In 2001, MIT became the primary higher education institution to supply educational resources without spending a dime to anyone on this planet. Fast forward 24 years: The Institute has now launched a dynamic AI-enabled website for its non-degree learning opportunities, making it easier for learners around the globe to find the courses and resources available on MIT’s various learning platforms.
MIT Learn enables learners to access greater than 12,700 educational resources — including introductory and advanced courses, courseware, videos, podcasts, and more — from departments across the Institute. MIT Learn is designed to seamlessly connect the present Institute’s learning platforms in a single place.
“With MIT Learn, we’re opening access to MIT’s digital learning opportunities for hundreds of thousands around the globe,” says Dimitris Bertsimas, vice provost for open learning. “MIT Learn elevates learning with personalized recommendations powered by AI, guiding each learner toward deeper understanding. It’s a stepping stone toward a broader vision of creating these opportunities much more accessible to global learners through one unified learning platform.”
The goal for MIT Learn is twofold: to permit learners to search out what they need to meet their curiosity, and to enable learners to develop a long-term relationship with MIT as a source of educational experiences.
“By fostering long-term connections between learners and MIT, we not only provide a pathway to continued learning, but in addition advance MIT’s mission to disseminate knowledge globally,” says Ferdi Alimadhi, chief technology officer for MIT Open Learning and the lead of the MIT Learn project. “With this initial launch of MIT Learn, we’re introducing AI-powered features that leverage emerging technologies to assist learners discover the suitable content, engage with it more deeply, and stay supported as they shape their very own educational journeys.”
With its sophisticated search, browse, and discovery capability, MIT Learn allows learners to explore topics without having to grasp MIT’s organizational structure or know the names of departments and programs. An AI-powered suggestion feature called “Ask Tim” complements the positioning’s traditional search and browsing tools, helping learners quickly find courses and resources aligned with their personal and skilled goals. Learners also can prompt “Ask Tim” for a summary of a course’s structure, topics, and expectations, resulting in more-informed decisions before enrolling.
In select offerings, corresponding to Molecular Biology: DNA Replication and Repair, Genetics: The Fundamentals, and Cell Biology: Transport and Signaling, learners can interact with an AI assistant by asking questions on a lecture, requesting flashcards of key concepts, and obtaining fast summaries. These select offerings also feature an AI tutor to support learners as they work through problem sets, guiding them toward the subsequent step without giving freely the answers. These features, Alimadhi says, are being introduced in a limited set of courses and modules to permit the MIT Open Learning team to collect insights and improve the training experience before expanding more broadly.
“MIT Learn is a complete latest front door to the Institute,” says Christopher Capozzola, senior associate dean for open learning, who worked with faculty across the Institute on the project. “Just because the Kendall Square renovations transformed the best way that individuals interact with our physical campus, MIT Learn transforms how people engage with what we provide digitally.”
Introducing MIT Learn: Your latest destination for lifelong learning
Learners who decide to create an account on MIT Learn receive personalized course recommendations and may create and curate lists of educational resources, follow their specific areas of interest, and receive notifications when latest MIT content is offered. They also can personalize their learning experience based on their specific interests and select the format that’s best suited to them.
“From anywhere and for anyone, MIT Learn makes lifelong learning more accessible and personalized, constructing on the Institute’s many years of worldwide leadership in open learning,” says MIT Provost Anantha Chandrakasan.
MIT Learn was designed to account for a learner’s evolving needs throughout their learning journey. It highlights supplemental study materials for middle schoolers, high schoolers, and college students, upskilling opportunities for early-career professionals, reskilling programs for those considering a profession shift, and resources for educators.
“MIT has an incredible collection of learning opportunities, covering a wide selection of formats,” says Eric Grimson, chancellor for educational advancement, who oversaw the initial development of MIT Learn during his time as interim vp for open learning. “The sheer size of that collection will be daunting, so making a platform that brings all of those offerings together, in an easily searchable framework, greatly enhances our ability to serve learners.”
In response to Peter Hirst, senior associate dean for executive education at MIT Sloan School of Management, one in all the Institute’s incredible strengths is its sheer volume and variety of experience, research, and learning opportunities. But it may possibly be difficult to find and follow all those opportunities — even for people who find themselves immersed within the on-campus experience. MIT Learn, he says, is an answer to this problem.
“MIT Learn gathers all of the knowledge and learning resources offered across all of MIT right into a learner-friendly, curatable repository that permits anyone and everybody, whatever their interests or learning needs, to explore and have interaction within the wide selection of learning resources and public certificate programs that MIT has to supply and that will help them achieve their goals,” Hirst says.
MIT Learn was spearheaded by MIT Open Learning, which goals to rework teaching and learning on and off the Institute’s campus. MIT Learn was developed with the direction of former provost Cynthia Barnhart, and in cooperation with Sloan Executive Education and Skilled Education. Throughout the design phase, OpenCourseWare Faculty Advisory Committee Chair Michael Short and Faculty Advisory Committee Chair Caspar Hare contributed key insights, together with other quite a few faculty involved with Open Learning’s product offerings, including OpenCourseWare, , and MicroMasters programs. MIT Learn can also be informed by the insights of the Ad Hoc Committee on and Online.
“For over 20 years, MIT staff and school have been making a wealth of online resources, from lecture videos to practice problems, and from single online courses to entire credential-earning programs,” says Sara Fisher Ellison, a member of the Ad Hoc Committee on and Online and the school lead for the web MicroMasters Program in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy. “Making these resources findable, searchable, and broadly available is a natural extension of MIT’s core educational mission. MIT Learn is a giant, necessary step in that direction. We’re excited for the world to see what we now have to supply.”
Looking ahead, MIT Learn will even feature chosen content from the MIT Press. As MIT Learn continues to grow, Open Learning is exploring collaborations with departments across the Institute with the goal of offering the fullest possible range of educational materials from MIT to learners around the globe.
“MIT Learn is the most recent step in an extended tradition of the Institute providing progressive ways for learners to access knowledge,” Barnhart says. “This AI-enabled platform delivers on the Institute’s commitment to assist people launch into learning journeys that may unlock life-changing opportunities.”
