Rate this response:
(9 votes)
Break MIT subjects into atomistic concepts that are linked across the entire institute--each concept might take a day or a week to master, but much shorter than a semester-long class. Students learn what they want to learn, and they can see how each concept builds upon others. Concepts can be linked to projects or goals so students see what knowledge areas are necessary. For example, a project might be to design and test an airfoil within certain constraints--what physics, mathematical, and aeronautical concepts are needed to do this?
Impact: less redundancy across subjects, more flexibility for students.
Comments
Academic year
Great idea to break up courses into smaller chunks. If students learn on line and don't need to travel back and forth from home to school a couple of times a year around holidays, we can ditch the traditional two- or three-semester academic calendar and make courses any length we want.
Academic year
Great idea to break up courses into smaller chunks. If students learn on line and don't need to travel back and forth from home to school a couple of times a year around holidays, we can ditch the traditional two- or three-semester academic calendar and make courses any length we want.
Good In Theory, Chaos In Practice
One drawback that immediately becomes visible with this approach is not having a central chain of projects that together provide more than the sum of their parts. Specifically, I can see students that want to learn "a little bit of everything" taking a lot of diverse project modules, but never gaining the insight of how to put those individual skills together to do something meaningful at a scale bigger than any one module.
I think project/module based learning is good if they function as building blocks, not completely modular/independent projects. Things like:
Make a digital clock (Intro level) -> Make a robot that can drive around -> Make an automated robot
This is a set of modules that builds on the last one, sharing a common backbone (e.g. the chip that's used in all 3 projects is the same, but you dive deeper with each level). Your major is defined by taking at least (example) 3 chains all the way to the end.