Fly-by-Wire

Strategic Education Initiatives in MIT’s Office of Digital Learning is collaborating on the Fly-by-Wire project, leveraging SEI’s infrastructure services and models including Backstage, MC3 and QBank.

Inspired by ideas from aerospace engineering, Fly-by-Wire (FbW) is a blended learning technology for teachers to provide scalable, differentiated instruction. The project will develop a FbW technological intervention, to be developed in conjunction with and implemented at Quinsigamond Community College in Massachusetts and Arapahoe Community College in Colorado, urban-metro area schools serving a majority of high-need, at-risk students.

The Fly-by-Wire project synthesizes pedagogical evidence and the aerospace-inspired analogy of digital technology for pilots to create a digital technology for instructors, enabling differentiated instruction. The goal of our Fly-by-Wire technology is to aid a human teacher, just as a fly-by-wire system aids a human pilot. The fly-by-wire analogy gives us a structured framework in which to think about and to design blended learning – the goal of our FbW technology is to aid a human teacher, just as a fly-by-wire system aids a human pilot. Our FbW system includes development of the following components FbW assessments (sensor system) FbW logic and FbW action reacting to student response (controller logic, actuators) FbW technology (student-facing and instructor-facing apps).