In early 2012, leading minds from Harvard, Stanford and M.I.T. started three companies to provide Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. They were open to anyone in the world with an Internet connection, no cost, millions of students signed up, and pundits called it a revolution. The technology was supposed to transform higher education. What happened? Continue reading… “Reforming higher education: when online degrees are seen as official”
Imagine a world where a department store knows from your buying habits that you’re pregnant even before your family does or mosquito-sized robots fly around stealing samples of your DNA. Continue reading… “Harvard professors: Privacy is dead and it’s never coming back”
Multimaterial 3-D printing – a complex lattice using different inks.
3D printing capabilities are rather limited despite the excitement that 3-D printing has generated. It can be used to make complex shapes, but most commonly only out of plastics. Even manufacturers using an advanced version of the technology known as additive manufacturing typically have expanded the material palette only to a few types of metal alloys. But what if 3-D printers could use a wide assortment of different materials, from living cells to semiconductors, mixing and matching the “inks” with precision?
Continue reading… “A 3D printing breakthrough: 3D printed biological tissue”
MOOCs can make a meaningful difference even if we don’t yet know what that will look like.
Harvard and MIT have made a compelling case for the potential benefits of massively open online courses, or MOOCs despite low completion rates. They released a draft of a working paper that is rich on data about their respective HarvardX and MITx courses and focuses on what has always been a faulty focal point of many MOOC criticisms. In a free, online environment, completion rates are vastly overrated.
Continue reading… “Harvard and MIT make a strong case for MOOCs”
Self-cooling windows let in the sunshine without the heat.
Homeowners love a lot of windows in their homes that let in a lot of sunlight. But those windows can also mean higher air conditioning bills since they absorb heat but don’t tend to cool themselves, until now. Harvard researchers have created self-cooling windows.
Continue reading… “Researchers develop self-cooling windows”
Harvard University
Ron Unz of the American Conservative posits that 375-year old Harvard University has grown so rich that it is now essentially a giant hedge fund with a little school attached.
Continue reading… “Harvard’s top endowment managers make 20 times as much as a professor”
South Dakota School of Mines and & Technology
South Dakota School of Mines & Technology graduates are earning more money than Harvard University graduates after a decade-long commodity bull market created shortages of workers and minerals.
Continue reading… “Mining school grads beat out Harvard grads in pay”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc[/youtube]
Incentives like employee bonus pay, app badges, student grades, and even lunch with President Obama are all the rage. Despite their widespread use, most research finds that incentives are terrible at improving performance in the long-run on anything but mindless rote tasks, because the fixation on prizes clouds our creative thinking. However, a new Harvard study of teachers found that a novel approach to incentive scould dramatically improve student performance: give teachers a reward upfront and threaten to take it away if performance doesn’t actually improve. Exploiting the so-called “loss-aversion” tendency could open the door to creative incentivizing for software designers and managers.
Continue reading… “Researchers at Harvard find creative way to make incentives work”
Harvard University
Harvard just set a record for low undergraduate admission rate. Only 5.9 percent of applicants for the class of 2016 were accepted.
Continue reading… “Why being accepted to Harvard is no longer an honor”
Princeton and Harvard tie as top ranked National University.
Harvard University tied Princeton University as the top-ranked National University in U.S. News & World Report’s 2012 rankings of Best Colleges. Last year, Harvard stood alone as the best ranked National University, a category that encompasses large, research-oriented schools.
Continue reading… “Top 10 best colleges in the U.S.”
What’s the Big Idea? What if the world’s greatest thinkers and leading practitioners all taught at the same school? What if anyone, anywhere could enroll in this school? This fall, Big Think is proud to announce the launch of The Floating University, a new educational media venture that creates and distributes online multimedia curricula featuring the best experts, scholars and professionals that the world has to offer.
Continue reading… “Big Think launches the Floating University e-learning platform”
The Nano House
Designers in India have built a tiny building with bamboo walls, fiber roof and a mud floor which means it can be built anywhere using local materials for $315 (£197). (Pics)
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.