Online courses directory (2511)

The course examines the causes and effects of rapid urbanization in developing countries. Using case studies from the world's four major developing regions, including (among others) Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Managua, Singapore, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Kabul, Beirut, Cairo, Kinshasa, Cape Town and Johannesburg, it explores the economic and political dynamics that grease the wheels of contemporary patterns of growth. In addition to examining both local and transnational forces that drive contemporary urbanization, the course focuses on key issues that emerge in rapidly growing cities of the developing world, ranging from growing income inequality and socio-economic exclusion, environmental challenges, and rising violence. Class sessions are discussion-based and focus on a critical analysis of the arguments presented in the readings.

Microeconomics will ground you in - surprise - basic microeconomics-how markets function, how to think about allocating scarce resources among competing uses, what profit maximizing behavior means in industries with different numbers of competitors, how technology and trade reshapes the opportunities people face, and so on. We will apply economic ideas to understand current economic problems, including the housing bubble, the current unemployment situation (particularly for high school gradutes), how Google makes its money and why healthcare costs are rising so fast.

The studio will focus on the district of Gaoming, located in the northwest of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) - the fastest growing and most productive region of China. The District has recently completed a planning effort in which several design institutes and a Hong Kong planning firm prepared ideas for a new central area near the river. The class will complement these efforts by focusing on planning and design options on the waterfront of the proposed new district and ways of integrating water/hydrological factors into all aspects and land uses of a modern city (residential, commercial, industrial) - including watershed and natural ecosystem protection, economic and recreational activities, transportation, and tourism.

For the last century, precepts of scientific management and administrative rationality have concentrated power in the hands of technical specialists, which in recent decades has contributed to widespread disenfranchisement and discontent among stakeholders in natural resources cases. In this seminar we examine the limitations of scientific management as a model both for governance and for gathering and using information, and describe alternative methods for informing and organizing decision-making processes. We feature cases involving large carnivores in the West (mountain lions and grizzly bears), Northeast coastal fisheries, and adaptive management of the Colorado River. There will be nightly readings and a short written assignment.

The course is an introduction to the approach of Reflective Practice developed by Donald Schön. It is an approach that enables professionals to understand how they use their knowledge in practical situations and how they can combine practice and learning in a more effective way. Through greater awareness of how they deploy their knowledge in practical situations, professionals can increase their capacities of learning in a more timely way. Understanding how they frame situations and ideas helps professionals to achieve greater flexibility and increase their capacity of conceptual innovation.

The objective of the course is to introduce students to the approach and methods of reflective practice by raising their awareness about their own cognitive resources and how they use them in their practice. The course will introduce theories of learning, knowledge generation, framing and reframing, theories of action, reflection-in-practice, and conceptual innovation, and provide students with opportunities to experiment with these theories in real life through practical exercises in which they reflect on real situations that they have faced in their past professional experience. Through these practical exercises, students will have the opportunity to reflect on their thinking capacities in the context of their practice.

This intensive and brief 4-day seminar, taught during MIT's Independent Activities Period in January, uses a case set in Hartford, Vermont to introduce economic development planning skills to students in the Master in City Planning (MCP) Degree Program. It introduces analytical tools that are used to assess local economic development conditions, issues, and opportunities as part of formulating economic development plans. The course is designed to provide MCP students with skills needed for applied economic development planning work in other courses, particularly Economic Development Planning (11.438) and Revitalizing Urban Main Streets (11.439).

The Workshop on Deliberative Democracy and Dispute Resolution, sponsored by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and The Flora and William Hewlett Foundation, is a two-day conference that brings together dispute resolution professionals and political theorists in the field of deliberative democracy.

Students work in small collaborative design teams to propose, build, and document a semester-long project focused on mobile applications for cell phones. Additional assignments include creating several small mobile applications such as context-aware mobile media capture and games. Students document their work through a series of written and oral proposals, progress reports, and final reports. This course covers the basics of J2ME and explores mobile imaging and media creation, GPS location, user-centered design, usability testing, and prototyping. Java experience is recommended.

Survey of principles underlying the structure and function of the nervous system, integrating molecular, cellular, and systems approaches. Topics: development of the nervous system and its connections, cell biology or neurons, neurotransmitters and synaptic transmission, sensory systems of the brain, the neuro-endocrine system, the motor system, higher cortical functions, behavioral and cellular analyses of learning and memory. First half of an intensive two-term survey of brain and behavioral studies for first-year graduate students.

This course provides a critical analysis of mass media in our culture. Various types of media such as books, films, video games, and online interactions will be discussed and reviewed. This course will also evaluate how information and ideas travel between people on a large scale.

Course 12.307 is an undergraduate course intended to illustrate, by means of 'hands on' projects, the basic dynamical and physical principles that govern the general circulation of the atmosphere and ocean and the day to day sequence of weather events.  The course parallels the content of the new undergraduate textbook Atmosphere, Ocean and Climate Dynamics by John Marshall and R. Alan Plumb.

This course teaches the art of guessing results and solving problems without doing a proof or an exact calculation. Techniques include extreme-cases reasoning, dimensional analysis, successive approximation, discretization, generalization, and pictorial analysis. Applications include mental calculation, solid geometry, musical intervals, logarithms, integration, infinite series, solitaire, and differential equations. (No epsilons or deltas are harmed by taking this course.) 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.

This course is conducted as an artificial intelligence programming contest in Java. Students work in teams to program virtual robots to play Battlecode, a real-time strategy game. Optional lectures are provided on topics and programming practices relevant to the game, and students learn and improve their programming skills experientially. The competition culminates in a live Battlecode tournament.

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.

This course is an introduction to copyright law and American law in general. Topics covered include: structure of federal law; basics of legal research; legal citations; how to use LexisNexis®; the 1976 Copyright Act; copyright as applied to music, computers, broadcasting, and education; fair use; Napster®, Grokster®, and Peer-to-Peer file-sharing; Library Access to Music Project; The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act; DVDs and encryption; software licensing; the GNU® General Public License and free software.

This class introduces students to the interdisciplinary nature of 21st-century engineering projects with three threads of learning: a technical toolkit, a social science toolkit, and a methodology for problem-based learning. Students encounter the social, political, economic, and technological challenges of engineering practice by participating in real engineering projects with faculty and industry; this semester's major project focuses on the engineering and economics of solar cells. Student teams will create prototypes and mixed media reports with exercises in project planning, analysis, design, optimization, demonstration, reporting and team building.

This short course provides an introduction to reactor dynamics including subcritical multiplication, critical operation in absence of thermal feedback effects and effects of Xenon, fuel and moderator temperature, etc. Topics include the derivation of point kinetics and dynamic period equations; techniques for reactor control including signal validation, supervisory algorithms, model-based trajectory tracking, and rule-based control; and an overview of light-water reactor startup. Lectures and demonstrations employ computer simulation and the use of the MIT Research Reactor.

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.

This course develops logical, empirically based arguments using statistical techniques and analytic methods. Elementary statistics, probability, and other types of quantitative reasoning useful for description, estimation, comparison, and explanation are covered. Emphasis is on the use and limitations of analytical techniques in planning practice.

The purpose of this seminar is to provide a context for understanding the challenges of urban food provisioning from a perspective of sustainability and social inclusion in cities of the global South. The seminar will be specifically geared towards preparing students for direct participation in urban markets and food policy project intervention in Cartagena, Colombia. 

To learn more about the Cartagena Practicum, visit the class website.

Fundamentals of photoelectric conversion: charge excitation, conduction, separation, and collection. Lectures cover commercial and emerging photovoltaic technologies and cross-cutting themes, including conversion efficiencies, loss mechanisms, characterization, manufacturing, systems, reliability, life-cycle analysis, risk analysis, and technology evolution in the context of markets, policies, society, and environment.

This course is one of many OCW Energy Courses, and it is an elective subject in MIT's undergraduate Energy Studies Minor. This Institute–wide program complements the deep expertise obtained in any major with a broad understanding of the interlinked realms of science, technology, and social sciences as they relate to energy and associated environmental challenges.

This course is a series of lectures on prospectus and thesis writing. It is a required course for undergraduate Nuclear Science and Engineering majors, taken during the fall semester of their senior year. Students select a thesis topic and a thesis advisor who reviews and approves the prospectus for thesis work in the subsequent spring term.