Peter Dizikes, MIT News
April 17, 2013

MIT and Haiti signed a new joint initiative today to promote Kreyòl-language education in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines, part of an effort to help Haitians learn in the language most of them speak at home.

From left to right: Director of MIT’s Office of Educational Innovation and Technology Vijay Kumar, MIT Provost Chris Kaiser, Haiti Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe, MIT Linguistics Professor Michel DeGraff and Haiti Minister of National Education and Vocational Training Vanneur Pierre at the signing of a joint commitment to an initiative for digital learning in Kreyòl.

“This government will make every effort to make this initiative a big success,” Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe said at the signing ceremony in MIT’s Vannevar Bush Room. “Haiti is moving forward.”

The project is taking MIT-developed and technologically based open education resources, translating those materials into Kreyòl, disseminating them in Haiti, and evaluating the materials’ effectiveness. The work is being done in conjunction with professors and educators from a variety of institutions in Haiti, including the State University of Haiti, Université Caraïbe, École Supérieure d’Infotronique d’Haïti, Université Quisqueya, NATCOM and the Foundation for Knowledge and Liberty.

“MIT folks are very collaborative,” MIT Provost Chris Kaiser said at the event. The initiative, he added, represented MIT’s “desire to do good in the world.”

The idea that more Haitian education should occur in Kreyòl is a longtime belief of MIT linguistics professor Michel DeGraff, a native of Haiti, who has contended that Kreyòl has been improperly marginalized in the Haitian classroom. DeGraff’s extensive research on public perceptions of Kreyòl, and on the language itself, has led him to assert that its perception as a kind of exceptionally simplified hybrid tongue, in comparison to English or French, unfairly diminishes the language.

The initiative is meant not to replace French, DeGraff added, but to help Kreyòl-speaking students “build a solid foundation in their own language.”

The technology-based open education resources, he noted, are meant to promote “active learning,” as opposed to drill-based rote learning techniques.

The initiative is being funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and by MIT.

Alongside DeGraff, the project has been developed with the guidance of Vijay Kumar, a principal investigator of the MIT-Haiti Initiative for Kreyòl-based and technology-enhanced STEM education and director of the MIT Office of Educational Innovation and Technology, and Thomas Kochan, the George Maverick Bunker Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-director of MIT’s Initiatives in Haiti, coordinating such efforts across the Institute.

New educational resources are badly needed in Haiti, especially after the January 2010 earthquake that devastated the country, Lamothe noted. Rebuilding with Kreyòl-language educational tools will help provide “access to quality education for all,” given that 97 percent of Haitians speak Kreyòl. About 50 percent of Haitians have an income of less than $1 per day.

Lamothe added: “The most productive partnership for Haiti [is] about empowering Haitians to fly with their own wings.”

Reprinted with permission of MIT News. Photos Courtesy of Dominick Reuter.

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17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - Provost Chris Kaiser and Haiti's Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe. Photo by Dominick Reuter.

17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - Provost Chris Kaiser and Haiti's Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe. Photo by Dominick Reuter.

17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - Provost Chris Kaiser, Haiti's Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe and Professor Michel DeGraff. Photo by Dominick Reuter.

17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - Provost Chris Kaiser opening remarks at the signing of a partnership in digital learning initiatives in Haitian Creole. Photo by Dominick Reuter.

17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - Haiti's Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe giving his opening remarks at the signing of a partnership in digital learning initiatives in Haitian Creole. Photo by Dominick Reuter.

17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - MIT Professor Michel DeGraff giving his opening remarks. Photo by Dominick Reuter.

17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - Provost Chris Kaiser and Haiti's Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe sign a joint commitment to a partnership in digital learning initiatives in Haitian Creole...Photo by Dominick Reuter

17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - Provost Chris Kaiser and Haiti's Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe sign a joint commitment to a partnership in digital learning initiatives in Haitian Creole...Photo by Dominick Reuter

17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - Provost Chris Kaiser and Haiti's Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe sign a joint commitment to a partnership in digital learning initiatives in Haitian Creole...Photo by Dominick Reuter

17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - Provost Chris Kaiser and Haiti's Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe sign a joint commitment to a partnership in digital learning initiatives in Haitian Creole...Photo by Dominick Reuter

17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - Provost Chris Kaiser and Haiti's Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe sign a joint commitment to a partnership in digital learning initiatives in Haitian Creole...Photo by Dominick Reuter

17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - Provost Chris Kaiser and Haiti's Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe sign a joint commitment to a partnership in digital learning initiatives in Haitian Creole...Photo by Dominick Reuter

17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - Provost Chris Kaiser and Haiti's Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe sign a joint commitment to a partnership in digital learning initiatives in Haitian Creole...Photo by Dominick Reuter

17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - Provost Chris Kaiser and Haiti's Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe sign a joint commitment to a partnership in digital learning initiatives in Haitian Creole...Photo by Dominick Reuter

17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - Provost Chris Kaiser and Haiti's Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe sign a joint commitment to a partnership in digital learning initiatives in Haitian Creole...Photo by Dominick Reuter

17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - Provost Chris Kaiser and Haiti's Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe sign a joint commitment to a partnership in digital learning initiatives in Haitian Creole...Photo by Dominick Reuter

17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - Provost Chris Kaiser and Haiti's Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe sign a joint commitment to a partnership in digital learning initiatives in Haitian Creole...Photo by Dominick Reuter

17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - Provost Chris Kaiser and Haiti's Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe sign a joint commitment to a partnership in digital learning initiatives in Haitian Creole...Photo by Dominick Reuter

17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - Provost Chris Kaiser and Haiti's Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe sign a joint commitment to a partnership in digital learning initiatives in Haitian Creole...Photo by Dominick Reuter

17 April 2013, Cambridge, MA - MIT Provost Chris Kaiser and Prof. Michel DeGraff bid farewell to Haiti's Prime Minister Mr. Laurent Lamothe. Photo by Dominick Reuter.

On March 29-30, 2012, Peter Dourmashkin, MIT, presented interactive workshops on Technology Enabled Active Learning (TEAL) to 38 participants from Haitian schools and universities.

Photo Credit: Michel DeGraff, Creative Commons Attribution License

Peter Dourmashkin, MIT

For the past ten years the Physics Department at MIT has developed a program called Technology Enabled Active Learning (TEAL) which has fundamentally changed the way the introductory Newtonian Mechanics and Electricity and Magnetism physics courses are taught at MIT. TEAL represents an attempt to incorporate a variety of new teaching ideas and technologies into first-year physics subjects. The course is a non-lecture based course with an emphasis on active engaged learning. Students work together in groups of three, using tabletop experiments and computer-based visualizations to develop their conceptual and analytic understanding of mechanics and electricity and magnetism. The syllabus is designed to integrate concepts, experiments, and problem solving skills in an interactive learning environment in which students regular discuss concepts and problems in class with their teachers. All of the course materials are now available in OCW Scholar. These workshops focused on describing TEAL and in particular how the TEAL materials on OCW Scholar can be adapted for use in teaching physics in many institutional settings.

About the Workshops

The main goal of these workshops was to start implementing faculty- and curriculum-development activities based on MIT’s Open Education Resources such as OpenCourseWare and Software Tools for Academics and Researchers. How can these resources be most constructively used to improve STEM courses in Haiti? How can similar resources be designed in situ by educators in Haiti and become fully functional?

From March 28-31, 2012 faculty and staff from MIT visited Haiti to present workshops on STAR (Software Tools for Academics and Researchers), TEAL (Technology Enhanced Active Learning) and Open Education to over fifty educators from Haitian universities and schools.

Photo: Brandon Muramatsu

Michel DeGraff, MIT, welcomes workshop participants

About the Workshops
The main goal of these workshops was to start implementing faculty- and curriculum-development activities based on MIT’s Open Education Resources such as OpenCourseWare and Software Tools for Academics and Researchers. How can these resources be most constructively used to improve STEM courses in Haiti? How can similar resources be designed in situ by educators in Haiti and become fully functional?