In 1972 a bunch of geeks at Stanford University held a video game competition. The prize was a year’s subscription to Rolling Stone magazine and the game was Spacewar!, in which two monochrome spaceships attempt to shoot each other whilst avoiding the gravity well of a star. It was the first known organised video game competition.
Last year courseindex.com featured a story about a new centre for cyber security at Bletchley Park in the UK, a ‘Hogwarts for hackers’ designed to recruit the best young minds in I.T. in the fight against cyberterrorism and other computer-based threats to national security.
In today’s world of just-in-time learning, where it’s perfectly possible to get a degree-level education without needing to spend tens of thousands on an actual degree, a lot of what we need to learn can be had for free. It can also be had when we need it, rather than forming part of a three or four-year program and being forgotten by the time we come round to needing to use it.
Sometimes at school students miss something important due to absence, inattention, teacher sickness or sporting commitments. Alternatively they might struggle with the subject in general and need extra support to get them through the year with good grades. Conversely, some students may be particularly fascinated by a subject and wish to deepen their knowledge. In the case of geometry, which forms the foundation for many disciplines and, ultimately, careers, taking extra online classes from an expert can help students to really nail down this fundamental subject.
Cuddly Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is the figurehead of a new educational enterprise aimed at training the next generation of tech wizards and fast-tracking the most promising ones.
A virtual reality simulation of a nuclear facility is one of the new training tools presented at the 61st IAEA General Conference in September. Training specialists will be using it to navigate through realistic scenarios, threats and risks. The 3D tool is focused on preventative and protective measures against insider threats, and there are plans to cover other areas of nuclear security in the future.
What is the real value of an MBA? The skills developed, or the prestige of the issuing institution? For those seeking to add an MBA to their resume, their answer to that question will make the difference between spending thousands of dollars and spending no dollars at all.
Drones are filling our skies. If companies like Amazon manage to negotiate their way past aviation restrictions, drones will soon be delivering our shopping to our homes and workplaces. No longer just toys and aerial photography tools, drones are here to stay. They are used in search and rescue, disaster relief, bomb disposal, military and civilian reconnaissance, archaeology, infrastructure inspection, anti-poaching, conservation, construction and law enforcement.
In 1233 a papal bull decreed that anyone admitted to the mastership at the University of Toulouse should be allowed to teach freely in any other university. Ever since then it has been set in stone that the rite of passage into a master’s degree is a three or four-year undergraduate degree. Pretty much by definition, a master’s is a follow-on from a bachelor’s degree.
Which courses are the most intellectually stimulating? If you ask this question to teachers and students of various subjects, you’re bound to get biased answers. After all, those people are in their chosen fields because they found them interesting in the first place. Unless they are doing it because they have to – more on that later.
Those involved in decision-making in business and law might have heard of the OODA loop. Standing for Observe-Orient-Decide-Act, it is a methodology for treading carefully, avoiding unnecessary conflict, and winning in challenging situations by performing actions based on rational decisions. To make those decisions, one must first fully understand the situation by observation, and get to know one’s opponents’ intentions and likely actions by orientation. The four steps in the loop are:
