By Yvonne Ng

Now in its fourth season, OpenCourseWare Chalk Radio has drawn thousands of listeners, who tune in to hear from MIT educators about their cutting-edge research and innovative teaching, along with candid, funny, and personal insights into their profession. Behind the scenes of the podcast, Sarah Hansen, Brett Paci, Dave Lishansky, and Peter Chipman help bring to light the motivations, intentions, and creativity that underscore teaching at MIT.

A wide range of expertise

The podcast runs the gamut of MIT subjects; past episodes have covered such topics as nuclear engineering, financial technology, climate change, linguistics, film, and artificial intelligence literacy. However, a unifying perspective is the teaching philosophies and approaches that engage and encourage learners to develop their critical thinking and creativity.

“When you show someone something surprising, they’re fully engaged. They’re always multi-sensory engaged. They’re listening. In a lot of cases, they’re touching, in some cases, even smelling. Taste is the sense that we don’t tend to engage in nuclear science, with good reason.”

-Professor Mike Short on using hands-on instruction to teach 22.01 Introduction to Nuclear Engineering and Ionizing Radiation

Some of the connective threads among episodes include democratizing knowledge, personalizing learning, mentoring students and teachers, and humanizing education. As students learn from teachers and teachers learn from their students, a wonderful reciprocity blossoms between them that deepens understanding and bolsters excellence.

 

Chalk Radio Team Fun Facts



The Chalk Radio name was inspired by the many MIT instructors who still love using chalk to show their thinking as they work on a problem in real time. And in many ways, that’s what guests are doing on the show: they’re talking through how they teach, sharing what worked, what didn’t, and inviting us to learn along with them. Also, Chalk Radio sounded catchy because it resembled “Talk Radio.”



The Chalk Radio tape animation is on its’ third version due to feedback from the podcast’s eagle-eyed followers. This version includes previous feedback like the tape amounts changing to match the podcast playback length and matching spindle speeds and tape changes.
The only "great" thing that we record but do not share with the world is during the recording of episode narrations when Sarah and I sing 80’s TV theme songs for our co-producer Dave Lishansky. (Editing is tough; we like to “reward” him!)

- Brett Paci on what gets edited out of a podcast episode.

It is one of my absolute favorite things! The harmonies especially 🙂 - Dave Lishansky.
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A learning future

Chalk Radio episodes have been downloaded more than 270,000 times and viewed on YouTube more than 600,000 times since the podcast launched in February 2020. This success motivates Hansen and her team to explore new themes, topics, and interviews. 

Paci says, “I’ve learned MIT does so much more than I ever imagined to help facilitate different learning styles. There’s a focused effort to balance structure and open-endedness that allows students to explore what they’re interested in, while still giving them the support they need to learn and create. (You’ll hear more about this in an upcoming episode on MIT Terrascope, so stay tuned)!”

On their conversation wish list, notes Hansen, are “educators in the world who have adopted or adapted OER from OpenCourseWare for learners at their own institutions. These stories are so powerful!” Hansen also mentions, “We’d love to have President Sally Kornbluth on the show to talk about her vision for the Institute, her focus on climate, and her approach to supporting MIT educators and students. She sometimes records podcasts in our Open Learning podcast studio, so we think our chances could be good!”

More Chalk Radio Team Fun Facts

chocolate-frozen banana-oatmeal smoothies

chocolate peanut butter cup ice cream by Hershey’s

black raspberry chocolate chip from Kimball Farms in Carlisle

lemon gelato on a hot day

Convenience Store Woman (Sayaka Murata), I Am I Am I Am (Maggie O’Farrell), Sophie’s Squash (Pat Zietlow Miller & Anne Wilsdorf)

Fallen Star (Claudia Gray), The Monster at the End of This Book: Starring Lovable, Furry Old Grover (Jon Stone)

The Overstory (Richard Powers), Nature (Ralph Waldo Emerson), On Beauty (Zadie Smith)

Persuasion (Jane Austen), Watership Down (Richard Adams), the collected poems of George Herbert, Robert Frost, and Richard Wilbur.

 The Lunchbox (Ritesh Bahtra), favorite show: Bluey (if it was a movie, it would be my favorite movie)

The Empire Strikes Back (obviously)

 Interstellar (Christopher Nolan)

 Wings of Desire / Der Himmel über Berlin (Wim Wenders)

 our daughters!

 My partner, Vanna

  My college choir director

 

“Writing things is what makes them important.” – Louisa May Alcott, via Amy March (Little Women)   and  “I understand what you’re saying, and your comments are valuable, but I’m gonna ignore your advice.” ― Roald Dahl, via the Fantastic Mr. Fox

Also the one by Mr. Fox.

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” – Albert Einstein

“Do the next right thing.” – Kristen Bell, paraphrasing Carl Jung