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Focus on Educational Innovation

Moderator: Charles Vest HM
Dick K.P. Yue '74, SM '76, ScD '80 Shigeru Miyagawa Henry Jenkins: October 2, 2004; Running Time: 1:55:57

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

These MIT panelists discuss their efforts to expand the educational horizons of learners from K to well beyond 12 with new technological tools and resources. Dick K.P. Yue describes the impact of MIT’s OpenCourseWare program, which is making all MIT’s courses freely available on the web. With 900 courses already published, the site receives an average of half a million visits a month, from every single continent on earth. Avid users include educators, self-learners and students from other universities boning up on a subject. Yue says that OCW is MIT’s way of taking a stand against a “movement that completely compartmentalizes information and access to knowledge.”

Shigeru Miyagawa’s Star Festival CD-ROM features a personal narrative of ethnic self-discovery intended to ignite the interest of racially diverse grade-school children. Miyagawa has visited classrooms where children deny or suppress sometimes painful family histories. After children watch his CD, which includes details from his own family biography, they are challenged to interview family members “and find out about their heritage as a way of building cultural identity.” He says that children can be transformed by “powerful emotions and narratives.”

In the face of pedagogical orthodoxy, Henry Jenkins argues for more (and better) video games. Close to one-third of incoming MIT freshman admitted playing video games during class. “We need to turn that around and get the teacher to play games with students to take advantage of the medium,” says Jenkins. One of Jenkins new initiatives is “Revolution,” a multi-player classroom computer game populated with characters from Colonial Williamsburg, who represent “different political factions, economic classes, genders…” Says Jenkins, games “allow you to drill more deeply into content.”

Lecture Details

Location: 10-250

“We were surprised by the number of visits (to the OWC website) from Antarctica, until we were reminded that probably everyone on Antarctica has an MIT degree.”

Dick K.P. Yue

About the Speakers

Moderator: Charles Vest HM

President, National Academy of Engineering
President Emeritus, MIT

Charles M. Vest was the fifteenth President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

During his 14 years at MIT, he placed special emphasis on enhancing undergraduate education, exploring new organizational forms to meet emerging directions in research and education, building a stronger international dimension into education and research programs, developing stronger relations with industry, and enhancing racial and cultural diversity. He also devoted considerable energy to bringing issues concerning education and research to broader public attention and to strengthening national policy on science, engineering and education. In this latter capacity, Vest chaired the President's Advisory Committee on the Redesign of the Space Station and has served as a member of the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), the Massachusetts Governor's Council on Economic Growth and Technology, and the National Research Council Board on Engineering Education. In February 2004, he was asked by President Bush to serve as a member of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Vest earned his B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from West Virginia University in 1963 and both his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan in 1964 and 1967, respectively. As a member of the Mechanical Engineering faculty at MIT, Vest's research interests were in the thermal sciences and in the engineering applications of lasers and coherent optics.

In December 2003, Vest announced his decision to step down from the presidency of MIT.

Dick K.P. Yue '74, SM '76, ScD '80

Associate Dean of Engineering
Professor of Hydrodynamics and Ocean Engineering

Dick K.P. Yue is actively engaged in the overall administration of the School of Engineering and in its educational and research initiatives. He originated the MIT OpenCourseWare concept and its formulation, and played a major role in its adoption by MIT. He also helped launch a new program that will potentially transform engineering education by providing sophomores with special training and industry-based work experiences. Dick Yue received all his degrees (S.B., S.M. and Sc.D./Ph.D.) from MIT. He has been a faculty member in the Department of Ocean Engineering since 1983.

Shigeru Miyagawa

Professor of Linguistics and the Kochi Prefecture—John Manjiro Professor of Japanese Language and Culture

Shigeru Miyagawa’s research areas include syntax, morphology, and the application of technology to foreign language and culture teaching. He is the author of Structure and Case Marking in Japanese, (1989 Academic Press) as well as numerous articles in linguistics. He is also Executive Producer of The Star Festival, a multimedia CD-ROM interactive fiction/documentary about Japan and Executive Director of JP NET, an Internet-based information service for Japanese language and culture.

Henry Jenkins

Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities
Director of Comparative Media Studies Program

Henry Jenkins' books include Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. His previous books include "What Made Pistachio Nuts": Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic; Classical Hollywood Comedy; and Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. Jenkins has published articles on a diverse range of topics relating to film, television and popular culture. His most recent essays include work on Star Trek, WWF Wrestling, Nintendo Games, and Dr. Seuss.

Jenkins has a Ph.D. in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.A. in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa.