In an article for Forbes, Elaine Pofeldt highlights how programs such as the MITx MicroMasters in Supply Chain Management provide workers with an opportunity to update their skills at any point in their career. “Education is the ultimate safety net,” explains Anant Agarwal, president of edX.
Prof. Mitch Resnick spoke about his new book, Lifelong Kindergarten, which is “his attempt to distill what he's learned over the last few decades…[and] includes the voices of children and teenagers who have participated in Lifelong Kindergarten projects,” writes NPR’s Anya Kamenetz.
Bryan Marquard of The Boston Globe writes about the legacy of Paul Gray, the 14th president of MIT, who died at 85 and was known for his efforts to increase diversity at MIT. Gray was a “transformative administrator who enrolled at MIT as an electrical engineering student in 1950 and retired in 1997 as chairman of the MIT Corporation, the institute’s governing body,” writes Marquard.
In this article written in Portuguese, graduate student Jennifer Groff speaks with Paula Adamo Idoeta of the BBC News about effective teaching methods. “We try to help teachers see the value of more playful learning by exploring a topic rather than ‘filling’ the students' heads with ideas,” Groff says.
MIT placed second in Times Higher Ed’s 2018 arts and humanities ranking, reports Ellie Bothwell. “The multidisciplinary nature of the institute is certainly invaluable – not only for educating citizens, engineers, scholars, artists and scientists, but for sustaining the institute’s capacity to tackle challenges,” explains Melissa Nobles, dean of the MIT School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.
UPI reporter Ed Adamczyk writes that MIT was named to the number five spot in U.S. News & World Report’s 2018 best college rankings. “Factors for the rankings include graduation and retention rates, surveys of college officials and high school counselors, faculty funding, and selectivity in admissions,” Adamczyk explains.
MIT placed fifth in U.S. News & World Report’s 2018 best college rankings, reports CBS This Morning.
MIT was named to the top four of The Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings teaching pillar, reports Linda Nordling for the Times Higher Education. Nordling notes that MIT, “draws on technology to prime its offering,” and, “uses data analysis to investigate how people learn and is feeding the insights into teaching practice.”
MIT tops Class Central’s list of the “Top 50 MOOCs of all Time, ”reports Class Central reporter Dhawal Shah. Several MITx MOOCs were featured on the list, including The Analytics Edge, Circuits and Electronics 1, Introduction to Biology, and Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python.
Writing for The New York Times about educational technology, Prof. Cynthia Breazeal describes her research examining the importance of social cues in learning from technology. “If we want to use technology to help people learn, we have to provide information in the way the human mind evolved to receive it,” she explains.
A study by MIT researchers found that after a law was passed in Louisiana allowing public-school teachers to contradict the scientific curriculum, students scored lower on the science section of the ACT, reports Kevin Lewis for The Boston Globe. The study also showed that, “at the same time, creationism-related search terms on Google became more common, relative to evolution-related terms.”
The Economist highlights a study by J-PAL researchers examining the effectiveness of certain educational technologies. The researchers found that, “in nearly all the 41 studies which compared pupils using adaptive software with peers who were taught by conventional means the software-assisted branch got higher scores.”
Mercury News reporter Jasmine Leyva highlights how students in Campbell, California are participating in the Zero Robotics program, which “aims to take students’ work to the moon and beyond, all while teaching students about space exploration, computer science and coding.” The Zero Robotics program is led by the MIT Space Systems Lab, Innovation Learning Center and Aurora Flight Sciences.
Prof. Esther Duflo speaks with WBUR’s Fred Thys about MIT’s MicroMasters in development economics. Thys explains that the new MicroMasters program allows students, “to take rigorous courses online for credit, and if they perform well on exams, to apply for a master's degree program on campus.”
Boston Globe reporter Jeremy Fox writes about a new study by MIT researchers examining whether math games can be beneficial in helping children learn. The researchers found that, “children who played math games consistently showed a better grasp of the concepts…but that understanding did not appear to help in elementary school.”