Tag: Learning

  • Nation & World

    Jeté into an ionic bond

    Ph.D. student Frederick Moss brings together the incongruous worlds of science and art.

    5 minutes
    People dancing.
  • Nation & World

    The future of mind control

    A new paper explores why neuron-like implants could offer a better way to treat brain disorders, control prosthetics, or even enhance cognitive abilities.

    4 minutes
    raditional-neural-electrodes-versus-mesh-electronics
  • Nation & World

    Lessons in learning

    Study shows students in ‘active learning’ classrooms learn more than they think

    6 minutes
    two students looking at notebook together
  • Nation & World

    Dealing with disaster

    As part of the class “GeoSciFi Movies: Real vs. Fiction,” students took part in a role-playing game that had them play the parts of the government and citizens of the island of Montserrat, as well as a group of scientists monitoring the island’s volcano.

    4 minutes
    Jania Tumey speaks in the Harvard class “GeoSciFi Movies: Real vs. Fiction.”
  • Nation & World

    Cannabis abstinence for month aids memory, study says

    A Massachusetts General Hospital study found that abstaining from cannabis use for one month resulted in measurable improvement in memory functions important for learning among adolescents and young adults who were regular users.

    4 minutes
    Cannabis on a failed test paper
  • Nation & World

    Harvard students, meet the Stone Age

    Students taking part in a new freshman seminar class learn to appreciate the sophistication of Neanderthals by manufacturing their own stone tools from scratch.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The eyes tell

    A new study shows that gaze-following develops in monkeys in a way that’s nearly identical to humans, suggesting that the behavior has deep evolutionary roots.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Closer view of the brain

    A team of researchers has succeeded in imaging — at the nano scale — every item in a small portion of mouse brain. What they found, Lichtman said, could open the door to, among other things, understanding how learning alters the brain.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Creatures of habit

    The motor cortex is critical to learn new skills, but may not be needed to perform them, a new Harvard study says.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A cost of culture

    A new study, authored by Collin McCabe, a doctoral student in Harvard’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, suggests that increased exposure to disease has played an important role in the evolution of culture in both humans and non-human primates.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard rolls out plan for the future

    The Harvard Sustainability Plan, released today, sets a holistic vision and clear priorities for how the University will move toward an even healthier, more sustainable campus community. The five-year operational plan targets reductions in energy, water, and waste while also focusing on sustainable operations, culture change, and human health.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘I have always been temperamentally wired to carry on’

    Interview with Professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot as part of the Experience series.

    29 minutes
    Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot in her home.
  • Nation & World

    A break to explore

    January@GSAS offered more than 100 classes, seminars, and training sessions to students in Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences during semester break. Students had the chance to escape the lab or library, and spend time exploring subjects that might not otherwise appear in a Harvard course catalog.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Deconstructing motor skills

    Harvard researchers have found that the brain uses two largely independent neural circuits to learn spatial and temporal aspects of complex motor skills.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Five named College Professors

    Five faculty members have been awarded Harvard College Professorships: Joseph D. Harris, Steven R. Levitsky, Michael Puett, Jennifer L. Roberts, and Maryellen Ruvolo. The Harvard College Professorships are five-year appointments. They provide faculty with extra support for research or scholarly activities and a semester of paid leave or a summer salary.

    8 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Crime-fighting platform wins President’s Challenge

    Today President Drew Faust named Team Nucleik the grand prize winner of the Harvard University President’s Challenge for social entrepreneurship, hosted by the Harvard Innovation Lab (i-lab).

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Focus on teaching, learning

    The essentials of good teaching and learning took the stage at the second annual Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching conference.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Understanding student weaknesses

    As part of an unusual study that surveyed 181 middle school physical science teachers and nearly 10,000 students, researchers found that the most successful teachers were those who knew what students would get wrong on standardized tests.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Provost’s other hat: Teacher

    As provost, Alan Garber spends his days tackling Harvard’s administrative concerns. This semester, he has stepped back into his old role as a teacher, leading a freshman seminar on health care policy that has given him a fresh take on the University he helps lead.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Finalists selected in President’s Challenge

    Harvard University today announced the selection of 10 teams of finalists in the 2013 President’s Challenge for social entrepreneurship.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Linking insulin to learning

    Work led by Yun Zhang, associate professor of organismic and evolutionary biology, shows how the pathway of insulin and insulinlike peptides plays a critical role in helping to regulate learning and memory.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Exploring edX 1.0

    MIT’s Anant Agarwal, who is the first president of edX, shared early results from the new online education venture’s first pilot course at the second annual Harvard IT Summit.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Ahead of the learning curve

    From the $40 million Hauser gift to support teaching and learning initiatives to the recent announcement of the global online platform edX, Harvard tackled the future of higher education head-on in 2011-12. As the University’s 375th anniversary draws to a close, the Gazette asked some prescient professors: “What’s the one big idea that will transform…

    16 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Educating Harvard, MIT — and the world

    Harvard and MIT are joining forces to launch edX, an open-source, online education platform. Leaders from both universities discussed how they hope to transform teaching and learning on campus and around the globe.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A peek at Harvard’s future

    Maya Jasanoff and her faculty colleagues gathered at the Tsai Auditorium on Feb. 16 and March 7 to consider how the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) may look in a generation. The discussions were part of the Conversations @ FAS series, which this year asks some of Harvard’s leading scholars to imagine the faculty…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Guiding lights

    In a scientific first that could shed light on how signals travel in the brain and how learning alters neural pathways, scientists at Harvard have created genetically altered neurons that light up as they fire. The work may also lead to speedier drug development.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Education and innovation

    Harvard University announced today that Rita E. and Gustave M. Hauser have given the University $40 million to support excellence and innovation in learning and teaching at Harvard.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Multiple Intelligences

    Tina Grotzer Associate Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Circuits of sense and sensibility’

    A Harvard biologist succeeds in mapping a neural network for learned olfactory behavior, using a roundworm model to trace the dislike of a particular smell to the reaction that avoids it.

    4 minutes