Hands-on Learning Needs a Push

In this section, Professor Michael Short discusses how he will foster more hands-on learning in future versions of 22.01 Introduction to Nuclear Engineering and Ionizing Radiation.

In the Fall 2015 iteration of 22.01 Introduction to Nuclear Engineering and Ionizing Radiation, I gave students the option to do hands-on (or lab) versions of problem sets versus analytical versions, but nobody chose the hands-on versions. I asked a lot of students why, because when I told them this was going to be available they were super excited. But then in the thick of it, every week, they just decided to go analytical because it's safer. They were still jazzed about the possibility of hands-on assignments, but they had a lot of other stuff to do. And the couple of things I made them do, like control the reactor power, and burn the bananas and measure the activity, they loved it.

So next year I’m going to force them to do the hands-on assignments. For every other problem set, they'll either have a crazy problem or a take-home lab. You have to force it upon them because they're all busy, and they will find the path of least resistance, so you must create a path of resistance that they must follow.

I want to create more positive emotional experiences with our course material.

— Michael Short

I want to create more positive emotional experiences like this with our course material. One of the biggest problems with our undergraduate major in the past was that it was very hands-off. It could be dry and boring. I remember because I was a student in it. It's something I want to fix, and my colleagues do too.  We're the youngest department at MIT, and everyone's full of energy and wants to improve things. It's a really great place to be now.