Online courses directory (2511)

This course enhances cross-cultural understanding through the discussion of practical, ethical, and epistemological issues in conducting social science and applied research in foreign countries or unfamiliar communities. It includes a research practicum to help students develop interviewing, participant-observation, and other qualitative research skills, as well as critical discussion of case studies. The course is open to all interested students, but intended particularly for those planning to undertake exploratory research or applied work abroad. Students taking the graduate version complete additional assignments.

This course covers basic topics in autonomous marine vehicles, focusing mainly on software and algorithms for autonomous decision making (autonomy) by underwater vehicles operating in the ocean environments, autonomously adapting to the environment for improved sensing performance. It will introduce students to underwater acoustic communication environment, as well as the various options for undersea navigation, both crucial to the operation of collaborative undersea networks for environmental sensing. Sensors for acoustic, biological and chemical sensing by underwater vehicles and their integration with the autonomy system for environmentally adaptive undersea mapping and observation will be covered. The subject will have a significant lab component, involving the use of the MOOS-IvP autonomy software infrastructure for developing integrated sensing, modeling and control solutions for a variety of ocean observation problems, using simulation environments and a field testbed with small autonomous surface craft and underwater vehicles operated on the Charles River.

This course enhances cross-cultural understanding through the discussion of practical, ethical, and epistemological issues in conducting social science and applied research in foreign countries or unfamiliar communities. It includes a research practicum to help students develop interviewing, participant-observation, and other qualitative research skills, as well as critical discussion of case studies. The course is open to all interested students, but intended particularly for those planning to undertake exploratory research or applied work abroad. Students taking the graduate version complete additional assignments.

This course provides students with the opportunity to develop a map of contemporary architectural practice and discourse. The seminar examines six themes in terms of their recent history: city and global economy, urban plan and map of operations, program and performance, drawing and scripting, image and surface, and utopia and projection. Students will study buildings and read relevant texts in order to place recent architectural projects in disciplinary and cultural context.

This course is an intensive introduction to architectural design tools and process, and is taught through a series of short exercises. The conceptual basis of each exercise is in the interrogation of the geometric principles that lie at the core of each skill. Skills covered in this course range from techniques of hand drafting, to generation of 3D computer models, physical model-building, sketching, and diagramming. Weekly lectures and pin-ups address the conventions associated with modes of architectural representation and their capacity to convey ideas. This course is tailored and offered only to first-year M.Arch students.

This course enhances cross-cultural understanding through the discussion of practical, ethical, and epistemological issues in conducting social science and applied research in foreign countries or unfamiliar communities. It includes a research practicum to help students develop interviewing, participant-observation, and other qualitative research skills, as well as critical discussion of case studies. The course is open to all interested students, but intended particularly for those planning to undertake exploratory research or applied work abroad. Students taking the graduate version complete additional assignments.

Can you make a cellphone change the world?

NextLab is a hands-on year-long design course in which students research, develop and deploy mobile technologies for the next billion mobile users in developing countries. Guided by real-world needs as observed by local partners, students work in multidisciplinary teams on term-long projects, closely collaborating with NGOs and communities at the local level, field practitioners, and experts in relevant fields.

Students are expected to leverage technical ingenuity in both mobile and internet technologies together with social insight in order to address social challenges in areas such as health, microfinance, entrepreneurship, education, and civic activism. Students with technically and socially viable prototypes may obtain funding for travel to their target communities, in order to obtain the first-hand feedback necessary to prepare their technologies for full fledged deployment into the real world (subject to guidelines and limitations).

This course is a fast-paced introduction to the C and C++ programming languages, with an emphasis on good programming practices and how to be an effective programmer in these languages. Topics include object-oriented programming, memory management, advantages of C and C++, optimization, and others. Students are given weekly coding assignments and a final project to hone their skills. Recommended for programmers with some background and experience in other languages.

This course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month.

In 2004, the Ansari X PRIZE for suborbital spaceflight captured the public's imagination and revolutionized an industry, leveraging a $10M prize purse into over $100M in innovation. Building from that success, the X PRIZE Foundation is now developing new prizes to focus innovation around "Grand Challenge" themes, including genomics, energy, healthcare, and education.

This course will examine the intersection of incentives and innovation, drawing on economic models, historic examples, and recent experience of the X PRIZE Foundation to help develop a future prize in Energy Storage Technologies.

This course studies the transformation of childhood and youth since the 18th century in France, as well as the development of sentimentality within the family in a francophone context. Students will examine the personification of children, both as a source of inspiration for artistic creation and a political ideal aimed at protecting future generations, and consider various representations of childhood and youth in literature (e.g., Pagnol, Proust, Sarraute, Lave, Morgievre), movies (e.g., Truffaut), and songs (e.g., Brel, Barbara). This course is taught entirely in French.

This course explores the ways in which humans experience the realm of sound and how perceptions and technologies of sound emerge from cultural, economic, and historical worlds. It examines how environmental, linguistic, and musical sounds are construed cross-culturally. It describes the rise of telephony, architectural acoustics, sound recording, and the globalized travel of these technologies. Students address questions of ownership, property, authorship, and copyright in the age of digital file sharing. There is a particular focus on how the sound/noise boundary is imagined, created and modeled across diverse sociocultural and scientific contexts. Auditory examples will be provided. Instruction and practice in written and oral communication provided. At MIT, this course is limited to 20 students.

This course covers the fundamental principles, practices and tools of Lean Six Sigma methods that underlay modern organizational productivity approaches applied in aerospace, automotive, health care, and other sectors. It includes lectures, active learning exercises, a plant tour, talks by industry practitioners, and videos. One third of the course is devoted to a physical simulation of an aircraft manufacturing enterprise or a clinic to illustrate the power of Lean Six Sigma methods.

The course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month.

This course on global integration brings together matters of global markets and institutions, global strategy, organization, and leadership. Global integration, the process by which an organization with units around the world becomes united, will be presented as a link to entrepreneurship and general management. The seminar is offered only to those enrolled in the MIT Sloan Fellows Program and challenges the participants to draw upon their past managerial experiences, especially those affiliated with multinational companies.

This course introduces diverse meanings and uses of the concept of culture with historical and contemporary examples from scholarship and popular media around the globe. It includes first-hand observations, synthesized histories and ethnographies, and visual and narrated representations of human experiences. Students conduct empirical research on cultural differences through the systematic observation of human interaction, employ methods of interpretative analysis, and practice convincing others of the accuracy of their findings.

This course analyzes Russia's social, cultural, and political heritage in the 18th and 19th centuries, up to and including the Russian Revolution of 1917. It compares reforming and revolutionary impulses in the context of serfdom, the rise of the intelligentsia, and debates over capitalism. It focuses on historical and literary texts, especially the intersections between the two.

This course provides a broad conceptual and historical introduction to scientific theories of evolution and their place in the wider culture. It embraces historical, scientific and anthropological/cultural perspectives grounded in relevant developments in the biological sciences since 1800 that are largely responsible for the development of the modern theory of evolution by natural selection. Students read key texts, analyze key debates (e.g. Darwinian debates in the 19th century, and the creation controversies in the 20th century) and give class presentations.

This graduate-level course covers fluid systems dominated by the influence of interfacial tension. The roles of curvature pressure and Marangoni stress are elucidated in a variety of fluid systems. Particular attention is given to drops and bubbles, soap films and minimal surfaces, wetting phenomena, water-repellency, surfactants, Marangoni flows, capillary origami and contact line dynamics.

This course is the first part of a modular sequence of increasingly sophisticated (and challenging) laboratory courses required of all Chemistry majors: 5.35 Introduction to Experimental Chemistry, 5.36 Biochemistry and Organic Laboratory, 5.37 Organic and Inorganic Laboratory, and 5.38 Physical Chemistry Laboratory. This course provides students with a survey of spectroscopy, and introduces synthesis of coordination compounds and kinetics.

This class is part of the new laboratory curriculum in the MIT Department of Chemistry. Undergraduate Research-Inspired Experimental Chemistry Alternatives (URIECA) introduces students to cutting edge research topics in a modular format.

Acknowledgements

Professor Nelson and Dr. Twardowski would like to acknowledge the contributions of MIT Professor Timothy Swager to the development of this course. Module 3 on Fabrication of a Polymeric Light Emitting Device, taught by Timothy Swager, is not currently available on OCW.

This course is an investigation of the Roman empire of Augustus, the Frankish empire of Charlemagne, and the English empire in the age of the Hundred Years War. Students examine different types of evidence, read across a variety of disciplines, and develop skills to identify continuities and changes in ancient and medieval societies. Each term this course is different, looking at different materials from a variety of domains to explore ancient and mideveal studies. This version is a capture of the course as it was taught in 2012, and does not reflect how it is taught currently.

This course examines civic media in comparative, transnational and historical perspectives through the use of various theoretical tools, research approaches, and project design methods.