
The 2013 MacVicar Faculty Fellows with Dean for Undergraduate Education Daniel Hastings (back row, center). Front row: Linda Griffith and Rob Miller. Back row: Laura Schulz, Hastings and Emma Teng. Photo: Dominick Reuter
Attendees at the MacVicar Day celebration on Friday, March 15, became participants in an online-learning experiment led by Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Anette “Peko” Hosoi. She asked the crowd in Bartos Theatre, “What is the first image that appeared in my Google search for ‘online digital learning’?”
Hosoi instructed those with laptops or mobile phones to go to the website m.socrative.com to record both their answer to the multiple-choice question and their degree of confidence in their response.
“If you use this tool to guide your lectures, the question about confidence can give you more valuable feedback,” Hosoi said. (And the correct response, she later revealed, was a photograph of Sanjay Sarma, MIT’s director of digital learning.)
MacVicar Day is an annual event held to celebrate the new MacVicar Faculty Fellows. The MacVicar Program was established in 1992 to commemorate Margaret MacVicar ’64, ScD ’67, MIT’s first dean for undergraduate education and founder of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. This year’s event was a symposium titled “Reimagining the MIT Classroom: Experiments With Digital Learning.”
In addition to Hosoi, who is a MacVicar Fellow, speakers at the event included: Jesús del Alamo, the Donner Professor of Electrical Engineering and MacVicar Fellow; Anne McCants, professor of history and MacVicar Fellow; Troy van Voorhis, professor of chemistry; and newly appointed MacVicar Faculty Fellow Emma Teng, an associate professor of China studies and the T.T. and Wei Fong Chao Professor of Asian Civilizations. Daniel Hastings, the dean for undergraduate education and the Cecil and Ida Green Education Professor of Engineering Systems and Aeronautics and Astronautics, moderated the symposium. Read more.