Chalk Radio

MIT OpenCourseWare has been one of the pioneers of open education, leading the way by offering free materials from MIT courses as early as 2001, when no other institutions were pursuing comparably ambitious initiatives. But in subsequent years, there’s been an explosion of activity in open education, led by faculty members, instructional designers, and librarians at institutions throughout the United States and worldwide. In this episode, we hear from senior manager of MIT Open Education collaborations, Dr. Shira Segal, who talks about MIT’s efforts to team up with and learn from open education practitioners at the Maricopa County Community College District in Arizona, whose energetic promotion of open educational resources has saved students over $270 million in textbook costs, and College of the Canyons in California, a leader in the Zero Textbook Cost movement. We also hear excerpts from interviews with four instructors from those colleges, who talk about the potential benefits and unexpected challenges of using open educational resources in general, and about what they learned from their experiences in adapting OCW materials for use in their own classes.Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalMore on MIT OpenCourseWare’s collaboration with community collegesMaricopa County Community College DistrictCollege of the CanyonsMaricopa Community Colleges Save Students $270M in TextbooksOER and Zero Textbook Cost at College of the CanyonsMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn XOn InstagramOn LinkedInStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer Dave Lishansky, producer Jackson Maher, producerShow notes by Peter Chipman

Prof. Jonathan Gruber, our guest for this episode, likes to tell his students that economics is a fundamentally right-wing science. What he means by that is that classical economics is built on one powerful explanatory insight: that free markets—networks of buyers and sellers, producers and consumers, weighing the trade-offs of different options and making self-interested choices based on supply and demand—do a better job of deciding how to allocate resources than can be achieved by a top-down, command-economy approach. But as Gruber goes on to explain, that principle only holds when all participants have equal access to markets and to information; in the real world, imbalances in that access lead to market failures, inefficient allocations of resources that leave most people worse off than they would otherwise be. That’s why government regulation still has a role in a properly functioning economy. Tune in to hear Prof. Gruber explain why we need “capitalism with gutter guards” to ensure equitable outcomes, especially in sectors of the economy such as healthcare where the ideal markets envisioned by classical economics are particularly unattainable or undesirable. Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator portalProf. Gruber’s faculty page14.01 Principles of Microeconomics on MIT OpenCourseWare14.41 Public Finance and Public Policy on MIT OpenCourseWarePower and Progress (book by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson)Video version of this interview on YouTubeMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn XOn InstagramOn LinkedInStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer Dave Lishansky, producer Jackson Maher, producerShow notes by Peter Chipman

Learn about Python, growth mindset, and the uses of rubber ducks in this interview with MIT lecturer Ana Bell. Dr. Bell, who has been programming since she was twelve and now teaches popular introductory courses in computer science, says that coding consists of almost equal parts creativity and logic. The creative part, she explains, gets exercised particularly when you have to come up with an algorithm to solve a given problem, because for any given complex problem there are many possible approaches to tackling it. The logical part comes into play when you sit down to translate that algorithm into an unambiguous sequence of rules in a programming language, and again when you discover that the code you’ve written doesn’t work exactly as you intended it to and you have to set about debugging it. Among the topics the conversation addresses are why everyone–even in the age of generative AI– ought to study at least the basics of programming, why it can be useful to speak to an inanimate object when your coding project is stuck in the debugging stage, and how programming can help you choose your own adventure. Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator portalDr. Bell’s faculty page6.100 L Introduction to Computer Science and Programming using Python on MIT OpenCourseWare6.0001 [now 6.100A] Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python on MIT OpenCourseWare6.0002 [now 6.100B] Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science on MIT OpenCourseWareGet Programming: Learn to Code with Python (book by Dr. Bell)Doodle Debug (coloring book by Dr. Bell)Video version of this interview on YouTubeMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn XOn InstagramOn LinkedInStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer Dave Lishansky, producer Jackson Maher, producerShow notes by Peter Chipman

In this the first of two pilot episodes of Chalk Radio with VIDEO, Professor Andrew Lo, who teaches finance at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, knows that many people find financial matters perplexing and scary. Lots of us don’t have a good head for numbers, and besides, how can one get advice and make sound decisions when it’s taboo to discuss one’s finances at all? That’s where a financial advisor is useful–someone who understands the concepts, can crunch the numbers, and has a fiduciary responsibility to look out for your best interests. For many people, hiring a financial advisor might be a financial impossibility, but Prof. Lo and his colleagues are working to develop an AI financial advisor that not only gives ordinary people access to sound financial advice, but acts with real fiduciary responsibility. Large language models can’t do this yet, he says, but the technology is developing fast. Other topics he touches on in this episode include the outsized influence of finance on drug development and global decarbonization and the equally outsized influence of teachers on their students–he names many who changed his own life, from his third-grade teacher in Queens to his professors at college and graduate school.        Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator portalProfessor Lo’s faculty page15.401 Finance Theory I on MIT OpenCourseWare15.481x Adaptive Markets: Financial Market Dynamics and Human Behavior on MIT Open Learning Library15.482x Healthcare Finance on MIT Open Learning LibraryVideo version of this interview on YouTubeMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions  Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn XOn InstagramOn LinkedInStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer Dave Lishansky, producer Jackson Maher, producerShow notes by Peter Chipman

Sujood Khalid Eldouma recently relocated to the UK for her master’s studies, having previously lived in Egypt after fleeing her native Sudan to escape the devastating civil war in that country. Sujood holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Khartoum, but her ambitions extend far beyond the field she was trained in. She recently graduated from the MIT Emerging Talent certificate program in Computer and Data Science and is pursuing a MicroMasters in statistics and data science through the support of MIT Emerging Talent. In this episode, we hear how Sujood and her classmates at the university in Khartoum used MIT OpenCourseWare lecture videos as the basis of a group learning experience, in which knowledge was shared and lasting friendships were formed. We also hear how Sujood is pursuing her current online studies not just as a means of self-improvement but as part of the groundwork for a much bigger, future project: helping to rebuild Sudan’s educational and scientific infrastructure when peace comes to that country. “I'm not doing it just for myself,” she says. “I'm not doing it just for my family, but in the bigger picture and with a heart filled with hope.”The Open Learners podcast is produced by Alexis Haut and hosted by Emmanuel Kasigazi and Michael Jordan Pilgreen.Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator portalMIT Emerging Talent programMIT MicroMasters Program in Statistics and Data ScienceMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Share Your Open Learning StoryTo share your own open learning story with Michael and Emmanuel, send them an email at [email protected]. Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn XOn InstagramOn LinkedInStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer Dave Lishansky, producer Jackson Maher, producerShow notes by Peter Chipman