[2601] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: [Mit-talk] Recommendations for new GIRs
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tim Abbott)
Sun Oct 15 20:09:58 2006
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 20:09:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tim Abbott <tabbott@mit.edu>
To: Jessica H Lowell <jessiehl@mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20061013161031.x4tasru9hy7e8sog@webmail.mit.edu>
Cc: random-hall-talk@mit.edu, ec-discuss@mit.edu, mit-talk@mit.edu
Errors-To: mit-talk-bounces@mit.edu
I read through the 158-page report and thought that I would share the
things that concerned me most about it, for those of you who are too lazy
to read the 11-page summary (which doesn't mention everything below):
- They recommend making orientation more about academics and less about
REX, student activities, Rush, and community in general.
- They recommend moving drop date earlier and lengthening the 1 or 2-day
"reading period" before finals.
- They propose "strengthening" the concentration requirement, and
recommend removing some concentrations that are too loosely concentrated.
I think most people will take their electives in a somewhat concentrated
fashion without a requirement, and so there should be a formal
concentration option, but no requirement.
- They recommend making it harder to get out of the science GIRs through
transfer credit, and impossible with AP exams (for anything but 18.01).
This would have resulted in my taking 5 standing exams during orientation.
We want freshmen year to be exciting and useful, and making it harder to
get out of repeating the science part of high school in more detail first
term is the optimal way to make it boring. I think that we should instead
be thinking about ideas like new 6-unit courses that bring people from
having a 5 on the AP exam to knowing enough of the subject to satisfy MIT.
- They propose distinct new project-based and computation/engineering
requirements. The project-based classes they envision would probably be
computation/engineering subjects, and I while think while it's perhaps
valuable for MIT students to get an experience in project-based
engineering, I don't see much value in seperately requiring (potentially
pen-and-paper) engineering like 2.001 or 6.002 for every MIT student.
- They propose changing the science core to have this weird 5/6 choice.
The summary online has a nice diagram explaining how this works. I think
it conflicts with their own criterion for including only things on the
science core list that every MIT student should know. I prefer the
alternative proposal on page 2-17 of the report (which is 5/5 with the
engineering and project-based requirements merged).
- They require 18.02 but only sort of require 18.03 and 8.02. I think
18.03 and 8.02 more important for almost everyone than 18.02 (6.002,
6.003, 8.03, 8.04, etc. are all some part of 18.03 with applications).
Currently, 18.02 is a corequisite for 8.02, so the physics people probably
cover everything before 18.02 gets to it. I think 18.02 should
eliminated, with any important topics merged into 18.03 and 8.02.
- The HASS proposal strictly decreases student choice. They replace a 3/5
HASS-D requirement with a 3/3 Foundational Electives requirement, and
require that all such classes are completed in the first two years (with
the 4 concentration classes presumably taken during the last 2 years).
Combining this with the "CI-HW" requirement for the 1/4 of undergrads who
fail the FEE, this fills up the first two years' HASSes.
- They propose a HASS Freshman Experience, despite the fact that student
opinion on the SAB forum uniformly condemned the idea. Their motivations
seem to include (A) making freshmen less scared by the list of 75 choices
they have first term, (B) making a common experience so that freshmen
discuss their HASSes with their peers (like they do with their science
core), (C) ignite the interest of first-year students in HASS with "big
ideas" classes that they asure us will be extremely good classes.
They also propose scheduling all such classes at the same time (which
all science core classes would avoid), so that freshmen could not take
advanced classes that met during that magic time. Personally, I've had
much more interesting discussions about HASS subjects with people not
taking those classes, and liked having 75 choices.
- They recommend 'fixing' the lack of practical choice in HASS-D classes
due to scheduling conflicts by moving some later and others as early as 9
AM. I don't think 9 AM HASS-Ds solve the problem of students feeling like
they have few practical choices.
- They recommend that "all new subjects that are created in response to
our curricular reform should address directly the relationship between the
subject design and the diversity goals of the institute". I'm really not
sure what they mean by this.
I suspect it's probably wise that discussion of the recommendations create
threads for each individual topic. I'd also be curious to hear about any
potentially concerning recommendations that I may have missed.
-Tim Abbott
On Fri, 13 Oct 2006, Jessica H Lowell wrote:
> The Task Force on the Undergraduate Educational Commons (the task force that was
> reforming the GIRs) released its final report today.
>
> Full Report (158 pages):
> http://web.mit.edu/committees/edcommons/documents/TF_FullReport.pdf
>
> Summary & Recommendations (11 pages):
> http://web.mit.edu/committees/edcommons/documents/TF_SumRecs.pdf
>
> There are some things I like in there, and some things I don't. I'm distressed
> that, despite the fact that no student that I've spoken with favored the idea
> (and many left comments on the feedback site to that effect), the Task Force
> kept in their idea of a Freshman Experience humanities class - and in general,
> I find the trend to regard freshmen as separate from the rest of the undergrads
> disturbing. For the science core, there seem to have been two proposals favored
> by some faction of the Task Force, and I like the one that they chose not to
> endorse, that would have combined their computation & engineering GIR and their
> project-based experience GIR and still required everyone to take, for instance,
> chem and bio, better.
>
> On the other hand, I like the idea of more streamlined procedures for students
> to follow who want to study abroad, and merging the HASS distribution and CI-H
> requirements.
>
> What do others think?
>
> - Jessie
>
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