturing for semiconductors, and spacecraft attitude control. His work also explores lathes, milling applications, and even bioengineering platforms.

Class 2.737, which is offered every two years, is lab-based. Sketches and concepts come to life in focused experiences designed to expose students to key principles in a hands-on way and are very much informed by what Trumper has found important in his research. The two-week-long lab explorations range from controlling a motor to evaluating electronic scales to vibration isolations systems built on a speaker. One year, students constructed a working atomic force microscope.

“The touch and sense of how things actually work is really important,” Trumper says. “As a designer, you have to be able to imagine. If you think of some new configuration of a motor, you need to imagine how it would work and see it working, so you can do design iterations in your imagined space — to make that real requires that you’ve had experience with the actual thing.”

He says his former late colleague, Woodie Flowers SM ’68, MEng ’71, PhD ’73, used to call it “running the movie.” Trumper explains, “once you have the image in your mind, you can more easily picture what’s going on with the problem — what’s getting hot, where’s the stress, what do I like and not like about this design. If you can do that with a piece of paper and your imagination, now you design new things pretty creatively.”

Flowers had been the Pappalardo Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at the time of his passing in October 2019. He is remembered for pioneering approaches to education, and was instrumental in shaping MIT’s hands-on approach to engineering design education.

Class 2.737 tends to attract students who like to design and build their own things. “I want people who are heading toward being hardware geeks,” says Trumper, laughing. “And I mean that lovingly.” He says his most important objective for this class is that students learn real tools that they will find useful years from now in their own engineering research or practice.

“Being able to see how multiple pieces fit in together and create one whole working system is just really empowering to me as an aspiring engineer,” says Cui.

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/how-mits-online-resources-provide-a-highly-motivating-even-transformative-experience/

How MIT’s online resources provide a “highly motivating, even transformative experience”

Charalampos (Haris) Sampalis was well established in his career as a product manager at a telecommunications company in Greece. Yet, as someone who enjoys learning, he was on a mission to acquire more knowledge and develop new skills. That’s how he discovered MIT Open Learning resources.

With a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Crete and a master’s in innovation management and entrepreneurship from Hellenic Open University — the only online/distance learning university in Greece — Sampalis had developed expertise in product management and digital strategy. In 2016, he turned to MITx within MIT Open Learning and found a wealth of knowledge and a community of learners who broadened his horizons.

“I’m a person who likes to be constantly absorbing educational information,” Sampalis says. “I strongly believe that education shouldn’t be under boundaries, or strictly belong to specific periods in our lives. I started with computer science, and it grew from there, following programs on a regular basis that may help me expand my horizons and strengthen my skills.”

Sampalis built his life and career in Athens, which makes MIT Open Learning’s digital resources more valuable. He completed courses in computer science, including 6.00.1x (Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python), 11.155x (Design Thinking for Leading and Learning) and Becoming an Entrepreneur back in 2016 and 2017 through MITx, which offers hundreds of high-quality massive open online courses adapted from the MIT classroom for learners worldwide. Sampalis has also enrolled in Management in Engineering: Strategy and Leadership and Management in Engineering: Accounting and Planning, which are part of the MITx MicroMasters Program in Principles of Manufacturing.

“I really appreciate the fact that an established institution like MIT was offering programs online,” he says. “I work full time and it’s not easy at this period of my life to leave everything behind and move to another continent for education — something I might have done at another time in my life. So, this is a model that allows me to access MIT resources and grow myself as part of a community that shares similar interests and seeks further collaborations, even locally where I live, something that makes the overall experience really unique.” 

In 2022, Sampalis applied for and completed the MIT Innovation Leadership Bootcamp. Part of MIT Open Learning, MIT Bootcamps are intensive and immersive educational programs for the global community of innovators, entrepreneurs, and changemakers. The Innovation Leadership Bootcamp was offered online, and Sampalis jumped at the opportunity. 

“I was in collaborative mode, having daily interactions with a diverse group of individuals scattered around the world, and that took place during an intensive 10-week period of my life that really taught me a lot,” says Sampalis. “Working with a global team was extremely engaging. It was a highly motivating, even transformative experience.”

MITx and MIT Bootcamps are both hands-on and interactive experiences offered by MIT Open Learning, which is exactly what appealed to Sampalis. One of the best parts, he says, is that community and collaborations with those he met through MIT continued even after the boot camp concluded. Participants remain in touch not only with their cohort, but with a broader community of over 1,800 other participants from around the world, and have access to continued coaching and mentorship.

Overall, the community of learners has been a highlight of Sampalis’ MIT Open Learning experience.

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/mit-opencourseware-changed-how-i-think-about-teaching-and-what-a-university-is/

MIT OpenCourseWare “changed how I think about teaching and what a university is”

Bernardo Picão has been interested in online learning since the early days of YouTube, when his father showed him a TED Talk. But it was with MIT Open Learning that he realized just how transformational digital resources can be. 

“YouTube was my first introduction to the idea that you can actually learn stuff via the internet,” Picão says. “So, when I became interested in mathematics and physics when I was 15 or 16, I turned to the internet and stumbled upon some playlists from MIT OpenCourseWare and went from there.”

OpenCourseWare, part of MIT Open Learning, offers free online educational resources from over 2,500 MIT undergraduate and graduate courses. Since discovering it, Picão has explored linear algebra with Gilbert Strang, professor emeritus of mathematics — whom Picão calls “a legend” — and courses on metaphysics, functional analysis, quantum field theory, and English. He has returned to OpenCourseWare throughout his educational journey, which includes undergraduate studies in France and Portugal. Some courses provided different perspectives on material he was learning in his classes, while others filled gaps in his knowledge or satisfied his curiosity. 

Overall, Picão says that MIT resources made him a more robust scientist. He is currently completing a master’s degree in physics at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal, where he researches prominent lattice quantum chromodynamics, an approach to the study of quarks that uses precise computer simulations. After completing his master’s degree, Picão says he will continue to a doctoral program in the field. 

At a recent symposium in Lisbon, Picão attended a lecture given by someone he had first seen in an OpenCourseWare video — Krishna Rajagopal, the William A. M. Burden Professor of Physics and former dean for digital learning at MIT Open Learning. There, he took the opportunity to thank Rajagopal for his support of OpenCourseWare, which Picão says is an important part of MIT’s mission as a leader in education.

In addition to the range of subjects covered by OpenCourseWare, Picão praises the variety of instructors. All the courses are well-constructed, he says, but sometimes learners will connect with certain instructors or benefit from a particular presentation style. Since OpenCourseWare and other Open Learning programs offer such a wide range of free educational resources from MIT, learners can explore similar courses from different instructors to get new perspectives and round out their knowledge. 

While he enjoys his research, Picão’s passion is teaching. OpenCourseWare has helped him with that too, by providing models for how to teach math and science and how to connect with learners of different abilities and backgrounds. 

“I’m a very philosophical person,” he says. “I used to think that knowledge was intrinsically secluded in the large bindings of books, beyond the classroom walls, or inside the idiosyncratic minds of professors. OpenCourseWare changed how I think about teaching and what a university is — the point is not to keep knowledge inside of it, but to spread it.”

Picão, now a teaching assistant at his institution, has been teaching since his days as a high school student tutoring his classmates or talking with members of his family. 

“I spent my youth sharing my knowledge with my grandmother and my extended family, including people who weren’t able to attend school past the fourth grade,” he says. “Seeing them get excited about knowledge is the coolest thing. Open Learning scales that up to the rest of the world and that can have an incredible impact.”

The ability to learn from MIT experts has benefited Picão, deepening his understanding of the complex subjects that interest him. But, he acknowledges, he is a person who has access to high-quality instruction even without Open Learning. For learners who do not have that access, Open Learning is invaluable. 

“It’s hard to overstate the importance of such a project. MIT’s OpenCourseware and Open Learning profoundly shift how students all over the world can perceive their relationship with education: Besides an internet connection, the only requirement is the curiosity to explore the hundreds of expertly crafted courses and worksheets, perfect for self-studying,” says Picão. 

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/investigating-and-preserving-quechua/

Investigating and preserving Quechua

Soledad Chango, a native of Ecuador and a graduate student in MIT’s Indigenous Language Initiative, began preparations for her Quechua course with a clear idea about its purpose.

“Our language matters,” she says. “It’s worth studying and spreading.”

Quechua at MIT, a new two-week introductory class hosted by MIT Global Languages during the Institute’s Independent Activities Period in January, introduced students to the basics of Kichwa, a Quechua variant that is the most widely spoken language in the Americas. The class, which featured an interactive approach, focused on oral and written skills, emphasizing tasks based on familiar contexts. “I prepared conversations that reflect cultural values,” Chango emphasizes. 

Chango, a scholar of language acquisition, credited her advisor, MIT Linguistics professor Norvin Richards, and postdoc Cora Lesure with helping shape the course. Global Languages section head Per Urlaub helped ready the course for the classroom. “They helped me refine my ideas about what to teach and how to teach it,” she says.

Cultural immersion, value, and language acquisition

Because language can often be better understood when connected with its cultural context, Chango introduced students to the history, culture, and geography of the Andes mountains where the language’s speakers live, work, and play. Cultural discussions and interactions with artifacts were designed to help students understand the value of the endangered language.

“Every day, we dedicated time to individually review our writing and grammar skills,” says Isabel Naty Sanchez Taipe, a computer science and education student at Wellesley College and a cross-registered student and student researcher at MIT. “We practiced the pronunciation of new vocabulary and sentences out loud, and engaged in diverse group activities and games where we spoke Quechua as much as possible.” 

Chango sought to emphasize the importance of keeping Kichwa and Quechua alive. When endangered languages disappear, so do the communities and culture from which they rose. 

“In 2014, I was investigating Indigenous language advancement, tracking changes and usage,” she says. “Research shows the youngest Indigenous people retain and value their native languages the least.” 

Multilingualism as a tool for improvement

Multilingualism can prove valuable both academically and professionally.

“I would definitely recommend that people explore languages taught in this manner,” says Prahlad Balaji Iyengar, a PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science who took the course. “I think this was a great opportunity for me to learn a new mode of thought.”

As Chango continues to review and refine the course, she looks to technology to both help retain Quechua’s distinctive traits and reverse its trajectory toward extinction. She wants to ensure languages like Kichwa find interested audiences outside of their native cultures.