March 2012 Agenda

Kreyòl

Wednesday, March 28

~6pm–??? (pending arrival): Meeting among organizers only: Informal planning and check-up session among organizers

Thursday, March 29

9am-noon, Biology / STAR workshop: STAR BioChem (Instructor: Lourdes Alemán)

12:30-2:30pm: Lunch session with special guests

• General introduction to MIT-Haiti Initiative: context and overview
• Overview and rationale of agenda for workshops: past, program, players and plan

3-6pm: Private consultation sessions with Lourdes Alemán on STAR

3-6pm, Physics / TEAL workshop: TEAL I (Instructor: Peter Dourmashkin)

Friday, March 30

9am-noon, Physics / TEAL workshop: TEAL II (Instructor: Peter Dourmashkin)

12:30-2:30pm: Lunch session with special guests

• Perspectives and prospects for technology-enhanced and open education in Haiti: overview of MIT’s OpenCourseWare + other Open Education Resources
• Rationales and long-term objectives of MIT-Haiti initiative

3-6pm: Private consultation sessions with Peter Dourmashkin on TEAL

3-6pm, Biology / STAR workshop: STAR BioGen (Instructor: Lourdes Alemán)

Saturday, March 31

9:30am-noon: Planning meeting among MIT, FOKAL, FdS, university administrators and technology experts and providers

• How to scale and extend
• Infrastructure issues
• Planning future workshops

Workshop Abstracts

Lourdes Alemán (life sciences with STAR)

The STAR (Software Tools for Academics and Researchers) program seeks to bridge the divide between scientific research and the classroom. Our multidisciplinary team, consisting of research-trained scientists and software engineers, collaborates with MIT faculty to design innovative and intuitive software tools for classroom use. The STAR educational tools are FREELY available. In addition to the software, the STAR web site contains educational materials that help incorporate these tools into various educational settings. The workshop highlighted two biology STAR tools: StarBiochem and StarGenetics. StarBiochem is a molecular 3D viewer that allows students to learn key concepts about the biology of molecules and proteins in an interactive manner. StarGenetics is a virtual genetics laboratory where students can simulate mating experiments and actively explore a wide array of genetics concepts.

We will cover the following items for each tool:

• the rationale for designing the tool
• the design process
• how to access the tool and supporting educational materials
• tour of the tool
• hands-on activity with an example exercise
• examples of how the tool is currently being used
• how to build custom exercises

Peter Dourmashkin (physical sciences with TEAL/OCW)

For the past ten years the Physics Department at MIT has developed a program called Technology Enabled Active Learning (TEAL) which has fundamentally changed the way the introductory Newtonian Mechanics and Electricity and Magnetism physics courses are taught at MIT. TEAL represents an attempt to incorporate a variety of new teaching ideas and technologies into first-year physics subjects. The course is a non-lecture based course with an emphasis on active engaged learning. Students work together in groups of three, using tabletop experiments and computer-based visualizations to develop their conceptual and analytic understanding of mechanics and electricity and magnetism. The syllabus is designed to integrate concepts, experiments, and problem solving skills in an interactive learning environment in which students regular discuss concepts and problems in class with their teachers. All of the course materials are now available in OCW Scholar. This talk will focus on describing TEAL and in particular how the TEAL materials on OCW Scholar can be adapted for use in teaching physics in many institutional settings.