Our first stop was Hosseiniyeh Ershad, a blue-domed lecture hall and mosque, in northern Tehran.

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Speaking to a standing-room-only lecture hall lined with dozens of students and faculty members, he spent the last minutes of his presentation reading off the names of students, post-doctoral fellows, collaborating groups and funding sources from a projected slide that listed even more of them.

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We wanted to be able to shoot live video from a variety of angles and locations within the lecture hall, so that everyone can see the techniques close-up.

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MIT, along with other academic shrines, may do all this while preserving the value of what it really sells: spots in the lecture hall and dorm rooms, the chance to interact face-to-face with a prestigious faculty and like-minded students and, a golden credential, the MIT diploma.

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The ground floor holds a theatre, lecture hall and kitchens where the arts of Italian cooking are taught to aspiring professional chefs, well-to-do food-lovers from around the world, and teams of managers encouraged to bond over chopping blocks and mixing bowls.

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