Online courses directory (10358)

ALISON’s "Geography 1" course introduces environmental awareness and raises awareness of the global importance of a safe, healthy and sustainable environment. The course offers learners a pragmatic introduction to the various issues currently facing key geographic areas such as Antarctica. It examines resource use, development and the environmental consequences of their misuse. This course is suitable for anyone interested in geography and the environment.

This graduate-level class explores the complex interrelationships among humans and natural environments, focusing on non-western parts of the world in addition to Europe and the United States. It uses environmental conflict to draw attention to competing understandings and uses of "nature" as well as the local, national and transnational power relationships in which environmental interactions are embedded. In addition to utilizing a range of theoretical perspectives, this subject draws upon a series of ethnographic case studies of environmental conflicts in various parts of the world.

The geologic record demonstrates that our environment has changed over a variety of time scales from seconds to billions of years. This course explores the many ways in which geologic processes control and modify the Earth's environment and serves as an introduction to Environmental Earth Science Field Course (12.120), which addresses field applications of these principles in the American Southwest.

This course explores the theory behind and evidence on regulatory, tax, and other government responses to problems of market failure. Special emphasis is given to developing and implementing tools to evaluate environmental policies. Other topics include cost-benefit analysis, measurement of the benefits of non-market goods and costs of regulations, and the evaluation of the impact of regulations in areas such as financial markets, workplace health and safety, consumer product safety, and other contexts.

This class is one of the core requirements for the Environmental Masters of Engineering program, in conjunction with 1.133 Masters of Engineering Concepts of Engineering Practice. It is designed to teach about environmental engineering through the use of case studies, computer software tools, and seminars from industrial experts. Case studies provide the basis for group projects as well as individual theses. Recent 1.782 projects include the MMR Superfund site on Cape Cod, appropriate wastewater treatment technology for Brazil and Honduras, point-of-use water treatment and safe storage procedures for Nepal and Ghana, Brownfields Development in Providence, RI, and water resource planning for the island of Cyprus and refugee settlements in Thailand. This class spans the entire academic year; students must register for the Fall and Spring terms.

This class explores the foundations of the environmental justice movement, current and emerging issues, and the application of environmental justice analysis to environmental policy and planning. It examines claims made by diverse groups along with the policy and civil society responses that address perceived inequity and injustice. While focused mainly on the United States, international issues and perspectives are also considered.

Through site-specific client-based work, this course will allow students to materially contribute to redevelopment decision-making regarding a former inner-city industrial site. The course will focus on generating and analyzing pragmatic redevelopment scenarios given the issues of brownfields and environmental contamination, community preferences, regulatory constraints and economic realities.

The course is designed along two parallel and mutually reinforcing educational tracks: Field learning and classroom reflection, with ample time built into the schedule for both. As the course will focus on an actual site, there will be a sizeable portion of student time spent on location and in the surrounding community.

This class provides a general introduction to the diverse roles of microorganisms in natural and artificial environments. It will cover topics including: cellular architecture, energetics, and growth; evolution and gene flow; population and community dynamics; water and soil microbiology; biogeochemical cycling; and microorganisms in biodeterioration and bioremediation.

This course explores the proper role of government in the regulation of the environment. It will help students develop the tools to estimate the costs and benefits of environmental regulations. These tools will be used to evaluate a series of current policy questions, including: Should air and water pollution regulations be tightened or loosened? What are the costs of climate change in the U.S. and abroad? Is there a "Race to the Bottom" in environmental regulation? What is "sustainable development"? How do environmental problems differ in developing countries? Are we running out of oil and other natural resources? Should we be more energy efficient? To gain real world experience, the course is scheduled to include a visit to the MIT cogeneration plant. We will also do an in-class simulation of an air pollution emissions market.

Can law change human behavior to be less environmentally damaging? Law will be examined through case histories including: environmental effects of national security, pesticides, air pollution, consumer products, plastics, parks and protected area management, land use, urban growth and sprawl, public/private transit, drinking water standards, food safety, and hazardous site restoration. In each case we will review the structure of law and evaluate its strengths and weaknesses.

"Environmental Politics & Policy" explores the workings of environmental policymaking in the United States.

• What are the big issues facing environmental policy?
• How did we end up with the policies we have today?
• Why does it take a crisis to move environmental policy forward?
• Why do political factors - economic interests, social and political values, bureaucratic styles, ideologies, elections, etc. - always seem to overwhelm sound scientific and engineering judgment in determining policy outcomes?

Case studies ranging from cleaning up toxic waste pollution to endangered species protection probe the clashes between science and politics at local, state, and federal levels.

Build your earth science vocabulary and learn about cycles of matter and types of sedimentary rocks through the Education Portal course Earth Science 101: Earth Science. Our series of video lessons and accompanying self-assessment quizzes can help you boost your scientific knowledge ahead of the Excelsior Earth Science exam . This course was designed by experienced educators and examines both science basics, like experimental design and systems of measurement, and more advanced topics, such as analysis of rock deformation and theories of continental drift.

This class explores the interrelationship between humans and natural environments. It does so by focusing on conflict over access to and use of the environment as well as ideas about "nature" in various parts of the world.

This environmental studies course is intended to introduce you to some of the basic principles in environmental studies, and how those are manifested in urban, rural and natural areas throughout the world.

Through observation, discussion, and creation of digital content, you will explore and share environmental challenges facing your local environment and create a global learning and action community.

Rather than simply offering a long list of the problems we face, this course will take a solutions-focused approach.

This course will introduce the concept of environmental ethics, a philosophy that extends the ethical concepts traditionally applied to human behavior to address the entire natural world. The course will outline the history of environmental ethics, discuss the idea of environmental justice, and explore how our views about the natural world have changed over time. Though environmental ethics is considered a fairly new branch of scientific philosophy, it has actually been debated avidly since the 19th century. From the frontier era of the developing United States through to the modern-day environmental movement, you will identify and analyze the key pioneers and events in the move to help preserve our planet for future generations and species. You will also explore the notion of environmental justice and how this impacts certain social groups, particularly in poorer communities throughout the world. Finally, you will familiarize yourself with the major environmental laws and world views that support the envir…

Human societies have always been dependent upon local and regional environments for critical natural resources, and loss of these resources (either due to environmental changes or human overuse) has often reduced a society’s resilience to future challenges.  When resilience decreases, the risk of societal collapse increases.  Today, our globalized, highly connected societies have increased access to environmental resources, yet they leave us more vulnerable to disruptions and disasters that begin in other regions or systems.  By understanding how our societies are connected to each other and to the environment, we can better manage our interactions so that they do not increase the potential for societal collapse.  This course will use a complex systems theory perspective to investigate how coupled human-environment systems interact to either increase or decrease their risk of collapse.  This complex systems approach works across many disciplines, so that human-environment linkages can be understood fro…

Discover the amazing adaptability of the human body to environmental stressors. Watch and learn as we put our bodies through extreme cold, heat, stress, age, and more!

Discover the amazing adaptability of the human body to environmental stressors. Watch and learn as we put our bodies through extreme cold, heat, stress, age, altitude, and pressure!

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses are useful for evidence-based clinical and public health practice. The widespread and growing application of systematic review methods for the synthesis of evidence on important or pressing research and clinical questions underscore the need for health-care professionals to understand and critique this research design. This course will provide a detailed description of the systematic review process, discuss the strengths and limitations of the method, and provide step-by-step guidance on how to actually perform a systematic review and meta-analysis. Specific topics to be covered include: formulation of the review question, searching of literature, quality assessment of studies, data extraction, meta-analytic methods, assessment of heterogeneity and report writing. The course will also cover statistical issues such as selection of statistical models for meta-analysis, practical examples of fixed and random effects models, best evidence syntheses (qualitative systematic reviews) as well as examples of methods to evaluate heterogeneity and publication bias. STATA statistical software will be used to perform meta-analysis during the computer lab, along with tutorials on how to effectively use tools such as PubMed for conducting reviews. Course Level: Graduate This Work, EPID 757 - Introduction to Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses, by Joel Gagnier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

Malaria, HIV/AIDS, Influenza, Measles - we’re in a constant battle against infectious diseases. This is a course about the dynamics of such diseases - how they emerge, how they spread around the globe, and how they can best be controlled.