Coursera partners with Howard University, expands social justice content, and collaborates with Facebook to offer scholarships to Black learners

By Betty Vandenbosch, Chief Content Officer at Coursera At Coursera, we believe that learning is the source of human progress — that it has the power to transform our world. In 2020, we strengthened our commitment to address systemic racism through learning. We focused on creating social justice and anti-racism content and elevating Black voices […]
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A New Release For GNU Octave

Long-time Slashdot reader lee1 shares his recent article from LWN: On November 26, version 6.1 of GNU Octave, a language and environment for numerical computing, was released. There are several new features and enhancements in the new version, including improvements to graphics output, better communication with web services, and over 40 new functions… In the words of its manual: GNU Octave…

Cheating-Detection Software Provokes ‘School-Surveillance Revolt’

New webcam-based anti-cheating monitoring is so stressful, it’s made some students cry, the Washington Post reports: “Online proctoring” companies saw in coronavirus shutdowns a chance to capitalize on a major reshaping of education, selling schools a high-tech blend of webcam-watching workers and eye-tracking software designed to catch students cheating on their exams. They’ve taken in millions of dollars, some of it…

Natural Language Processing Specialization from deeplearning.ai: Q&A with Younes Bensouda Mourri

Younes Bensouda Mourri is an instructor of the new Natural Language Processing Specialization from deeplearning.ai on Coursera. The intermediate-level, four-course Specialization helps learners develop deep learning techniques to build cutting-edge NLP systems. Apart from his research interest in AI, Younes is actively working to better AI education for some of the brightest minds at Stanford […]
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The ‘Useless’ Perspective That Transformed Mathematics

Representation theory was initially dismissed. Today, it’s central to much of mathematics. From a report: When representation theory emerged in the late 19th century, many mathematicians questioned its worth. In 1897, the English mathematician William Burnside wrote that he doubted that this unorthodox perspective would yield any new results at all. “Basically what [Burnside was] saying is that representation theory is…

What’s new on Coursera for Business – December 2019

By Kyle Clark, Senior Skills Transformation Consultant Coursera’s university and industry partners launched over 50 courses in December to round out 2019. Our new courses range in topic from the data-heavy – including new AI, cloud, and analytics courses – to cultural intelligence, public health, security management, and business English. Here are our top picks […]
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How Texas Instruments Monopolized Math Class

Texas Instruments’ $100 calculators have been required in classrooms for more than twenty years, as students and teachers still struggle to afford them. From a report: Texas Instruments released its first graphing calculator, the TI-81, to the public in 1990. Designed for use in pre-algebra and algebra courses, it was superseded by other Texas Instruments models with varying shades of complexity…

Should High School Computer Science Classes Count as a Math Credit?

“In a widely-reprinted essay, Ohio State University assistant professor of physics Chris Orban ponders whether the tech world did students a favor or disservice by getting states to count computer science as high school math credit,” writes long-time Slashdot reader theodp. The assistant physics professor writes:
In 2013, a who’s who of the tech world came together to launch a new nonprofit…