Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 1 session / week, 2 hours / session

Course Overview

The digital revolution is both necessitating and facilitating radical changes in how and what we learn. To flourish in today's rapidly changing world, people must continue to learn all the time: throughout the day, throughout their lives. At the same time, new technologies make possible new approaches to learning, new contexts for learning, new tools to support learning, and new ideas of what can be learned.

In this course, we will be exploring new opportunities for learning in the digital age, with special focus on what can be learned through immersive, hands-on activities. Students will participate in (and reflect on) a variety of learning situations, including: learning from a friend, teaching something to a friend, participating in a several-hour workshop, and learning on your own. As a final project, students will develop new workshops (using Media Lab technologies), iteratively run and refine the workshops, and analyze how and what the workshop participants learn.

(Thanks to the creators of Media Lab course MAS.863: How to Make (Almost) Anything for providing the inspiration for the title of this course.)