Online courses directory (19947)

Whether you know it or not, you are actively contributing to a comprehensive media environment forged on both regional and global levels even when you are privately using social media websites!  The media we use today has come a long way, but the basic pattern of development remains consistent.  This course introduces various academic theories, cases, and models to make sense of local and global media development.  How does a locally operated newspaper trigger development of the national mass media market?  How does a global conglomerate media company set agendas for international news distribution?  Consider how the following historical events may be connected: In 1833, The Sun, a New York-based newspaper, became available to the general public for the first time.  This marked the beginning of the mass production of information and created a market sector that could be influenced by average people. In 1995, conglomerate media company, News Corporation, headquartered in New York City, acquired the H…

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…

Scholarship on medieval women writers is a somewhat recent phenomenon, in part because we know relatively little about men of the Middle Agesand what we know about women from the period is even more limited.  In this course, we will engage this new frontier in literary studies by examining the writings of a diverse group of medieval womenfrom reclusive anchoresses to aristocratic women of the courtand analyzing the perceptions of reality, both secular and religious, that they present.  We will also read and respond to a number of critical essays concerning medieval women and the various debates that have emerged in the study of their works. We will begin the course with a unit on context, acquainting ourselves with the major socio-historical developments that shaped the period as well as the little that is known about medieval women and their roles in society.  We will then take a look at some major feminist and gender/sex-related approaches to literature, making their various methods and beliefs availab…

This course will introduce you to the history of the European Middle Ages and Renaissance.  You will learn about the major political, economic, and social changes that took place between the fourth century and 1500.  The course is structured chronologically.  Each unit includes representative primary-source documents that illustrate important overarching political, economic, and social themes, such as the collapse of the Roman Empire, the rise of the Christian Church, the emergence of the feudal system, the advent of the Renaissance in Italy and northern Europe, and the significance of the European Age of Exploration.  By the end of the course, you will understand how Europe transformed from a collection of barbarian kingdoms into a continent with a sophisticated cultural and economic life that would later come to dominate the globe.

This self-contained course presents a sampling of the fields of Materials Engineering and Materials Science. This course is intended primarily for engineering students who are not planning to major in either Materials Engineering or Materials Science. We will focus primarily on the concerns of the materials engineerthe person interested in choosing materials to make a finished product. This selection is determined by compromises among material properties, ease of fabrication, and cost. In contrast, the materials scientist is concerned with understanding the relationships between material properties and the internal structure of a materialthat is, atomic bonding, arrangements of atoms, grain structure, and other microscopically observable features. We leave most of these associations to advanced courses, which will use more chemistry and physics than needed for this course. The course is divided into four units: Unit 1: Ways That Materials Can Fail  What Can Go Wrong? Unit 2: Classes of Engineering Mate…

This course will introduce you to the basic concepts and methods of moral and political philosophy.  Its primary focus is on the development of moral reasoning skills and the application of those skills to contemporary social and political issues.  Although the course is organized around the central concept of justice, it uses this notion as a point of departure for discussing a wide range of philosophical topics and perspectives. Topics range from the value of human life, the moral standing of the free market, and the notion of fundamental human rights, to equality of opportunity, the legality of same-sex marriage, and the conditions for a moral community.  In order to investigate these topics, this course makes extensive use of Professor Michael Sandel’s video lecture course on justice, delivered at Harvard University in 2009.  In addition to these lectures, you will study a number of important moral and political philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham, Joh…

This course is a survey of philosophical issues surrounding the concepts and practices of modern science.  The course covers the major areas of contemporary philosophy of science, including scientific reasoning, scientific progress, interpretations of scientific knowledge, and the social organization of scientific practice.  Its aim is not only to familiarize you with philosophical issues about science but also to equip you to critically interpret popular reports about contemporary scientific research. Unit 1 introduces philosophy of science as a discipline distinct from psychology of science, history of science, and sociology of science.  Unit 2 examines the nature and objectivity of observational evidence, and Unit 3 examines methods of reasoning relevant to induction, confirmation, and explanation.  Unit 4 examines accounts of theory change and scientific progress, and Unit 5 addresses the interpretation of scientific knowledge.  Finally, Unit 6 explores various topics concerning science in a social…

The purpose of Introduction to Human Resources Management is to provide a general overview of the concepts and applications of the many parts of Human Resources (HR).  This course is for the entry level HR Generalist who wants to explore how the interdependence of the major topics in HR are created and implemented.  Upon completion of this course, you will be able to apply your knowledge to real world HR issues.  While general topics such as benefits and compensation will be covered in other Human Resource Management courses, this course will focus primarily on the employee life cycle and each of its phases.  The employee life cycle is central to most of the functions and purposes of HR.  It is important to start at the beginning of any life cycle in an effort to understand how each component is dependent on the next. To begin with, you will take a look at the history of HR and determine the major events and champion theorists who brought HR to its humble beginnings.  The course will then cover the em…

To appreciate the opportunities and make wise choices about the use of technology, information professionals need to understand the architectures of modern information systems. In alternative system architectures, storage, communication, and processing substitute for and complement each other in different ways. This course introduces students, at several different levels of abstraction, to sets of functional components and alternative ways of combining those components to form systems. It also introduces a set of desirable system properties and a core set of techniques that are useful in building systems that have those properties. Course Level: Graduate This Work, SI 502 - Networked Computing: Storage, Communication, and Processing, by Charles Severance is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

This course introduces students to the conceptual, institutional, and practical foundations of information policy analysis and design. The course explores the regulatory histories, paradigms, processes, and actors shaping the ongoing development of the information field. Course topics provide a comprehensive grounding in telecommunications policy; competition and antitrust; concentration, diversity and expression; intellectual property; standards and innovation; peer production and user innovation; information privacy; digital governance; and transnational information policy. The course also emphasizes the development of core information policy skills, introducing students to relevant analytic contributions from the fields of economics, communication, law, and public policy. Course Level: Graduate This Work, SI 507 / 703 - Information Policy Analysis and Design, by Steven J. Jackson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

Provides an understanding of why societies, cultures, organizations, and individuals create and keep records. Presents cornerstone terminology, concepts, and practices used in records management and archival administration. Examines the evolution of methods and technologies used to create, store, organize, and preserve records and the ways in which organizations and individuals use archives and records for ongoing operations, accountability, research, litigation, and organizational memory. Participants become familiar with the legal, policy, and ethical issues surrounding records and archives administration and become conversant with the structure, organization, and literatures of the archival and records management professions. Course Level: Graduate This Work, SI 580 - Understanding Records and Archives: Principles and Practices, by Paul Conway is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

This course covers specialized and somewhat advanced topics in the fields of cellular biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, and genetics. It does not cover organismal biology or taxonomy. The course is carefully planned to provide the background that biology students will need for advanced biology classes. Non-biology majors will also find this course useful as it explains many of the concepts and techniques currently discussed in the popular press. This course is built around six key concepts that provide unifying explanations for how and why structures are formed and processes occur throughout your study of biology. Because it is not possible to cover the breadth of modern molecular biology in one semester, an understanding of these key concepts will provide a basis for extension of your knowledge to biological systems beyond the specifics covered in this course. One of the major goals of the course therefore is for you to not only learn the definitions of the concepts but also learn to recognize when they are operating the process being studied.

This course introduces students to the basic concepts and logic of statistical reasoning and gives the students introductory-level practical ability to choose, generate, and properly interpret appropriate descriptive and inferential methods. In addition, the course helps students gain an appreciation for the diverse applications of statistics and its relevance to their lives and fields of study. The course does not assume any prior knowledge in statistics and its only prerequisite is basic algebra. We offer two versions of statistics, each with a different emphasis: Probability and Statistics and Statistical Reasoning. Each course includes all expository text, simulations, case studies, comprehension tests, interactive learning exercises, and the StatTutor labs. Each course contains all of the instructions for the four statistics packages options we support. To do the activities, you will need your own copy of Microsoft Excel, Minitab, the open source R software, TI calculator, or StatCrunch. One of the main differences between the courses is the path through probability. Probability and Statistics includes the classical treatment of probability as it is in the earlier versions of the OLI Statistics course.

A fast-start (90 min) WordPress training sequence designed for small-business owners creating a new website

Learn how Khan Academy is used outside of schools. Community programs ranging from summer and afterschool programs to jails have found benefit in Khan Academy. Take a tour of the Khan Academy site. Afterschool, community, and summer programs. Prisons, jails and correctional facilities. International usage. Offline programs. Take a tour of the Khan Academy site. Afterschool, community, and summer programs. Prisons, jails and correctional facilities. International usage. Offline programs.

Learning Google AdWords Better is Better. Learn the secrets the pros don't want you to know.

Learn all that you need to get started using Adobe Photoshop CS6, by Adobe Certified Training Center, Train Simple

Discover the vast audience of Podcasts and Internet Radio and promote your book, your blog, your website and yourself.

Get your app on the app store as quickly as possible!

Easy Photoshop tutorials for beginners who want to create professional looking digital collage now.