CyberclassroomTV Online Education Network: MIT OPENCOURSEWARE 2018: Greatest Hits: Architecture and Urban Studies and Planning

September Newsletter

OCW’s Greatest Hits: Architecture and Urban Studies and Planning

Model from a student's final project that demonstrates the relationship between object and void. (Courtesy of Johanna Greenspan-Johnston. Used with permission.)

It’s time for a new post in our Greatest Hits series, highlighting individual MIT departments through a handpicked selection from their most-visited OCW courses. This month we feature the departments of Architecture and Urban Studies and Planning.

Architecture

4.111 Introduction to Architecture & Environmental Design, taught by Lorena Bello Gomez
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.

4.125 Architecture Studio: Building in Landscapes, taught by Professor Jan Wampler
This undergraduate design studio “introduces skills needed to build within a landscape establishing continuities between the built and natural world. Students learn to build appropriately through analysis of landscape and climate for a chosen site, and to conceptualize design decisions through drawings and models.”

> Read the complete article

11.384 Malaysia Sustainable Cities Practicum (Updated Course) The Malaysia Sustainable Cities Practicum is an intensive field-based course that brings 15 graduate students to Malaysia to learn about and analyze sustainable city development in five cities in Malaysia. The students in the Practicum will help determine the extent to which these efforts have been successful. They will identify specific projects or policy-making efforts that the following year's cohort of International Visiting Scholars can examine more closely.

Spotlighting important (mini)figures in STEM: An interview with Maia Weinstock

LEGO® figurine of Shirley Ann Jackson by Maia Weinstock. (Image courtesy of pixbymaia on flickr. License: BY-NC-SA.)

By Sarah Hansen, OCW Educator Project Manager

Women scientists and engineers have long played significant roles in shaping STEM disciplines and advancing technological innovation, yet many go unrecognized. (Case in point: How many women scientists can you name right now?) Maia Weinstock is committed to changing this. In the fall of 2017, she taught WGS.S10 History of Women in Science and Engineering, a course for MIT undergraduates that spotlighted the contributions of women in STEM and created space for uncovering how biases in academia and popular culture impact scientific achievements.

The course also had this: LEGO® minifigures depicting women scientists, created and photographed by Weinstock herself. (We know. History + LEGO Minifigures + Science = Where Can I Sign Up? Thanks, MIT, for being awesome and for sharing it all on MIT OpenCourseWare, for free.)
> Read the complete article

21H.102 American History Since 1865 (Updated Course) This course examines the social, cultural, political, and economic history of the United States, from the Civil War to the present. It uses secondary analysis and primary documents, such as court cases, personal accounts, photographs, and films, to examine some of the key issues in the shaping of modern America, including industrialization and urbanization, immigration, the rise of a mass consumer society, the emergence of the US as a global power, and the development of civil rights activism and other major social movements.

5 tips for getting to know your students

By Sarah Hansen, OCW Educator Project Manager

Students learn better when you see them as individuals and care about their success. But it can be challenging to get to know your students when you teach large lecture classes, or interact with a new group of students (or several!) every 15 weeks. MIT faculty members face these challenges, too. We’ve mined their Instructor Insights to bring you 5 creative ways to get to know your students this semester.

1. Start Your Lecture Sitting Down
With 300-400 students taking Introductory Biology each year, Professor Hazel Sive has ample experience getting to know students in the context of large classes. One of her strategies is to make use of the time before class starts to connect with students. In her Instructor Insights, she notes that “before class, I sometimes walk around the room and meet groups of students. Sometimes I start the lecture sitting down with a group of students and have them introduce themselves to the class at the beginning of the lecture, so that we have a bit of personal interaction going on.”

> Read the complete article

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