The Office of Educational Innovation and Technology (OEIT) has been established as part of the Office of the Dean for Undergraduate Education (DUE) as an important step toward supporting and sustaining educational innovation at MIT. OEIT will provide end-to-end support for innovation; its formation represents an important step in MIT's support for educational innovation through productive application of technology.
By creating OEIT as part of DUE, which also encompasses the Teaching and Learning Lab and the Office of Faculty Support, a natural synergy has been created that enables DUE to develop and promote innovative educational practices at MIT. DUE also administers the D'Arbeloff funds and Alumni Funds for the support of faculty educational innovation. OEIT reinforces DUE's commitment to serving as a catalyst for learning, exploring and discovering at MIT.
In making the announcement, Daniel Hastings, dean for undergraduate education, said that DUE will now offer faculty "services to enable educational innovation, including technology and assessment with a transition to sustaining services."
OEIT is a critical component of these services. OEIT will collaborate with faculty, students and staff to identify, develop and distribute innovative uses of educational technology at MIT. With strategic guidance from the MIT Council on Educational Technology, OEIT will communicate the availability of new educational innovations to faculty as well as facilitate the adaptation and adoption of innovations to improve teaching and learning at MIT. Finally, OEIT will collaborate with educational technology service providers, such as Information Services and Technology (IS&T) and the MIT Libraries, to ensure that innovative technology applications are supported as sustainable services.
The Office of Educational Innovation and Technology is led by Vijay Kumar, senior associate dean in DUE, and is staffed primarily by educational consulting and software development groups formerly in the Academic Computing group from IS&T.
To get more information, please visit the interim OEIT web site at web.mit.edu/due/OEIT.html. To contact OEIT, please e-mail oeit-lt@mit.edu or call 617-252-1981.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on February 14, 2007 (download PDF).
