Online courses directory (2511)

This course surveys the increasing interaction between communities, as the barrier of distance succumbed to both curiosity and new transport technologies. It explores Western Europe and the United States' rise to world dominance, as well as the great divergence in material, political, and technological development between Western Europe and East Asia post–1750, and its impact on the rest of the world. It examines a series of evolving relationships, including human beings and their physical environment; religious and political systems; and sub-groups within communities, sorted by race, class, and gender. It introduces historical and other interpretive methodologies using both primary and secondary source materials.

During this seminar, students will chronicle their MIT experiences and investigate MIT history and culture. Visits to the MIT archives and museum, along with relevant readings, will supplement students’ experiences as source material for discussion and writing.

This course is built around practical instruction in the design and analysis of non-­digital games. It provides students the texts, tools, references, and historical context to analyze and compare game designs across a variety of genres. In teams, students design, develop, and thoroughly test their original games to better understand the interaction and evolution of game rules. Covers various genres and types of games, including sports, game shows, games of chance, card games, schoolyard games, board games, and role-­playing games.

This is a mostly self-contained research-oriented course designed for undergraduate students (but also extremely welcoming to graduate students) with an interest in doing research in theoretical aspects of algorithms that aim to extract information from data. These often lie in overlaps of two or more of the following: Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Statistics, and / or Operations Research.

Doctoral level seminar in system dynamics modeling with a focus on social, economic and technical systems. The course covers classic works in dynamic modeling from various disciplines and current research problems and papers. Participants critique theories and models, often including replication, testing, and improvement of various models.

This course provides understanding of the theory and processes of negotiation as practiced in a variety of settings. It is designed for relevance to the broad spectrum of bargaining problems faced by the manager and professional. With an emphasis on simulations, exercises, role playing and cases, students are given an opportunity to develop negotiation skills experientially and to understand negotiation in useful analytical frameworks.

The course explores the interactions between state and market as instigators of China's urbanization, and its consequences of land, housing, transportation, energy, environment, migration, finance, urban inequality. Themes include the de-synchronization of China's urbanization, potential differences between China's past and future development, and differentiators between China's urbanization and those of other countries. This discussion-based course asks students to participate in the conversation with the course instructor and guest lecturers by drawing upon their experiences and academic or professional backgrounds.

This seminar is a space for collaborative inquiry into the relationships between social movements and the media. We'll review these relationships through the lens of social movement theory, and function as a workshop to develop student projects. Seminar participants will work together to explore frameworks, methods, and tools for understanding networked social movements in the digital media ecology. We will engage with social movement studies as a body of theoretical and empirical work, and learn about key concepts including: resource mobilization; political process; framing; New Social Movements; collective identity; tactical media; protest cycles; movement structure; and more. We'll explore methods of social movement investigation, examine new data sources and tools for movement analysis, and grapple with recent innovations in social movement theory and research. Assignments include short blog posts, a book review, co-facilitation of a seminar discussion, and a final research project focused on social movement media practices in comparative perspective.

Introduction to systems thinking and system dynamics modeling applied to strategy, organizational change, and policy design. Students use simulation models, management flight simulators, and case studies to develop conceptual and modeling skills for the design and management of high-performance organizations in a dynamic world.

2010 marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo's astonishing sightings of features on the moon, stars, and moons around Jupiter that no one had seen before. Recreate these new ways of seeing and exploring from the materials and techniques Galileo had on hand, while you reflect on the times and works of Galileo. What was it like to improvise new ways of seeing and exploring from the materials and techniques on hand? What do we notice? What surprises us? How can we relate to past experience and ideas? What are we curious to research? How does our experimenting grow into our learning? Let your own curiosity drive your explorations.

This course explores how gender shaped the historical experiences and cultural productions in the North American West during the time it was being explored, settled, and imagined. The North American West of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provides a fascinating case study of the shifting meanings of gender, race, citizenship, and power in border societies. As the site of migration, settlement, and displacement, it spawned contests over land, labor disputes, inter-ethnic conflicts and peaceful relations, and many kinds of cultural productions.

The Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies (GCWS)

This course is part of the Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies. The GCWS at MIT brings together scholars and teachers at nine degree-granting institutions in the Boston area who are devoted to graduate teaching and research in Women's Studies and to advancing interdisciplinary Women's Studies scholarship. Learn more about the GCWS.

This course is an introduction to computational biology emphasizing the fundamentals of nucleic acid and protein sequence and structural analysis; it also includes an introduction to the analysis of complex biological systems. Topics covered in the course include principles and methods used for sequence alignment, motif finding, structural modeling, structure prediction and network modeling, as well as currently emerging research areas.

Este curso contiene un subconjunto de material en español del curso 16.660J (en Inglés). Para la versión en Inglés, por favor vea 16.660J Introduction to Lean Six Sigma Methods January IAP 2012.

El programa presenta los fundamentos del pensamiento Lean a través de conceptos y herramientas prácticas y aplicables. Este curso cubre los principios fundamentales, prácticas y herramientas de una empresa Lean, incluyendo Lean Six Sigma y otros métodos de enfoques modernos para la productividad organizacional. El curso incluye ejemplos y ejercicios aplicados en la industria aeroespacial, automotriz, servicios de salud y otros sectores. La metodología es altamente interactiva con simulaciones y ejercicios orientados hacia el aprendizaje de conceptos aplicados en experiencias grupales, incluyendo una simulación Lego®, tour virtual a fábricas, charlas de expertos entre otros. Este curso fue ofrecido en la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile a través del Centro de Excelencia en Gestión de Producción (GEPUC) de 17 a 19 abril, 2013.

MIT Professional Education Conecta A Los Profesionales Con Conocimiento Y Expertise Avanzado A Traves De Entrenamiento Y Capacitacion Los cursos y programas ofrecidos por MIT Professional Education son diseñados por expertos de MIT para conectar a profesionales de la industria con los últimos avances tecnológicos y de conocimiento. La inmersión en un intenso ambiente de aprendizaje permite a profesionales alrededor del mundo la oportunidad de acceder a información crucial para nutrir sus carreras, generar un mayor desarrollo empresarial e impactar al mundo. Nuestros programas le entregan a los participantes acceso inigualable a los mayores expertos de cada área. Esta experiencia de aprendizaje altamente focalizada les permite acceder a tópicos de interés vital y compartir con expertos reconocidos a nivel mundial además de incorporarse a una red internacional de colegas talentosos. Para mayor información acerca de los programas de MIT Professional Education favor visitar: http://professionaleducation.mit.edu.

This course will introduce students to the principles, performance, and challenges of electrochemical and photoelectrochemical devices. This will be done in the context of global energy needs and challenges, and will include an overview of different energy technologies.

This course applies the tools of anthropology to examine biology in the age of genomics, biotechnological enterprise, biodiversity conservation, pharmaceutical bioprospecting, and synthetic biology. It examines such social concerns such as bioterrorism, genetic modification, and cloning. It offers an anthropological inquiry into how the substances and explanations of biology—ecological, organismic, cellular, molecular, genetic, informatic—are changing. It examines such artifacts as cell lines, biodiversity databases, and artificial life models, and using primary sources in biology, social studies of the life sciences, and literary and cinematic materials, and asks how we might answer Erwin Schrodinger's 1944 question, "What Is Life?" today.

This course examines how people learn, practice, and evaluate traditional and contemporary craft techniques. Social science theories of design, embodiment, apprenticeship learning, skill, labor, expertise, and tacit knowledge are used to explore distinctions and connections among art, craft, and science. We will also discuss the commoditization of craft into market goods, collectible art, and tourism industries. Ethnographic and historical case studies include textiles, glassblowing, quilting, cheese making, industrial design, home cooking, factory and laboratory work, CAD-CAM. In-class demonstrations and hands-on craft projects will be included.

This course provides a foundation to the design of the environment from the scale of the object, to the building to the larger territory. The design disciplines of architecture as well as urbanism and landscape are examined in context of the larger influence of the arts and sciences. Students are expected to develop skills in thinking and analysis, spatial representation, and design methodologies. Through lectures and design exercises, students are provided an opportunity to establish a reference for understanding the discipline of architecture and environmental design, and are given an introduction to design fundamentals and the design process.

What was the early modern economy like, and how did monetization impact artistic production, consumption, and the afterlife of objects? This seminar-format class explores major topics and themes concerning interconnections between early modern artistic and architectural creation and the economy. We will approach capitalism not as an inevitable system, but rather as a particular historical formation. Core course themes: commodification, production, and consumption, using case studies of the impact of the mercantile economy on chapels; palaces; prints and paintings, and their replication; and other material objects, including coins.

Transmedia narratives exist across multiple storytelling platforms, using the advantages of each to enhance the experience of the audience. No matter which medium nor how many, the heart of any successful transmedia project is a good story. In this class we will spend time on the basics of solid storytelling in speculative fiction before we move on to how to translate those elements into various media. We will then explore how different presentations in different media can complement and enhance our storytelling. While we will read scholarly articles and discuss ideas about transmedia, this is primarily a class in making speculative fiction transmedia projects. We will analyze the strengths and weaknesses of various mediums and consider how they complement each other, and how by using several different media we can give the audience a more complete, rewarding, and immersive experience.

CMS.611J / 6.073 Creating Video Games is a class that introduces students to the complexities of working in small, multidisciplinary teams to develop video games. Students will learn creative design and production methods, working together in small teams to design, develop, and thoroughly test their own original digital games. Design iteration across all aspects of video game development (game design, audio design, visual aesthetics, fiction and programming) will be stressed. Students will also be required to focus test their games, and will need to support and challenge their game design decisions with appropriate focus testing and data analysis.