Online courses directory (4179)

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The free online course Ecology Studies – Conservation Biology and Biodiversity provides detailed information on the current biodiversity crisis, the importance of biodiversity to human life and the use of conservation preserves and legislative frameworks for biodiversity protection. The course begins by introducing you to biodiversity and how it exists at multiple levels of organization and is measured in different ways. These measurements include numbers of species, genetic diversity, chemical diversity, and ecosystem diversity. The five mass extinctions of prehistory are explained along with the most recent extinctions recorded in written history and how they are the basis for one method of estimating contemporary extinction rates. Next, you will learn how humans use many compounds as medicines that were first discovered or derived from living organisms. You will learn how the loss of biodiversity threatens ecosystem services that support human agriculture such as: pollination, nutrient cycling, pest control, and soil development and maintenance. You will also learn about the core threats to biodiversity including human population growth and unsustainable resource use, and how habitat loss occurs through deforestation, damming of rivers, and other human activities. Finally, you are introduced to the methods of biodiversity conservation, such as the optimal design of preserves and the limitations imposed by political and economic forces. You will also gain an understanding of how legislation within individual countries protects species and how agreements on global warming have had limited success. The course will be of great interest to students or professionals who want to develop a career in various aspects of biodiversity and ecosystem conservation or for those who simply want to learn more about the biodiversity crisis, how to preserve and conserve current biodiversity levels and how human activities are the core threat to the planet's ecosystems.<br />

The free online course Ecology Studies – Ecosystem Ecology provides detailed information on the modelling of ecosystems, energy transfer and biogeochemical cycles. The course begins by introducing you to the three broad categories of ecosystems based on their general environment: freshwater, ocean water, and terrestrial ecosystems. You will learn more about the resources within these ecosystems which organisms compete for such as organic material, sunlight, and mineral nutrients. You will learn to identify the various critical factors influencing community dynamics such as the components of its physical and geographic environment. The course then introduces you to how organisms acquire energy and how that energy is passed from one organism to another through food webs and their constituent food chains. You will gain an understanding of the different trophic levels, such as producers, consumers and decomposers, and how energy transfers affect ecosystem structures and dynamics. You will also learn about how the structure of ecosystems can be visualized and modelled with ecological pyramids to show the relative amounts of various parameters (such as number of organisms, energy, and biomass) across trophic levels. Finally, you will be introduced to the biogeochemical cycle, which is the process of recycling inorganic matter between living organisms and their environment. The six most common elements associated with organic molecules are covered explaining how mineral nutrients are cycled from one living organism to another, and between the biotic and abiotic world. You will also gain an understanding of how human activities have impacted these biogeochemical cycles and the potential consequences for society. The course will be ideal for students or professionals who want to develop a career in ecosystem research or for those who simply want to learn more about ecosystem structures, how energy is transferred between trophic levels, and how human activities have caused major disturbances to these cycles. This course will be of great interest to anyone who would like to learn more about ecosystem types and categories, the transfer of energy between trophic levels, through food webs and food chains, and how mineral nutrients are cycled through ecosystems.<br />

The free online course in Ecology Studies – Population and Community Ecology introduces you to patterns of population distribution, population growth and species relationships and behaviours. You will learn about species populations, how life patterns evolve through natural selection, and how species behaviours are influenced by the environment. The course begins by introducing you to the tools that ecologists use to measure the characteristics of populations such as size, density, dispersion pattern and age structure. You will also learn how life tables are used to calculate population life expectancy. You will learn to identify the environmental limits to population growth, how populations with unlimited resources grow exponentially and, when resources become limited why populations then follow a logistic growth curve. You will gain an understanding of population dynamics and regulation based on density-dependent and density-independent factors and learn how the age structure of a population allows us to predict population growth. You will also learn about the characteristics used to categorize species. Finally, you are introduced to community ecology where you will learn the features of community structure and keystone species, and how some species can form symbiotic relationships within an ecological community. You will be introduced to behavioural biology and learn about behaviours such as imprinting and habituation, conditioning, and cognitive learning and methods of communication. The course will be of great interest to professionals working in the areas of ecology or environmental science, and who would like to learn more about the social and environmental consequences of population growth, and the different characteristics of species behaviour.<br />

Learn what ecommerce is actually! A guide to assist you understanding essentials of online business systems

Principles of Microeconomics belongs to the CLEP® PREP suite of Saylor courses. This version of ECON101 will help you master the subject of microeconomics and will help prepare you to take the CLEP® exam in microeconomics [1]. The purpose of this course is to provide you with a basic understanding of the principles of microeconomics. At its core, the study of economics deals with the choices and decisions that have to be made in order to manage scarce resources available to us. Microeconomics is the branch of economics that pertains to decisions made at the individual level, i.e., by individual consumers or individual firms after evaluating resources, costs, and tradeoffs. When we talk about the economy, we are referring to the marketplace or system in which these choices interact with one another. In this course, you will learn how and why these decisions are made and how they affect one another in the economy. Each of the following units has been designed as a building block, where the concepts you le…

The purpose of this course is to provide you with a basic understanding of the principles of microeconomics.  At its core, the study of economics deals with the choices and decisions that have to be made in order to manage scarce resources available to us.  Microeconomics is the branch of economics that pertains to decisions made at the individual level, i.e. by individual consumers or individual firms, after evaluating resources, costs, and tradeoffs.  When we talk about “the economy,” then, we are referring to the marketplace or system in which these choices interact with one another.  In this course, we will learn how and why these decisions are made and how they affect one another in the economy. Each of the following units has been designed as a building block, where the concepts you learn in one unit will enable you to understand the material you discover in the next.  By the end of this course, you will have a strong grasp on the major issues that face microeconomists, including consumer and…

Economics is traditionally divided into two parts: microeconomics and macroeconomics. The main purpose of this course is to introduce you to the principles of macroeconomics. Macroeconomics is the study of how a country’s economy works while trying to discern among good, better, and best choices for improving and/or maintaining a nation’s standard of living and level of economic and societal well-being. Historical and contemporary perspectives on the roles and policies of government are part of the mix of interpretations and alternatives that surround questions of who or what gains and loses the most or least within a relatively small set of key interdependent players. In the broadest view, that set consists of households, consumers, savers, firm owners, investors, agency and elected officials, and global trading partners in which some wear many hats and face price considerations at two levels. Consider one distinction between macroeconomics and microeconomics though prices are taken into account in bot…

Economics is traditionally divided into two parts: microeconomics and macroeconomics.  The purpose of this course is to provide you with a fundamental understanding of the principles of macroeconomics.  Macroeconomists study how a country’s economy works and try to determine the best choices to improve the overall wellbeing of a nation.  Typical topics include inflation (the overall level of prices), employment, fiscal policy (government taxing and spending), and money and banking (interest rates and lending policies).  Individuals and firms need to consider how macroeconomic events will affect their own prosperity.  To better define macroeconomics, consider its distinction from microeconomics.  Imagine you are attempting to figure out how the price of a certain good has been determined.  Microeconomics would focus on how supply and demand determine prices, while macroeconomics would study the determination of prices at all levels.  To test particular policies and ideas, or to find out the causes of…

This course is designed to introduce you to the study of Calculus.  You will learn concrete applications of how calculus is used and, more importantly, why it works.  Calculus is not a new discipline; it has been around since the days of Archimedes.  However, Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, two 17th-century European mathematicians concurrently working on the same intellectual discovery hundreds of miles apart, were responsible for developing the field as we know it today.  This brings us to our first question, what is today's Calculus?  In its simplest terms, calculus is the study of functions, rates of change, and continuity.  While you may have cultivated a basic understanding of functions in previous math courses, in this course you will come to a more advanced understanding of their complexity, learning to take a closer look at their behaviors and nuances. In this course, we will address three major topics: limits, derivatives, and integrals, as well as study their respective foundations and a…

In this course, you will look at the properties behind the basic concepts of probability and statistics and focus on applications of statistical knowledge.  You will learn about how statistics and probability work together.  The subject of statistics involves the study of methods for collecting, summarizing, and interpreting data.  Statistics formalizes the process of making decisions, and this course is designed to help you use statistical literacy to make better decisions.  Note that this course has applications for the natural sciences, economics, computer science, finance, psychology, sociology, criminology, and many other fields. We read data in articles and reports every day.  After finishing this course, you should be comfortable evaluating an author's use of data.  You will be able to extract information from articles and display that information effectively.  You will also be able to understand the basics of how to draw statistical conclusions. This course will begin with descriptive statistic…

Math for Economists will help you assemble a toolkit of skills and techniques to solve fundamental problems in both macroeconomics and microeconomics.  The material covers both precalculus and calculus concepts and should help you identify the best approach to solving problems.  For example, an economist may be called upon to determine the right mix allocation of capital to a production process.  The tools in this course will help you evaluate the options and select from the best alternatives.  Advanced courses in economics typically utilize mathematical techniques beyond basic calculus; so, gaining practice in fundamental skills can serve as a good basis for further study.  Of note, this course applies precalculus and calculus; this is different from “applied math,” which economists typically use to refer to probability and statistics. This course begins with a survey of basic optimization tools and then applies them to solve problems over several periods in time.  These optimization tools descri…

This course is designed to extend your knowledge of the basic microeconomic principles that will provide the foundation for your future work in economics and give you insight into how economic models can help us think about important real world phenomena.  Topics include supply and demand interaction, utility maximization, profit maximization, elasticity, perfect competition, monopoly power, imperfect competition, and game theory. Microeconomics is the study of rational choice behavior on the part of individual consumers and firms.  In general, economists are interested in how market mechanisms solve extremely complex resource allocation problems.  This course presents a logical and coherent framework in which to organize observed economic phenomena. Several economic "models" are developed and analyzed in order to help explain and predict a wide variety of economic (and sometimes, seemingly non-economic) phenomena.  Microeconomic theory is based on the notion that individuals (and firms) have well defin…

In this course, you will build on and apply what you learned in the introductory macroeconomics course (ECON102 [1]).   You will use the concepts of output, unemployment, inflation, consumption, and investment to study the dynamics of an economy at a more advanced level.   For example, now that you understand the relationship between supply and demand in general terms, you will be asked to examine the effects that short-run and long-run price changes have on full employment and output.  As the course progresses, you will gain a better appreciation for how policy shifts and changes in one sector impact the rest of the macroeconomy (whether the impacts are intended or unintended).  You will also examine the causes of inflation and depression, and discuss various approaches to responding to them.  By the end of this course, you should be able to think critically about the economy and develop your own unique perspective on various issues. Remember that macroeconomics attempts to explain the role of gover…

This course is designed to provide you with a simple and straightforward introduction to econometrics.  Econometrics is an application of statistical procedures to the testing of hypotheses about economic relationships and to the estimation of parameters.  Regression analysis is the primary procedure commonly used by researchers and managers whether their employments are within the goods or the resources market and/or within the agriculture, the manufacturing, the services, or the information sectors of an economy. Completion of this course in econometrics will help you progress from a student of economics to a practitioner of economics.  By completing this course, you will gain an overview of econometrics, develop your ability to think like an economist, hone your skills building and testing models of consumer and producer behavior, and synthesize the results you find through analyses of data pertaining to market-based economic systems.  In essence, professional economists conduct studies that combine…

As a student of economics, you must study the history of economic thought to understand why individuals, firms, and governments make certain choices. Economists try to answer three basic questions: what to produce, how to produce it, and for whom. The history of economic thought represents a wide diversity of theories within the discipline, but all economists address these three basic questions. As you learn more about the history of economic thought, you may realize that policies presented as great innovations today are founded upon centuries-old writings. You will learn that without a clear sense of the discussions and debates that took place among economists of the past, the modern economist lacks a complete perspective. By examining the history of economic thought, you will be able to categorize and classify thoughts and ideas and will begin to understand how to think like an economist. Economics is both a social science and a business subject; accordingly, economic thinking affects everything from art t…

This course is designed to provide you with a thorough understanding of the importance of money, banking, and financial markets of a developed economy.  Money, financial institutions, and financial markets have emerged as instruments of payments for the services of factors of production, such as labor and capital.  The use of money facilitates business in a market by acting as a common medium of exchange.  Of course, as that market expands and develops on a national and international level, the importance of money, banking, and other financial markets expands to accommodate innumerable exchanges. This course will allow you to examine not only the origins and nature of money, but also the institutions and markets that have evolved to enable the exchange of goods and services worldwide.  It will provide you with the opportunity to examine the instruments and strategies assisting production, distribution, and consumption.  Also, this course will help you develop an appreciation for important concepts in e…