Reshaping teacher learning and supporting educators
This past year, Open Learning hosted six playtests where educators provided feedback on prototypes coming out of the Teaching Systems Lab (TSL), while also learning about the latest developments in games and simulations in teacher education. Along with recent improvements to the OCW Educator Portal and the launching of the Woodrow Wilson Academy, a graduate school of education, these events underscore Open Learning’s commitment to transforming the education landscape for both learners and teachers, on campus and around the world.
With 169 attendees in 2017-2018, the TSL’s playtests bring to life the lab’s mission of making teacher education as innovative and engaging as student learning. Teachers, student teachers, and those interested in education were invited to the playtest events, where they participated in a range of activities, from testing subject-specific games to learning about classroom support to rethinking the role of assessment. The TSL has been running playtests every two months since 2016, creating collaborative environments in which educators can share their feedback, connect with others committed to improving education, and come away with the skills and knowledge to transform the ways that they and their students learn. “I’m so pleased you are thinking about ways to keep teachers engaged so we can try to get our students engaged,” said a participant in one of this year’s events. “I didn’t know that the group existed. I’m excited to share with the schools’ faculty—look at these things they are making.”
Through playtest events, the TSL also supports and collaborates with other education initiatives at MIT and locally. For example, OCW Educator, a feature of OpenCourseWare (OCW) that shares teaching approaches and materials from MIT with educators everywhere for free through a special portal and publications, collaborated with the TSL this past year on a playtest event with teachers. Participants’ feedback led to a number of improvements to the Educator Portal’s navigability, making it easier for education professionals to find and use the vast library of openly licensed MIT teaching materials available on OCW—and to adapt the resources they find there to their own classrooms.
As a faculty-inspired initiative, OCW Educator recognizes and highlights the need to support educators by providing resources and knowledge to keep pace with the changing nature of education. Sarah E. Hansen, the OCW Educator project manager, states that the initiative is “integral” to OpenCourseWare’s “dual mission of unlocking knowledge and empowering minds because educators are multipliers, individual users who share MIT OER [online educational resources] and teaching approaches with multitudes of learners.”
Over the past year, alone, Educator content was viewed over 316,000 times. Visitors to the site have access to not only teaching materials—ranging from the engineering fields to economics to health science and technology—but also teaching insights and strategies directly from MIT instructors. In a special section of the OCW Educator site called “Instructor Insights,” users can learn about MIT instructors’ thoughts on and approaches to topics like course design, active learning, and engaging learners. During the last year, OCW Educator published 19 Instructor Insights, bringing the number of available insights to over 200. Two recent examples include CMS.631 Data Storytelling Studio: Climate Change, in which research scientist Rahul Bhargava shares insights about teaching a “compass-led” course, and 16.842 Fundamentals of Systems Engineering, in which Professor Olivier de Weck shares his insights about teaching a small online private course (SPOC) and engaging students in the design process.
For even more in-depth instruction on teaching approaches and strategies, education professionals this year could enroll in 11.154x Launching Innovation in Schools, a six-week MOOC targeted to school leaders ⏤ from teachers to principals to superintendents and school board members. For his work on the course, Justin Reich, the Teaching Systems Lab executive director, received the 2018 MITx Prize for Teaching and Learning in MOOCs. Recognized for creating a collaborative environment for educators and for encouraging educators to implement specific actions in their own schools every week, the course is imagined as “not just a learning experience,” with lessons applying only after the fact. Instead, as Reich explains, “You are encouraged to take what you are learning and immediately start applying it in your context to get feedback and iteratively improve a change initiative together.” As part of an initiative to provide school leaders with the resources to address the particular needs of their schools in a fast-evolving landscape, the course exemplifies the many ways that Open Learning supports and empowers educators with the latest insights, tools, and resources to make an impact in their classrooms and education worldwide.
This fall, MIT continues to change student learning and teacher education with the launch of the Woodrow Wilson Academy. Two years in the making, the Woodrow Wilson Academy is a new graduate school, co-designed by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and MIT, on a mission to transform the preparation of educators. The Woodrow Wilson Academy is initially offering competency-based master’s in education programs in middle- and secondary-school science, technology/engineering, and math (STEM) teacher education. As it welcomes its inaugural class, the school joins Open Learning’s other efforts on the path to reshaping teacher learning and supporting educators through these changes.