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In last Saturday's New York Times Op-Ed, Professor Michel DeGraff and Molly Ruggles outlined a plan to leverage the power of Haitian Creole ("Kreyòl") as a tool for educational and socio-economic success in Haiti.  

In a recent article from Future Tense, Richard Larson's BLOSSOMS puts teachers at the center of educational technology.

Check out MIT+K12 Videos new website! Their mission is to use MIT's unique resources to inspire the inner scientist in all learners. We believe everyone can have wonder for our world - so we create video content that entertains and engages just as much as it educates.

What kinds of decisions does an expert make?

In an xTalk earlier this week, Carl Wieman presented his work on education reform: how cognitive psychology research has illuminated what it means to “think like a scientist or engineer,” and how those abilities are developed. 

Wieman’s interest in this subject developed after observing that graduate students, while academically successful, were not able to apply physics concepts.  

At last week’s xTalk/HHMI presentation, Jeremy Orloff and Jonathan Bloom shared their experience teaching a Probability & Statistics class for non-math majors (18.05). Their goal was to bring student-centered active-learning into what had been a traditional lecture course with dwindling enrollment and slated for possible cancellation.

On April 2^nd’ Pavel Luksha, professor at the Moscow Skolkovo School of Management and Director of Re-Engineering Futures, led a stimulating tour through the next 5-30 years of the global technology landscape.

He defined the five major global challenges that require a search for a new model of education:

Earlier this month, Prof Tom Kochan delivered a provocative and absorbing xTalk on the changing expectations of the American Dream and how it affects work, education, and social mobility.

At Thursday's joint xTalk/HHMI Education Group, Dr Sanjoy Mahajan led a lively exploration of different approaches to teaching and the impact of those approaches on long term learning and retention.

He contrasted the topical approach against that of teaching through modes of learning. In other words, instead of listing a set of topics to cover and systematically teaching them in sequence, Mahajan suggested the notion of teaching around modes of reasoning: looking for the main principles underlying a discipline and teaching problems and projects related to those principles.

We're excited to share our spring schedule of xTalks. We have an exciting roster of events. Some sessions explore education’s impact in broader social contexts; some focus on pedagogy.

All events are free, and refreshments will be served. We hope you will join us. For more information, please visit odl.mit.edu/xtalks and odl.mit.edu/events.

Last Thursday Jan 30, HarvardX Research Fellow Justin Reich presented on "Motivation and MOOCs: How Student Expectations Shape Learning in Open Online Settings.” Reich’s research seeks to understand how students use MOOCs as well as to learn what motivates them to enroll and take MOOCs.  Reich believes that in order to serve learners well, educators should understand students’ motivations, especially in MOOCs, where audiences can be far more diverse than typical residential college classrooms.