Online courses directory (19947)

How did Newton describe the orbits of the planets? To do this, he created calculus.  But he used a different coordinate system more appropriate for planetary motion.  We will learn to shift our perspective to do calculus with parameterized curves and polar coordinates. And then we will dive deep into exploring the infinite to gain a deeper understanding and powerful descriptions of functions.

How does a computer make accurate computations? Absolute precision does not exist in the real world, and computers cannot handle infinitesimals or infinity. Fortunately, just as we approximate numbers using the decimal system, we can approximate functions using series of much simpler functions. These approximations provide a powerful framework for scientific computing and still give highly accurate results. They allow us to solve all sorts of engineering problems based on models of our world represented in the language of calculus.

1. Changing Perspectives
   1. Parametric Equations
   2. Polar Coordinates
2. Series and Polynomial Approximations
   1. Series and Convergence
   2. Taylor Series and Power Series

This course, in combination with Parts 1 and 2, covers the AP* Calculus BC curriculum.

Learn more about our High School and AP* Exam Preparation Courses

Calculus 1A: Differentiation

Calculus 1B: Integration

This course was funded in part by the Wertheimer Fund.

*Advanced Placement and AP are registered trademarks of the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, these offerings.

A Room with a View is a 1908 novel by English writer E.M. Forster.  

A Room with a View is a romance and a critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century. As Forster’s most romantic and optimistic book, A Room with a View is considered one of the top 100 English language novels of all times. An award-winning film adaptation of this novel came out in 1985.

Participants in this course will read, discuss, and write about the text and its influence. As in most book clubs, the focus will be on lively discussion. Course materials will include background information for understanding the text, as well as vocabulary and language support. Assessment will include quizzes and short writing assignments.

The Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC) is a computer science principles course developed at the University of California, Berkeley, intended to broaden participation in computing to non-traditional groups. Computing has profoundly changed the world, opening up wonderful new ways for people to connect, design, research, play, create, and express themselves. However, just using a computer is only a small part of the picture. The real transformative and empowering experience comes when one learns how to program the computer, to translate ideas into code.

This course teaches students how to do exactly that, using Snap! (based on Scratch), one of the friendliest programming languages ever invented. It's purely graphical, which means programming involves simply dragging blocks around, and building bigger blocks out of smaller blocks. But this course is far more than just learning to program. We focus on seven big ideas (creativity, abstraction, data and information, algorithms, programming, the Internet, and global impact), and six computational thinking practices (connecting computing, creating computational artifacts, abstracting, analyzing problems and artifacts, communicating, and collaborating). Throughout the course, relevance is emphasized: relevance to the student and to society. This fun, introductory course is not just for computer science majors, it’s for everyone… join us!

Learn more about our High School and AP* Exam Preparation Courses

The Call of the Wild is a 1903 novel written by Jack London. The story is set in the Yukon, the far northern territory of Canada/Alaska, during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush. During this period, good sled dogs were in high demand. The novel's main character is a dog named Buck, who lives on a California ranch.

London himself lived nearly a year in the Yukon, collecting material for the novel. Like many older popular novels, The Call of the Wild was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in the summer of 1903. A month later, it was released as a  book. The novel’s great popularity and success made London famous. The appeal of this story comes from its simplicity as a tale of survival. As early as 1908, the story was adapted to film. Since then, there have been other adaptations.

Participants in this course will read, discuss, and write about the text and its influence. As in most book clubs, the focus will be on lively discussion. Course materials will include background information for understanding the text, as well as vocabulary and language support. Assessment will include quizzes and short writing assignments.

This course will examine Oscar Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. This novel was first published as a serial novel in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890.

The Picture of Dorian Gray was immediately controversial, and was censored by the magazine’s editors. Even with the censorship, reviewers still thought that Wilde ought to have been prosecuted for violating laws concerning public morality. This story has two important themes: the idea of selling one’s soul, and the theme of living a double life. Wilde takes these themes to their extreme.
 
Participants in this course will read, discuss, and write about the text and its influence. As in most book clubs, the focus will be on lively discussion. Course materials will include background information for understanding the text, as well as vocabulary and language support. Assessment will include quizzes and short writing assignments.
 
This is the fourth part of the BerkeleyX Book Club offerings.

SCOPE: To create an interactive learning module to help reinforce the concept of maintaining lab safety where hazardous materials are used in various laboratories.

Academic laboratories where hazardous materials are used are potentially dangerous places. Taking the necessary precautions to avoid unnecessary hazards is paramount for the safety of all involved.

In this course, you will learn about lab safety through an interactive game called "Don't Endanger the Owls".

The characters in the game include Wise Owl, Owlet, and the Zombie Squirrels. Owlet is the student figure and Wise Owl is Owlet’s sage advisor / professor figure.

In the game, your goal is to stop the Zombie Squirrels from spreading their Zombiegen by finding an “Anti-Zombiegen” in the lab that will counteract the effects of the Zombiegen. In order to find the Anti-Zombiegen, you will journey through three lab rooms: the biology lab, the chemistry lab and the analytical lab. Along the way, you will learn safe laboratory practices. In the end, if you follows safe laboratory practices, you will find the Anti-Zombiegen and saves the campus from the Zombiegen outbreak.

“Don’t Endanger the Owls” is a collaboration between the instructors of Rice University’s Responsible Conduct of Research Graduate Course, Rice’s Environmental Health and Safety and HyperWindows Inc.

This course will help managers in accounting, finance, operations, manufacturing, R&D, legal and a host of other functional areas, gain a better appreciation and understanding of core marketing concepts and tools that all managers should have in their toolkit.
 
After this course you will be able to:

• Develop a basic customer segmentation system
• Effectively target customer segments and position your product or service in the marketplace
• Begin to understand the psychology of consumer decision making
• Develop pricing strategies that maximize profitability
• Define appropriate channel systems and go-to-market efforts
• Understand how marketing metrics can benefit your business
• Build effective communication efforts with customers

This course draws on the award-winning teaching approaches of Sauder School of Business Marketing Faculty, in bringing a marketing lens to complex and messy business and organizational challenges, to aid holistic decision-making that aligns customer and company goals.

You will earn a professional certificate from the University of British Columbia and edX upon successful completion of this course. Certificates can be uploaded directly to your Linkedin profile.

La necesidad de conocer los vehículos aeroespaciales y sus sistemas de vuelo exige el conocimiento adecuado y aplicado a la Ingeniería de los diferentes métodos de cálculo y diseño en el campo aeroespacial; el uso de la experimentación aerodinámica y de los parámetros más significativos en la aplicación teórica; el acercamiento a las técnicas experimentales, equipamiento e instrumentos de medida propios de la disciplina; la simulación, diseño, análisis e interpretación de experimentación y operaciones en vuelo; los sistemas de mantenimiento y certificación de aeronaves.

Estas necesidades se acometen de diversas formas en el sector aeroespacial dependiendo de si es un vehículo espacial, una aeronave de ala fija y una aeronave de ala rotatoria. Es esta última la que centra el objetivo de esta asignatura introductoria hacia conocimientos de mayor envergadura en curso de master o especialización.

When you complete this course, you will become familiar with the general structure of primary and secondary equity markets from a domestic and international perspective. Beginning with introductory finance notions of risk and return, we examine qualitative concepts such as market efficiency and valuation.

These tools should enable you to build valuation models for common stocks. Through this process, you will also learn how professional financial analysts should evaluate companies. The course is suitable for students seeking eventual employment with a brokerage company, investment company or financial services company with responsibilities in evaluating and selecting equity securities for investment portfolios.

A retrospective look (2005) inside the mind of Mark Zuckerberg, and one of the great product developers of our time!

Key insights to starting and succeeding with your own business. Presented by Jason Nazar, CEO of Docstoc.

Foundations of Business Strategy introduces strategic analysis frameworks and their underlying theory.

Reframing should be in the water we drink, scientists say. But how does reframing work - and what happens in the brain?

Brain and behavior are inextricably linked in neuroscience. The function of the brain is to govern behavior, and the aim of this course is to causally link biophysical mechanisms with simple behaviors studied in mice. The brain processes information through the concerted activity of many neurons, which communicate with each other through synapses organised in highly dynamic networks. The first goal of the course is to gain a detailed understanding of the structure and function of the fundamental building blocks of the mammalian brain, its synapses and neurons. The second goal is to understand neuronal networks, with specific emphasis on the interactions of excitatory glutamatergic and inhibitory GABAergic neurons. The third goal is to place neuronal network function in the context of sensory processing ultimately leading to behavioral decisions and motor output.

Comment étudier l'Univers dans lequel nous vivons en utilisant la seule information qu'il nous envoie: la lumière ? Ce cours donne un aperçu des phénomènes physiques qui se cachent derrière les objets astronomiques qui nous entourent, des planètes et des étoiles jusqu'aux filaments cosmiques, en passant par les galaxies comme notre Voie Lactée et les amas de galaxies. Le cours met l'accent sur le lien entre les prédictions théoriques et les observations et constitue la base indispensable des cours d'astrophysique avancés.

Quantitative Methods in Clinical and Public Health Research is the online adaptation of material from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health's classes in epidemiology and biostatistics. Principled investigations to monitor and thus improve the health of individuals are firmly based on a sound understanding of modern quantitative methods. This involves the ability to discover patterns and extract knowledge from health data on a sample of individuals and then to infer, with measured uncertainty, the unobserved population characteristics. This course will address this need by covering the principles of biostatistics and epidemiology used for public health and clinical research. These include outcomes measurement, measures of associations between outcomes and their determinants, study design options, bias and confounding, probability and diagnostic tests, confidence intervals and hypothesis testing, power and sample size determinations, life tables and survival methods, regression methods (both, linear and logistic), and sample survey techniques. Students will analyze sample data sets to acquire knowledge of appropriate computer software. By the end of the course the successful student should have attained a sound understanding of these methods and a solid foundation for further study.
 

FAQ

How much does it cost to take the course?
Nothing! The course is free.

When will assignments be due?
The course is organized into weeks, and each week will have its own set of assignments. Students will be expected to complete their homework each week.

Do I need any other materials to take the course?
Nope, as long as you’ve got a Mac or PC, you’ll be ready to take the course.

Will the course use any textbooks or software?
Yes! We'll have free access to the book "Principles of Biostatistics" written by Marcello Pagano (one of the Professors) and Kimberlee Gauvreau.

In addition to the textbook, we'll use Stata (a piece of software for doing statistical analysis).

Thanks to our friends at Statacorp, we'll have free copies of Stata available for all students to use for the duration of the course (Mac and PC only).

Do I need to watch the lectures live?
No. You can watch the lectures at your leisure.

Will certificates be awarded?
Yes. Online learners who achieve a passing grade in a course can earn a certificate of achievement. These certificates will indicate you have successfully completed the course, but will not include a specific grade. Certificates will be issued by edX under the name of either HarvardX, MITx or BerkeleyX, designating the institution from which the course originated. For the courses in Fall 2012, honor code certificates will be free.

HarvardX requires individuals who enroll in its courses on edX to abide by the terms of the edX honor code : https://www.edx.org/edx-terms-service. 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.

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 : http://harvardx.harvard.edu/research-statement to learn more.

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 : https://www.edx.org/contact-us.

Quantum computation is a remarkable subject building on the great computational discovery that computers based on quantum mechanics are exponentially powerful. This course aims to make this cutting-edge material broadly accessible to undergraduate students, including computer science majors who do not have any prior exposure to quantum mechanics. The course starts with a simple introduction to the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics using the concepts of qubits (or quantum bits) and quantum gates. This treatment emphasizes the paradoxical nature of the subject, including entanglement, non-local correlations, the no-cloning theorem and quantum teleportation. The course covers the fundamentals of quantum algorithms, including the quantum fourier transform, period finding, Shor's quantum algorithm for factoring integers, as well as the prospects for quantum algorithms for NP-complete problems. It also discusses the basic ideas behind the experimental realization of quantum computers, including the prospects for adiabatic quantum optimization and the D-Wave controversy.

Before your course starts, try the new edX Demo where you can explore the fun, interactive learning environment and virtual labs. Learn more.

Do I need a textbook for this class?
No. Notes will be posted each week. If you wish to consult other references, a list of related textbooks and online resources will be provided.

What is the estimated effort for course?
About 5-12 hrs/week.

Why is the work load range so wide?
How long you spend on the course depends upon your background and on the depth to which you wish to understand the material. The topics in this course are quite open ended, and will be presented so you can understand them at a high level or can try to follow it at a sophisticated level with the help of the posted notes.

How much does it cost to take the course?
Nothing! The course is free.

Will the text of the lectures be available?
Yes. All of our lectures will have transcripts synced to the videos.

Do I need to watch the lectures live?
No. You can watch the lectures at your leisure.

Preparing for the AP Physics 2 exam requires a deep understanding of many different topics in physics as well as an understanding of the AP exam and the types of questions it asks. This course is Part 1 of our AP Physics 2 series designed to prepare you for the AP exam. 

In Part 1, you will learn about fluids and thermodynamics. You will explore pressure, buoyant forces and concepts that involve conservation of mass and energy. You will also be learning about heat, its transfer and how we have taken advantage of its behavior in different types of technology.

As you work through this course, you will find lecture videos taught by expert AP physics teachers, practice multiple choice questions and free response questions that are similar to what you will encounter on the AP exam and tutorial videos that show you step-by-step how to solve problems. By the end of the course, you will be prepared to take on the AP exam!

This course is authorized as an Advanced Placement® (AP®) course by the AP Course Audit. The AP Course Audit was created by the College Board to give schools and students the confidence that all AP courses meet or exceed the same clearly articulated curricular expectations of colleges and universities.

By taking an AP course and scoring successfully on the related AP Exam, students can:

• Stand Out in College Admissions
• Earn College Credits
• Skip Introductory Classes
• Build College Skills

Advanced Placement® and AP® are trademarks registered and/or owned by the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, these offerings.

Is it okay to take pills to help you ace exams? Should you be able to choose the sex of your child? Is abortion murder?

These controversial questions will be explored through Manga in this bioethics course. Bioethics is an interdisciplinary field of study that looks into ethical, legal, and social implications of life sciences and health care.

This course will help you understand key ethical issues surrounding crucial problems that profoundly impact your life from birth to death.

Topics include:

• Reproductive technology such as surrogacy and sex-selection of the baby
• Abortion 
• Informed consent
• Euthanasia 
• The use of medical technology for the purpose of enhancement

You will also learn about ethical arguments and regulations in Japan and other countries concerning life sciences and healthcare. Our hope is, through this course, you will better understand and formulate your own opinions on these important issues.

DISCLAIMER: The intention of this course is to present different arguments and perspectives on a number of different topics on bioethics. In other words this course DOES NOT aim to instill in its audience any particular perspective, religious or otherwise, on each topic.

No previous knowledge of bioethics is needed.

DNS (Domain Name System) is an essential core pillar of all Microsoft networking infrastructure. However, incorrectly configured DNS is one of the most common causes of slow and failed logons in Microsoft environments.

In this computer science course, you will learn the core skills to quickly and easily implement DNS in your work environment.

This self-paced interactive computer science course is the fourth in a series of courses where you’ll have the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of Windows Server 2012 operating system administrative tasks. Through video, practical exercises, and assessments, the task-focused material is designed to ensure you can confidently perform the relevant task.