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Graduate student Marsin Alshamary writes for The Washington Post about how the role of Iraq’s Shiite clerics is transforming. “Because their authority ultimately stems from the population, Shiite clerics will have to adapt to popular demands — which are now tending toward a secular state — or risk losing relevance,” writes Alshamary.
A Washington Post article co-written by MIT graduate student Marsin Alshamary notes that there is “no clear political authority to hold accountable” for recent protests in Basra, Iraq. “Basra’s protests are more about economic grievances than political ones. Although many of these grievances are shared by other Iraqis, they are felt most keenly by Basrawis,” Alshamary and her co-author explain.
Lecturer Amy Carleton speaks with Times Higher Ed reporter Holly Else about how she uses Wikipedia in her courses. Carleton explains that by asking students to write new pieces and add information to existing Wikipedia entries, she is attempting to help students “start to understand how important it is to have a high-quality source to back up any statements that they are making.”
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.”
In a Guardian article about how technology can be used to help refugees, Tazeen Dhunna Ahmad highlights MIT’s Refugee ACTion Hub (ReACT). ReACT is aimed at finding, “digital learning opportunities for a lost generation of children who, as a result of forced displacement, are losing their education.”
Joel Brenner, former NSA inspector general and a research fellow at MIT, speaks to BBC reporter Gareth Mitchell about an MIT report that examines cyber security threats to the nation’s infrastructure. “You can have a digital network that’s not public,” says Brenner, “but you shouldn’t be able to get to the controls of critical infrastructure through the public internet.”
Prof. Evan Ziporyn and Visiting Artist Maya Beiser speak to Arun Rath of WGBH about their work at MIT’s Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) and their performance of David Bowie’s final album. Ziporyn explains that CAST’s purpose is to “energize cross relations between those disciplines, which is something MIT has had going on basically since it was MIT.”
Richard Florida writes for The Atlantic’s CityLab site about Prof. Emeritus Peter Temin’s research examining how growing class and racial divisions in America are creating a dual economy. In the new, highly-segmented economy, “education, which was once a force for the homogenization of the labor force,” Temin argues, “has become a barrier reinforcing the dual economy.”
Prof. Fotini Christia and grad students Elizabeth Dekeyser and Dean Knox write for The Washington Post about how they surveyed religious Shiites from Iran and Iraq concerning their views on religion, politics and more. The authors write that the survey, which was conducted during an annual pilgrimage, “presents a unique template for surveying hard-to-reach populations in an increasingly mobile world.”
Carl Straumsheim writes for Inside Higher Ed that instructor grading will be offered in an MITx philosophy MOOC this fall. “You can still achieve scale through partially automating courses, but keeping some bits of human interaction that are really important, like the interaction between you and the person you are writing a paper to,” explains Prof. Caspar Hare.
A new study co-authored by MIT Prof. Susan Silbey examines why female students leave the field of engineering. When the researchers analyzed "more than 40 engineering students’ twice-monthly diaries, they found that female students often felt marginalized during group activities,” Inside Higher Ed reports.
Writing for The Huffington Post, Richard Freed highlights a study by MIT researchers that found that a student’s academic performance tends to decline when personal computing technology is available. The researchers “compared West Point students’ final exam scores for those who used personal computers and tablets in class to those who didn’t.”
A new study by MIT researchers finds that student use of personal computing technology in classrooms has a negative effect on academic performance, reports Richard Adams for The Guardian. “The researchers suggested that removing laptops and iPads from classes was the equivalent of improving the quality of teaching,” writes Adams.
Tech reporters Drew Bent and Katherine Nazemi speak with MIT President L. Rafael Reif about the MIT Campaign for a Better World. “We want to be as strong as we can, but for a purpose, and the purpose is to do something good for the world,” says Reif. “That’s very uniquely MIT.”