Online courses directory (2511)

This landscape and environmental planning workshop investigates and propose a framework for the enhancement, development and preservation of the natural and cultural landscape of the Cardener River Corridor in Catalunya, Spain. The workshop is carried out in conjunction with the Polytechnic University of Catalunya, and the Barcelona Provincial Council (Diputació de Barcelona).

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).

This class explores the development of Hollywood Film Noir. There will be a focus on émigré directors who moved to Hollywood when the Nazis rose to power. Assignments will include short response papers about three of the films in the series, and reports by students on examples of "neo-noir" films from recent decades.

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.

D-Lab World Prosthetics is a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Jaipur Foot Organization to improve the design, manufacture, and distribution of rehabilitation devices in the developing world. The course welcomes individuals interested in physical rehabilitation to work on multidisciplinary teams of students with bioengineering, mechanical engineering, material science, and medical or pre-medical backgrounds. Students will learn about the basics of human walking, different types of gait disabilities, as well as the technologies that seek to address those disabilities. Patient perspectives and current research areas are presented. Lecture topics focus on lower-limb disabilities, including polio and above-knee and below-knee amputation, and will cover both developed and developing world techniques for overcoming these disabilities. Students form teams to design and prototype low-cost orthotic and prosthetic devices, and present their work at the end of the course.

D-Lab World Prosthetics is a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Jaipur Foot Organization to improve the design, manufacture, and distribution of rehabilitation devices in the developing world. The course welcomes individuals interested in physical rehabilitation to work on multidisciplinary teams of students with bioengineering, mechanical engineering, material science, and medical or pre-medical backgrounds. Students will learn about the basics of human walking, different types of gait disabilities, as well as the technologies that seek to address those disabilities. Patient perspectives and current research areas are presented. Lecture topics focus on lower-limb disabilities, including polio and above-knee and below-knee amputation, and will cover both developed and developing world techniques for overcoming these disabilities. Students form teams to design and prototype low-cost orthotic and prosthetic devices, and present their work at the end of the course.

Memory is not a unitary faculty, but rather consists of multiple forms of learning that differ in their operating characteristics and neurobiological substrates. This seminar will consider current debates regarding the cognitive and neural architectures of memory, specifically focusing on recent efforts to address these controversies through application of functional neuroimaging (primarily fMRI and PET).

This seminar explores approaches to representation for distributed cinematic storytelling. The relationship between story creation and story appreciation is analyzed. Readings are drawn from literary and cinematic criticism, as well as from descriptions of interactive, distributed works. Students analyze a range of storytelling techniques; they develop a proposal using visualization techniques; and they prototype a working story experience, culminating in a final project displayed at the end of the semester.

This course will investigate the semantics of generic sentences, i.e., sentences that are used to talk about habits, tendencies, dispositions, or kinds. For instance:

1. Dogs are good pets.
2. The giant panda is an endangered species.
3. A soccer player makes lots of money.
4. Mary smokes after dinner.
5. This machine crushes oranges.

This is a half-semester course.

In this 3-unit class, we will read Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost. The goal of the class is for students to come away feeling comfortable with its language and argument; meeting in a small group will also allow us to talk about the key questions and issues raised by the poem. 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 forms an introduction to a selection of mathematical topics that are not covered in traditional mechanical engineering curricula, such as differential geometry, integral geometry, discrete computational geometry, graph theory, optimization techniques, calculus of variations and linear algebra. The topics covered in any particular year depend on the interest of the students and instructor. Emphasis is on basic ideas and on applications in mechanical engineering. This year, the subject focuses on selected topics from linear algebra and the calculus of variations. It is aimed mainly (but not exclusively) at students aiming to study mechanics (solid mechanics, fluid mechanics, energy methods etc.), and the course introduces some of the mathematical tools used in these subjects. Applications are related primarily (but not exclusively) to the microstructures of crystalline solids.

This class is jointly sponsored by the MIT Museum, Massachusetts Bay Maritime Artisans, the Department of Mechanical Engineering's Center for Ocean Engineering, and the Department of Architecture. The course teaches the fundamental steps in traditional boat design and demonstrates connections between craft and modern methods. Instructors provide vessel design orientation and then students carve their own shape ideas in the form of a wooden half-hull model. Experts teach the traditional skills of visualizing and carving your model in this phase of the class. After the models are completed, a practicing naval architect guides students in translating shape from models into a lines plan. The final phase of the class is a comparative analysis of the designs generated by the group.

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 class deals with interactive art. Visiting artists will discuss their work from a theoretical and practical perspective. Discussions of the history of interactive digital art and contemporary issues in the field will take place. Students will develop an interactive art project for a final exhibition or submit a short paper.

This class deals with interactive art. Visiting artists will discuss their work from a theoretical and practical perspective. Discussions of the history of interactive digital art and contemporary issues in the field will take place. Students will develop an interactive art project for a final exhibition or submit a short paper.

This subject presents a range of advanced topics in integrated logistics and supply chain management. The course was conducted in a lecture-discussion format, with participation of corporate executives as guest lecturers. Students prepare industry assessment analyses and make formal classroom presentations. Specific topics alternate from year to year, but basic content includes procurement strategies and strategic sourcing, dynamic pricing and revenue management tactics, mitigation of supply chain risk through supply contracts, strategic outsourcing of supply chain functions and operations, management and operation of third party logistics providers, and management of supply chain security.

An advanced seminar on issues of current interest in human and machine vision. Topics vary from year to year. This year, the class will involve studying the perception of materials. Participants discuss current literature as well as their ongoing research. Topics are tackled from multiple standpoints, including optics, psychophysics, computer graphics and computer vision.