Free MIT courses and resources to help K-12 teachers make this school year a success

By Katherine Ouellette

Now that school is back in session, are you looking for fresh approaches and curricula for your class? MIT Open Learning’s free research-based teaching and learning resources can help you look at lessons in a new way. Dive into online courses about education, STEAM curricula, and other classroom activities this academic year on MIT Learn, a new online destination for lifelong learning from MIT.

Enrich your teaching

• Becoming a More Equitable Educator: Mindsets and practices that help all learners, especially underserved learners, to thrive and feel valued.
• Competency-Based Education: An overview of competency-based education in schools, presenting ideas, inspiration, strategies, and challenges.
• Design Thinking for Leading and Learning: A hands-on course for education leaders to learn about design thinking and explore how it can transform classroom learning and school communities.
• Education Technology Studio: A range of new and ongoing projects that hone understanding and skills in learning science, instructional design, development, and evaluation.
• Educational Theory and Practice I: A course designed to prepare learners to analyze themselves as teachers and as learners, their subject knowledge, adolescent development, learning styles, lesson planning, assessment strategies, classroom management techniques, and differentiated instruction.
• Educational Theory and Practice III: A course dealing with the practicalities of teaching, including: educational psychology, identification of useful resources that support instruction, learning to use technology in meaningful ways in the classroom, finding more methods of motivating learners, implementing differentiated instruction, and obtaining a teaching job.
• Envisioning the Graduate of the Future: Best practices on reimagining the capabilities, competencies, knowledge, and attitudes of the high school graduate of the future.
• Inclusive Teaching Module: Both a standalone online resource for those looking to explore materials related to inclusive teaching as well as an integral part of a blended workshop available to use at your own institution.
• Introduction to Education: Looking Forward and Looking Back on Education: An introductory course on teaching and learning science and mathematics in a variety of K-12 settings, including education and media, education reform, the history of education, simulations, games, and the digital divide.
• Launching Innovation in Schools: The first step towards becoming a change leader and launching initiatives to improve teaching and learning.
• Linguistics in K–12 Education: A seminar focused on creating pedagogical materials and methods that will motivate learners of all ages to be inquisitive about their native language and about language in general.
• MIT Project on Embodied Education: A project integrating physical activity and academic instruction at all levels, based on the growing body of research on the relationship between movement, the learning process, and pedagogical strategies.
• Syllabus Checklist to Support Learner Belonging and Achievement: A guide for instructors in their construction and revision of course design, assessment descriptions, teaching practices, and policies in their syllabi.
• Teaching and Learning: Cross-Cultural Perspectives: A course exploring the diverse ways that people teach and learn, discussing how theories of learning can be applied to a variety of hands-on, in-class learning activities.

Get inspired with STEAM lessons

• Full STEAM Ahead: High-quality MIT resources for teaching and learning online covering a variety of subjects.
• STEAM Learning Architecture: A Framework for Educational Innovation: A learner-centered framework using pedagogical approaches that span academic, social, and personal development.
• MIT OpenCourseWare for Educators: An initiative helping educators discover, adapt, and share the open educational resources and teaching materials available on OpenCourseWare under a Creative Commons license.
• Public Library Innovation Exchange: Creative, research-based STEAM learning experiences developed for the public library setting, as well as a handy facilitation guide.
• MIT pK-12 Videos: A series of educational videos designed to open the door to MIT and to promote STEM literacy.
• MIT Haystack Observatory K–12 STEM Lesson Plans: Lessons allowing learners to explore the atmosphere and the universe through electromagnetic waves, optics, molecular chemistry, and more.

Engage with climate change activities

• Day of Climate: A free, hands-on curriculum of lessons and activities introducing K-12 learners to climate research and how it shapes their lives.
• Climate in Classrooms: Tools for All Teachers and Disciplines: A guide for high school teachers incorporating accurate, meaningful climate education content into K-12 curricula for a variety of academic subjects.
• Climate Justice Instructional Toolkit: A wide range of supportive tools, including: adaptable climate justice teaching modules, a starter guide for teaching climate justice, data sets to enhance content and teaching approaches, and learner resources.
• Teaching with Sustainability: A resource providing knowledge and skills to infuse sustainability into lessons and practices, plus an online library of activities and lessons that align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
• An Education in Climate Change: A podcast about a new multidisciplinary climate change curriculum for high schools that aims to engage and mobilize teachers and learners across science, language arts, math, and more.

Dive into AI resources

• Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education: Curriculum modules and associated teaching materials available to all K-12 educators for free under a Creative Commons license.
• Generative Artificial Intelligence in K–12 Education: A class introducing the foundations of generative AI technology and exploring the new opportunities it enables for K–12 education.
• Day of AI: Free and open-source AI tools, curriculum, assessments, and teacher professional development materials to students and educators everywhere.
• Responsible AI for Computational Action: Project-based modules about AI.
• MIT App Inventor: A visual programming tool helping learners build fully-functional mobile apps that can have a global impact.
• AI Literacy for All: A podcast featuring social robotics pioneer Prof. Cynthia Breazeal in a discussion about artificial intelligence, digital citizenship, and AI education for all.

These courses and resources are available through MIT pK-12, the RAISE Initiative (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education), MIT OpenCourseWare, and MITx, which are part of MIT Open Learning. MIT pK-12 creates meaningful learning experiences for young learners and educators around the world through co-design, capacity building, and impactful work at scale. MIT RAISE Initiative is a collaboration between MIT Open Learning, the Media Lab, and Schwarzman College of Computing that helps prepare learners and workers for an AI-powered society. MIT OpenCourseWare offers free, online, open educational resources from more than 2,500 courses that span the MIT undergraduate and graduate curriculum. MITx offers high-quality massive open online courses adapted from the MIT classroom for learners worldwide.

Free MIT courses and resources to help K-12 teachers make this school year a success was originally published in MIT Open Learning on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.