Over the years in this and other Course III graduate subjects, students have found it helpful and a valuable learning experience to work together in teams to develop approaches to solve problems posed on assignments. We see several benefits to such collaborations, including:
We will establish teams of 3 or 4 students who will collaborate on preparation of problem set solutions. Group assignments will be made after we have conducted an assessment of skills that we believe are helpful for success in the context of the groups-that is, we will attempt to "balance" each group so that particular skills are distributed among all groups.
Each group will be required to complete each problem set, but only one problem set submission will be accepted per group. All members of the group will receive the same score on each problem set.
We will set membership in the groups and announce them on Friday, February 8. On that day, all class periods (lecture and recitations) will be conducted by Professor Lori Breslow of MIT's Teaching and Learning Center. These sessions will introduce important skills that should help ensure that the group learning experience is successful.
Problem sets will be assigned on Mondays and will be due the following Monday by 5 P.M. in the Grader's office, unless otherwise noted.
The semester grade will be determined by the exams (each 25%), the homework (25%), and class participation (25%).