Do You Believe Aliens Exist?
Find all our Student Opinion questions here. Did you hear about the meme-inspired Facebook event encouraging people to “storm Area 51,” a secret military site that has long been rumored — in television shows, movies and online forums — to be the home of extraterrestrial life? Well, the event took place last week, and several…
Anisa Ray: Test Prep Teacher to Software Engineer
Anisa Ray, MCIT ’22, studied rhetoric in college and then worked as a test prep teacher, getting students ready to ace their graduate school entrance exams. Today, she’s a newly minted graduate of the online Master of Computer and Information Technology (MCIT Online) from University of Pennsylvania and a software engineer at Palo Alto Networks,…
Lesson of the Day: ‘How Pop Music Fandom Became Sports, Politics,...
Students in U.S. high schools can get free digital access to The New York Times until Sept. 1, 2021.Lesson OverviewFeatured Article: “How Pop Music Fandom Became Sports, Politics, Religion and All-Out War” by Joe CoscarelliOn social media in 2020, “the stan was ascendant,” reports Joe Coscarelli, a Times culture reporter. How did music fan culture…
What Is User Acceptance Testing (UAT)?
In 2020, a survey by Original Software found that almost 90% of respondents agreed that user acceptance testing (UAT) is a key part of achieving high-quality results in software development. But what is user acceptance testing?User acceptance testing is the final testing stage in software development before production. It's used to get feedback from users…
Must Read
Picture Prompt: Holding Hands
Tell us a story, real or made up, that is inspired by this image.
Course Spotlight: Understanding Fashion: From Business to Culture
Over almost 150 years, the fashion industry has transformed many aspects of Western culture. On the course, Understanding Fashion: From Business to Culture by Institut Français de la mode (IFM) learners are invited to explore the interaction of fashion, society and business. The course features exclusive input from fashion industry leaders, including designers such as…
3 Real-World Use Cases for Algorithms You’ll Learn With Penn’s MCIT...
In recent years, “algorithm” has gone from a niche word relevant mostly to computer scientists to an essential term for understanding how our data-rich world works. And as the use of algorithms becomes pervasive, a firm grasp of how to use them has become a major competitive advantage. The online Master of Computer and Information…
What’s Going On in This Picture? | April 20, 2020
Students1. After looking closely at the image above (or at the full-size image), think about these three questions:2. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post…
A high-income skill for creatives: user experience
So far in our high-income skills series, we’ve explored how you can use data analysis to demonstrate your impact and project management to enhance your workflow. Both of these skill sets tend to involve internal workflows. This week, we’re shifting to an external focus: the user experience. User experience (UX) has to do with understanding the way a person (the user) interacts…
Gender Expectations
A recent article headlined “Girls Enter the Boys’ World of Flipping” features teen girls who are claiming their place inside an emerging online community of extreme athletes who flip, freerun and defy expectations in a sport dominated by boys. Do you ever find gender expectations or norms confining? How? In what ways, if any, have…
Past Stories
Launching “Generative AI for University Leaders”
A free course from Vanderbilt University to better equip educators worldwide with GenAI skills By Marni Baker Stein, Chief Content Officer, Coursera Today, we are excited to launch Generative AI for University Leaders, a course from Vanderbilt University specifically designed to help universities navigate the challenges and opportunities posed by generative AI. The course is…
What is a DDoS Attack?
Hackers use many methods to infiltrate systems, steal data, and create general havoc with devices and networks connected to the Internet. Below, we'll look at one of the most common disruptive weapons in a cyber attacker's arsenal — the DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attack.Attackers don't even have to get access to a system in order to…
Why the Future of Learning Starts with Building
Coding has always served two purposes: the intrinsic drive to build something, and the practical path to a lucrative career. Even the most passionate code aficionados don’t dream of variables or syntax — they want to make a website, a tool, a game. For years, the career upside was impossible to ignore. You could land a stable SWE job, bootstrap your own app, or join a buzzy…
Why the Future of Learning Starts with Building
Coding has always served two purposes: the intrinsic drive to build something, and the practical path to a lucrative career. Even the most passionate code aficionados don’t dream of variables or syntax — they want to make a website, a tool, a game. For years, the career upside was impossible to ignore. You could land a stable SWE job, bootstrap your own app, or join a buzzy…
On Phones and Childhood: The Week 10 Winners of Our Summer...
As our contest comes to a close, we honor both a video and an essay, and hear reflections on this year’s submissions from our judges.
Word of the Day: beckon
The word bold has appeared in 33 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on July 25 in “Will Translation Apps Make Learning Foreign Languages Obsolete?” by John McWhorter:Because I love trying to learn languages and am endlessly fascinated by their varieties and complexities, I am working hard to wrap my head around this…