H2 Courses - Reflection

(15.905) Technology Strategy for SDM
Lots of case studies and lots of work. This was my first class with case studies, if you have previous experience with case studies this class might flow much smoother. The case studies with the recommended readings can take up 8 hours every week. If a short paper is due that week then you will end up spending almost 12-16 hours working on this course. The cases and the recommended readings are very interesting but with the other courses and work it gets very challenging and this course is worth only 6 credits. At MIT the way the credit system works is as follows, if you have a 6 credit course then the that is the amount of hours they think you will spend per week on that course. So Tech Strategy had 3 hours of class sessions so that would mean that 3 more hours of homework, but as I mentioned earlier it was more like a 12 credit course. The good news for future students is that they are going to make this a full term course going forward. The Professor Michael Davies is very passionate and fun person to learn from.
The course deliverables were 3 short papers and one long paper on a technology of our choice. We had to work in groups of 3-5 people. There was paper due every two weeks and 2 cases per week. The cases gave us the framework of what to write for the papers. We chose WiMax as our technology and it was interesting to apply what we learned in class to our technology. The following picture gives the general idea of what is taught in the course.(ESD 762) System Optimization

"This course provides an introduction to computer-based models for decision making. The emphasis is on models that are widely used in diverse industries and functional areas, including finance, accounting, operations, and marketing. Applications will include production planning, supply chain management, foreign exchange and commodity trading, asset-liability management, portfolio optimization, corporate risk management, and yield management, among others. The aim of the course is to help students become intelligent consumers of these methods. To this end, the course will cover the basic elements of modeling -- how to formulate a model and how to use and interpret the information a model produces. The course will attempt to instill a critical viewpoint towards decision models, recognizing that they are powerful but limited tools." - From the course syllabus. The course was interesting and the last lecture was excellent since its showed how the methods taught were widely used in real world environments albeit in a much more complicated fashion.