How to learn anything

Lectures: 1 session / week, 2 hours / session

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.)

Don't show me this again

This is one of over 2,200 courses on OCW. Find materials for this course in the pages linked along the left.

MIT OpenCourseWare is a free & open publication of material from thousands of MIT courses, covering the entire MIT curriculum.

No enrollment or registration. Freely browse and use OCW materials at your own pace. There's no signup, and no start or end dates.

Knowledge is your reward. Use OCW to guide your own life-long learning, or to teach others. We don't offer credit or certification for using OCW.

Made for sharing. Download files for later. Send to friends and colleagues. Modify, remix, and reuse (just remember to cite OCW as the source.)

Learn more at Get Started with MIT OpenCourseWare