Instructor Interview

The NEET (MIT New Engineering Education Transformation) program introduces students to cognitive approaches for tackling complex challenges valued by industry and for thriving in an uncertain and rapidly changing world.

Below, Dr. Rea Lavi describes various aspects of how he and his colleagues taught SP.248 NEET Ways of Thinking in fall 2023.

OCW: For this course, you were assisted by a fairly large team of co-instructors. How were responsibilities parceled out among the teaching team?

Rea Lavi: I led the course and was present in every lecture. A different instructor joined me every 3 weeks, and they were only involved in their section, corresponding to the NEET thread they teach. The challenge for me had more to do with preparing and coordinating the various sections and less to do with running the course itself. 

OCW: The six course challenges are all exercises in practical problem-solving from diverse disciplines. How did you select those challenges?

Rea Lavi: Firstly, there is a progression from well-structured to ill-structured problems. For instance, the minibot challenge is algorithmic, whereas designing a method for choosing a major at MIT is a lot more open-ended. Each challenge had to center around one or more skills involved with problem-solving, include real knowledge/methods from the domain it was taken from, and be simplified enough so it could be carried out by novices.  

OCW: What value do you see in the reflection assignments?

Rea Lavi: For the students, it’s an opportunity to apply, synthesize, and evaluate what they’ve learned—that is, to engage in higher-order thinking, which should help with retaining the information they’ve learned. For the instructor, it helps to see where students are understanding certain concepts and where they’re not. For the course developer, it helps understand the overall progression of students throughout the course.

OCW: You first taught the course in fall 2020; you’ve taught it almost every semester since then. How has it evolved through those various iterations? Where do you see it going from here?

Rea Lavi: The assignments have undergone refinement, but otherwise the course has stayed similar. The synthetic challenge of choosing one’s major was changed from improving learning via Zoom (the fall 2020 and spring 2021 lectures were given via Zoom). For fall 2024, we redesigned the class to focus more on what’s being done in NEET, including lab tours and attending student presentations. The “ways of thinking” exercises are still a part of the course, but not as much as they were before. We did this because we received feedback from students that they wanted to be exposed more to what’s happening in NEET.

OCW: What would you like to share about teaching SP.248 NEET Ways of Thinking that we haven’t yet addressed?

Rea Lavi: The course is modular, which means educators can pick and choose any section, challenge, or way of thinking they like to teach or adapt. The course material is based in research concerning those skills, some of which my own—specifically, the creative thinking and systems thinking–centered assignments.  

Curriculum Information

Prerequisites

None

Requirements Satisfied

This subject is not required for joining the NEET program, but completion of the course allows students access to early application for the program.

Offered

Most semesters

Assessment

The grade for the course is based on the student’s completion of the 6 course challenges and 22 other assignments.

Student Information

Enrollment

10 to 20 students

Breakdown by Year

All first-year students

Breakdown by Major

Many of the students were considering applying to join the NEET program in their sophomore year.

How Student Time Was Spent

During an average week, students were expected to spend 3 hours on the course, roughly divided as follows:

In Class (1 hour)

In class, Dr. Lavi and his co-instructors gave lectures, presented overviews of the course’s subtopics, introduced challenges, and oversaw individual and team-based activities.

Out of Class (2 hours)

Outside of class, students worked on individual and group assignments, as well as the six team-based challenges.