Education
- PhD, 2009, Biology, MIT
- SB, 2004, Biological Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University
Summary
Mary Ellen applies her teaching experience, PhD in biology, and knowledge of the learning sciences research to transform the biology curriculum at MIT in collaboration with the faculty and instructional team. The projects include blended learning experiences for MIT students (especially the Introductory Biology and core undergraduate courses) and open online courses (MOOCs) that are available to learners around the world. She takes a learning engineering approach to the design process to focus on the learners and make data-informed decisions. She manages the development and execution of the projects and promotes the implementation of evidence-based teaching. The group also studies learner engagement and course design. Mary Ellen enjoys training and mentoring other teaching staff and postdocs as well as graduate, undergraduate, and high school students in this discipline. The group created and manages three of Class Central's Best Free Online Courses of All Time. She is also a founding member and senior co-leader of the cross-departmental Digital Learning Lab of MIT Open Learning. Prior to returning to MIT, Mary Ellen taught at Harvard University.Awards
- COVID-19 Hero, School of Science, MIT, 2020
- Silver Award in the Science of Learning category, Reimagine Education, 2019
- Infinite Mile Award, Department of Biology, MIT, 2016
Key Publications
- Friend, Caitlin M., Darcy G. Gordon, and Mary Ellen Wiltrout. "Application and Evaluation of a Revision Framework to the Formative Assessments in a MOOC." 2023 IEEE Learning with MOOCS (LWMOOCS). IEEE, 2023.
- Wiltrout, Mary Ellen. "How to build the future of teaching and learning while growing from the changes and challenges of 2020–21." Advances in Online Education: A Peer-Reviewed Journal 1.1 (2022): 6-15.
- Blackwell, Virginia Katherine, and Mary Ellen Wiltrout. "Learning during covid-19." EMOOCs 2021 (2021): 219.
- Giora Alexandron, Mary Ellen Wiltrout, Aviram Berg, and José A. Ruipérez-Valiente. Assessment that matters: balancing reliability and learner-centered pedagogy in MOOC assessment. In Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge (2020). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 512–517. doi: 10.1145/3375462.3375464
- Gordon, Darcy, and Mary Ellen Wiltrout. "A Case Study in Applying the Learning Sciences to MOOC Design." (2019).
- The Effect of Course Content Position on Student Attempts of Practice Problems in Introductory Biology. 2018 Learning With MOOCS (LWMOOCS). IEEE (2018).
- Thornton, S, Riley, C, Wiltrout, ME. Criteria for Video Engagement in a Biology MOOC. Proceedings of the Fourth (2017) ACM Conference on Learning@Scale. doi: 10.1145/3051457.3054007
- Thornton, S, Wiltrout, ME. Teaching MIT Students to Think Like Cell Biologists: A Visual Approach. EducationXpress (2015).