OEIT's director Vijay Kumar was recently interviewed by Education-Portal.com during the OpenCourseWare Consortium held at MIT last month.
Dr. Kumar talked about OEIT's unique approach to educational innovation which involves active engagement and dialog with the faculty:
"We spend a lot of time talking with our faculty on the problems they're trying to solve and what's getting in the way ...there's no resistance, because we don't start with the solution, we start with the problem. It's a natural process."
Kumar also explained MIT's unusual strategy of leveraging student ingenuity through partnerships with faculty and other targeted support:
"A lot of our applications and infrastructure were actually built by students. ...Our faculty helps them build these applications. Some of them we select and make part of the infrastructure."
OEIT's function as incubator of new initiatives was also discussed as well as its role in identifying and developing technology used to support innovative pedagogies. The entire interview is available on the Education-Portal site.
Office of Educational Innovation and Technology
Building NE48-308, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
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