Like thousands and thousands of others throughout the international Covid-19 lockdowns, Emmanuel Kasigazi, an entrepreneur from Uganda, turned to YouTube to move the time. But he wasn’t following an influencer or watching music movies. A lifelong learner, Kasigazi was scouring the video-sharing platform for instructional assets. Since 2013, when he acquired his first smartphone, Kasigazi has been charting his personal studying journey by means of YouTube, educating himself on topics as numerous as psychology and synthetic intelligence. And it was whereas looking for the reply to an AI-related query that Kasigazi first found MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW).
“The search results showed MIT lectures, and I thought, ‘Which MIT is this?’” recollects Kasigazi, who admits he was initially skeptical as he opened the OCW YouTube channel. To his amazement, he discovered lots of of programs there — not solely clips, however full lectures that he might observe alongside the scholars in MIT school rooms. He looked for extra info on OCW and tried the channel on totally different browsers to triple-check its credibility. “Here they were, all these courses by one of the best — if not the best — schools in tech in the world, and they were free. For a long time I couldn’t believe it. I told everyone I knew,” he remembers.
For Kasigazi, the channel grew to become a gateway to different open schooling assets, together with the OpenCourseWare web site and MITx programs, each a part of MIT Open Learning. “I always had the questions — I grew up on science cartoons like ‘Dexter’s Laboratory’ and ‘Pinky and the Brain’ — so I would go on YouTube to try to find answers to these questions, and I found this whole other world,” he says.
OCW launched its YouTube channel in 2008, and this August handed 4 million subscribers. While introductory laptop science, math, and physics are the most-visited programs on the OCW web site, the most well-liked YouTube movies mirror a extra numerous vary of pursuits, together with a lecture about piloting a fighter jet plane, an introduction to the human mind, and an introduction to monetary phrases and ideas.
Through this in depth assortment, Kasigazi explains that he’s been in a position to discover “the things I love,” whereas additionally finding out cloud computing, knowledge science, and AI — fields that he plans to pursue in graduate research. He says, “This is what OpenCourseWare has enabled me to do: I get the chance to not only watch the future happen, but I can actually be a part of it and create it.”
Understanding humanity by means of the liberal arts
When Kasigazi was younger, a beloved aunt acknowledged his pure curiosity and steered him towards the very best faculties. “I owe her everything,” he says, “everything I am is because of her.” Thanks to his wonderful grades he acquired a tutorial scholarship from the Ugandan authorities to attend Makerere University, one of many high universities in sub-Saharan Africa, the place he earned a level in info programs. Having pursued IT for its sensible functions, Kasigazi admits that he was initially extra within the science and concept behind computer systems than “the coding bits of it.”
“I love the concept of it — how we are trying to make these machines,” he says, explaining that he’s lengthy been drawn to the social sciences and humanities, significantly psychology and philosophy.
“I’m interested in how we work as human beings, because everything we do is for, with, and around human beings,” says Kasigazi, who considers psychology to be foundational to nearly each discipline. “Whatever it is you’re teaching these kids, they’re going to be dealing with people. So first teach them what people think, how they act — that was my drive to love psychology.”
Kasigazi has additionally turned to OCW to brush up on his coding expertise, watching 6.0001 (Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python) lectures with Professor Ana Bell and reviewing the instructor-paced model with Professor Eric Grimson now on MITx. “I am proud to say MIT OCW has made me fall in love with coding … it makes sense like it never has before,” he says.
Nurturing a worldview
In 2014 Kasigazi moved to South Sudan, which had solely just lately emerged from a civil conflict as an impartial nation. Fresh out of college, he was there to show laptop expertise and graphic design — a few of his college students included members of the brand new nation’s authorities — however his time in South Sudan shortly grew to become a studying expertise for him, too. “When you grow up in your community, you have this bubble. We all experience it — it’s a human thing,” he displays. “For the first time, I realized that everything I knew is not a given. Everything I grew up knowing is not universal.”
With his worldview newly broadened, he started to nurture his curiosity in psychology, philosophy, and the sciences, watching crash programs, explainer movies, and different content material on the topic. “It’s entertainment, to me, at the same time that it’s a passion,” he says. Today Kasigazi runs his personal firm, which he began in 2012 with pals and resumed when he returned to Uganda seven years in the past.
Since coming throughout the OCW YouTube channel, Kasigazi has labored by means of the entire freely accessible MIT psychology programs. Professor John Gabrieli’s 9.00SC (Introduction to Psychology) have significantly resonated with him, even prompting him to achieve out to Gabrieli. “As much as I’d been getting some knowledge on psychology over the years online, it wasn’t as deep and as interesting or captivating as your classes were,” he wrote. “From your teaching style, to the explanations, to the topics, to how you make people understand a topic, to the experiments mentioned and referenced, to how you approach questions and later make one think deeper about them.”
“The message from Emmanuel is deeply touching about the joy of learning,” says Gabrieli. “I am so grateful to OCW for making this course on psychology open to the world, and to Emmanuel for so delightfully sharing what this course meant to him.”
New programs are added commonly to each the OCW web site and YouTube channel. Kasigazi, who’s presently having fun with Professor Nancy Kanwisher’s 9.13 (Introduction to the Human Brain), seems ahead to discovering what new worlds of data they’ll open.