Beaver Works Summer Institute -- Online Courses

The Beaver Works Summer Institute provides a variety of rigorous online courses for high school seniors interested in engineering and programming, or for teachers conducting an afterschool STEM course.
Students in the Autonomous RACECAR Grand Prix course program the software to control the camera, lidar, sensors, and embedded processing for the robot pictured.
Students in the Autonomous RACECAR Grand Prix course program the software to control the camera, lidar, sensors, and embedded processing for the robot pictured.

The Beaver Works Summer Institute (named after the MIT mascot) has expanded from an onsite summer workshop to a variety of online courses offered all year round in the following programs:

  • Autonomous RACECAR Grand Prix
  • Autonomous Air Vehicle Racing
  • Hacking a 3D Printer
  • Cog*Works: Build Your Own Cognitive Assistant
  • Medlytics
  • Embedded Security and Hardware Hacking
  • Build a Cubesat
  • Unmanned Air System–Synthetic Aperture Radar

How to Apply

These courses are designed to be prerequisites for the Beaver Works Summer Institute. However, the course are informative and educational for interested students and educators, particularly in Python, machine learning, and autonomous systems.

There are two steps to access the online course: 

  1. First, applicants must be nominated using the form linked below. Nominators can be a teacher, a mentor, or a robotics coach. Educators can also nominate themselves.
  2. Second, once approval is made by BWSI staff, applicants will be registered on bwsix.edu which provides access to the online courses.

Once registered, students can complete as many of the available online courses as desired.

Nomination Form

The registration emails will contain confirmation, a unique ID, and links to set your password to access the online course website. Each course uses Piazza as a forum for questions and answers and this is moderated by BWSI instructors and staff. The Piazza course information is located in the course overview information.

For more information applying to our onsite summer program, see our website: https://beaverworks.ll.mit.edu/CMS/bw/bwsi, or you can email [email protected] for additional information.