Online courses directory (10358)

This course is part of the Microsoft Professional Program Certificate in Big Data. 

In this four week course, you’ll learn how to implement low-latency and streaming Big Data solutions using Hadoop technologies like HBase, Storm, and Spark on Microsoft Azure HDInsight.

Note: To complete the hands-on elements in this course, you will require an Azure subscription and a Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X client computer. You can sign up for a free Azure trial subscription (a valid credit card is required for verification, but you will not be charged for Azure services). Note that the free trial is not available in all regions. It is possible to complete the course and earn a certificate without completing the hands-on practices.

This course is the second in a series that explores big data and advanced analytics techniques with HDInsight; and builds on the batch processing techniques learned in DAT202.1x: Processing Big Data with Hadoop in Azure HDInsight.

Learn the importance of Financial Planning and the key steps involved in developing a financial plan.

A guide to learning the essentials of financial, credit and debt management.

This course teaches the basic skills needed for conducting sound source research.

With roots in industry and in health care, improvement science is a disciplined approach to educational innovation that supports teachers, leaders, and researchers in collaborating to solve specific problems of practice. Improvement science brings discipline and methods to different logics of innovation by integrating:

• Problem analysis
• Use of research
• Development of solutions
• Measurement of processes and outcomes
• Rapid refinement through plan-do-study-act cycles.

For teachers, school leaders, and system leaders, improvement science moves educational innovation out of the realm of “fad” and into the realm of research-based, evidence-driven continuous improvement, with the goal of increasing the effectiveness of educational practice.

That, in turn, will support schools and systems in responding to calls to improve opportunities to learn and student performance and calls to reduce achievement gaps by improving the day-to-day work students, teachers, and leaders.

In this introduction to improvement science, developed in collaboration with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, learners will explore:

• Problem-specific and user-centered design and analysis
• Differences in implementation and outcomes as resources for improvement
• Improving systems to improve practice
• Driving improvement through measurement, evidence, and disciplined inquiry

This course is part of the Leading Educational Innovation and Improvement MicroMasters Program offered by MichiganX.

We are at a critical inflection point in global health. We have seen improvements in access to care, but struggle to improve human health. A key component of this equation is quality of care.

Improving access to healthcare is only as useful as the quality of care provided. Many agree that quality is important – but what is it? How do we define it? How do we measure it? And most importantly, how might we make it better?

The course is designed for those who care about health and healthcare and wish to learn more about how to measure and improve that care – for themselves, for their institutions, or for their countries. Each session will be interactive and provide concrete tools that students can use. We will empower you to raise questions, propose concrete solutions, and promote change.

We have assembled leading thinkers from around the globe – not only people who are experts – but people with real, hands-on experience running organizations, hospitals, and ministries of health. So join us – whether you are a physician, nurse, or other healthcare provider, if you are a student of medicine, public health, or health policy, or a patient who simply cares about getting good care – this course is for you.

Honor Code

HarvardX requires individuals who enroll in its courses on edX to abide by the terms of the edX honor code. HarvardX will take appropriate corrective action in response to violations of the edX honor code, which may include dismissal from the HarvardX course; revocation of any certificates received for the HarvardX course; or other remedies as circumstances warrant. No refunds will be issued in the case of corrective action for such violations. Enrollees who are taking HarvardX courses as part of another program will also be governed by the academic policies of those programs.

Research statement

HarvardX pursues the science of learning. By registering as an online learner in an HX course, you will also participate in research about learning. Read our research statement to learn more.

Nondiscrimination/anti-harassment statement

Harvard University and HarvardX are committed to maintaining a safe and healthy educational and work environment in which no member of the community is excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or subjected to discrimination or harassment in our program. All members of the HarvardX community are expected to abide by Harvard policies on nondiscrimination, including sexual harassment, and the edX Terms of Service. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact harvardx@harvard.edu and/or report your experience through the edX contact form.

Under Common Core, all teachers need to be writing teachers. Unfortunately many History/Social Studies teachers have not had significant instruction and/or practice in historical writing. This course will help social studies teachers: identify the characteristics of high quality writing, improve argumentative writing, improve informative or explanatory writing, improve narrative writing, conduct rubric validation, and incorporate peer review and revision memos.

Under Common Core, all teachers need to be writing teachers. Unfortunately many History/Social Studies teachers have not had significant instruction and/or practice in historical writing. This course will help social studies teachers: identify the characteristics of high quality writing, improve argumentative writing, improve informative or explanatory writing, improve narrative writing, conduct rubric validation, and incorporate peer review and revision memos.

Voxopop is a Web application program that can be used by teachers and trainers as an online learning tool to create forums where questions are asked using voice recordings instead of text. It can be used to help students develop their oral speaking skills by having students reply to questions using voice recorded answers and by hearing the recorded answers from other students. This online language learning tool is particularly useful in language teaching, where a teacher can post a question in the language they are teaching and have students respond orally to the question in the same language. In this free online language learning course about Voxopop you will learn how to join and use Voxopop, create talk-groups and initiate discussion forums to get people discussing a topic, and how to be notified when someone responds. This free language learning course will be of great interest to teachers and trainers who would like to see how this Web application program can help them improve the oral skills of their students especially in relation to language teaching.<br />

This course will give both traditional classroom and virtual teachers resources for improving relationships and interactions with students. After reviewing research and current trends in learning and motivation theory, this course will allow teachers to think-aloud and practice with new tools within a caring community of instructors seeking to improve their classroom practices. Playlists of leveled readings, video lectures, and research-based curricular resources will assist course participants in applying their learning and getting ready for the start of a great school year. One instructor will offer the virtual teacher’s perspective, while the other will cover the traditional, brick and mortar classroom teacher’s viewpoint.

French is spoken by 110 million native speakers, is an official language in 29 countries and has 190 million non-native speakers around the world. This free online course is ideal for learners who have had some exposure to the French language and want to continue improving their knowledge and understanding of both grammar and vocabulary of this wonderful language. You will start this free course by improving your pronunciation skills. This is followed by learning more useful vocabulary and further expanding your ability to count numbers in French. You will also improve your understanding and knowledge of grammar rules, in particular, the use of adjectives, adverbs and pronouns. This course will be of interest to business professionals doing business in French speaking countries and who would like to communicate more effectively with their French speaking colleagues, and to individual students learning French who would like to continue improving their understanding of this language.<br />

Learn how to achieve consistent and excellent results in all aspects of dental photography.

Do you want to sound like a native Spanish speaker? Get started by improving your accent. This course provides a practical introduction to Spanish pronunciation for students at all levels. It is taught in English and designed to provide an auditory and visual approach to learning pronunciation. Students will listen to audio files recorded by native speakers and then record themselves pronouncing the same words or phrases. In addition to playing back both recordings to compare the auditory differences, students will have an opportunity to view and compare visual sound waves of both audio recordings. These techniques will help learners assess and improve their pronunciation. Although it will be necessary to some extent, discussion of theoretical issues will be kept to a minimum with the emphasis being on accent reduction.

The online course focuses on the management of enterprise data in column-oriented in-memory databases. Latest hardware and software trends led to the development of a new revolutionary technology that enables flexible and lightning-fast analysis of massive amounts of enterprise data. The basic concepts and design principles of this technology are explained in detail. Beyond that, the implications of the underlying design principles for future enterprise applications and their development are discussed. Unbelievable things are possible and you will understand why this is true using an in-memory column-oriented database instead of a traditional row-oriented disk-based one.

The U.S. incarcerates a larger number and percentage of its own citizens than any nation on earth: larger than China, Russia, Cuba, or Iran. American ex-offenders are arrested again at a rate of 67% within three years, and 75% within five years of release. This course looks inside U.S. prisons, through the history of literary witness produced by incarcerated people. This history will help us to understand the mass-scale prison’s rise, its day-to-day practices, and why it fails so badly at the task of rehabilitation. Through prison witness, we may hope to begin to understand what is needed to make the U.S. prison a more socially constructive institution. Among other texts, we will read and discuss Fourth City: Essays from the Prison in America, The (online) American Prison Writing Archive, hosted and made possible by Hamilton College's Digital Humanities Initiative, and come to a sense of the moral weight that prison witness must carry in any truly democratic debate on the criminal justice system.

Inclusion of Minorities in Community Development is the third in a series of free online courses that will assist you in the delivery of a community development project and help you include the different minority groups in the process. Using community health as a springboard for understanding community development you will learn to identify diversity in the community and how to include minority groups who may have been overlooked in the decision making process. You will get an overview of the challenges of including minorities in a community development project, such as changing demographics and barriers to equitable access as well as getting an overview of why inclusiveness is important. You will also learn about the benefits that accrue to an organisation or community that is inclusive. The course then outlines the process for organisational change before going through the steps needed to affect change. Finally, you will be introduced to a number of tools and techniques, such as how to use a template for the terms of reference or how to conduct a focus group, that will help you implement inclusiveness. This course will be of great interest to professionals or volunteers working in community development and with community organisations. It will also be of interest to learners who would like to know more about community development and its role in changing and improving local communities.<br />

Do you ever struggle to manage your work and the rest of your life? You are not alone. This course is designed for those leading teams as well as for individuals who want to manage their own careers with flexible options. Men and women all over the world are trying to figure out how to get beyond the impossible work-life “balance” to achieve a new level of success in all parts of their lives. Join Catalyst experts to explore this topic and the importance of inclusive leadership in creating flexible—and productive—work environments. Through research and real-world examples from a variety of situations, you will learn strategies for managing workplace flexibility, and you will see how you have the power as an individual, as a member of a team, and as a manager to make positive change. You will understand the value of a flexible work environment and what sets successful flexible workers and leaders apart. With short quizzes, compelling case studies, and engaging videos, you will build your knowledge each week and share your experience with other learners on topics such as communication, technology, myth-busting, challenges, and solutions. Throughout the course you will develop a Personal Work-Life Plan to help apply the strategies taught in the course to your work and other parts of your life.

Bonus: Sign up for a Verified Certificate of Achievement to bolster your credentials on this topic in the workplace, and at the end of the course you will receive Managing Flex, a three-part interactive toolkit that helps individuals, managers, and organizations understand, navigate, and create flexible work arrangements.

Get Energy Quickly and Easily So You Can Have the Quality of Life You Want

Are you currently working as a server at a restaurant or hospitality venue? Do you want to learn how you can increase your tips? If so, this course will teach you customer service strategies from industry experts using real life scenarios.

The purpose of this class is to offer students a new perspective on the importance of our bodily experience to our cognitive and social lives. The curriculum is designed to foster a working appreciation for how better bodily awareness can positively affect how we feel in our bodies, carry and present ourselves for improved social sensitivity and more successful social interactions.