At MITx, it’s all about creating a strong community—for learners and for the MITx team
Calm but fierce, the team behind MITx is deeply passionate about changing the world through MITx MOOCs. Every day, this crew of educational technologists, media specialists, digital learning managers, administrators, and intellectual property coordinators find deep satisfaction in engineering rich educational experiences for MITx’s online community.
I connected with Sarah Davis, project manager for MITx, one of the people who helps grow MITx. The following are excerpts from our conversation:
Q: What is a typical day like for you? What are some highlights?
A: The thing I love about my day-to-day work is that there isn’t a typical day really. I work an earlier schedule, so I get in when the office is nice and quiet and answer any e-mails that might have come in overnight. I make sure any problems from the day before are on their way to being resolved. As everyone filters in and the coffee kicks in, I’ll have meetings... about new courses [faculty are] developing, course teams getting ready to launch a course for the first time, troubleshooting with the educational technologists on any technical issues from courses that are going to rerun, talking to our media team about what exciting stand-alone pieces we have for the YouTube channel – it really is a toss-up.
Q: What do you look forward to doing?
A: Working with course teams on new courses. All the people who work in STEM at MIT are mind-bogglingly smart. But humanities/liberal arts are my passion, my own degrees are in those fields. So encouraging faculty to consider and build humanities courses is so exciting. MIT has such a unique approach to any subject matter, I’m always excited for the chance to show how that perspective is applied to subjects that people don’t normally associate with MIT.
Q: What about the MITx mission inspires you?
A: I love the idea that MIT really wants knowledge to be available. We’re part of MIT Open Learning, and the libraries and other departments on campus are really trying to push for transparency and openness in regards to knowledge dissemination, which is amazing. There are so many capable, brilliant, amazing people out there that don’t have the chance to come to MIT and soak in all the cool stuff we’re doing – so having the Institute realize that those people have just as much a right to that knowledge as anyone else, I think that’s really important and really cool.
Q: What do you like about working with the MIT faculty or fellow team members?
A: My team is awesome. MIT faculty are really cool and all of them have these wild ideas that kind of draw you into their brilliant minds (even if maybe you don’t really understand them – quantum mechanics, I’m looking at you). And I love that. I love being able to support them in some of those wild ideas.
But man, the MITx team is just amazing.
We’re all really passionate about our work and our support of faculty and on the same page of where we want the future of our organization to go. I don’t think I’ve ever worked at a place that has such drive to make sure they’re doing the best job possible about a mission we all singularly care about. We also are known to have lengthy arguments about the merits of say, tacos, which is pretty hilarious and fun. I appreciate working with people who take their job seriously but don’t take life super seriously.
Every day Sarah and the MITx team work to make MIT courses accessible to anyone with the motivation to learn. If MITx has been a valuable resource to you, please consider supporting our work with a gift on March 12, 2020 during the MIT 24-Hour Challenge. Visit us online to learn more or to support MITx on March 12.
A highlight is anything where I get to use my artistic skill. The wall numbers, updating the Air Traffic Control board (where the team tracks course launches), drawing a card for a colleague going on maternity leave, etc. I enjoy this because it’s a time when I feel like I’m contributing to our community culture, which is really strong here, so that’s an awesome fuzzy feeling.