Online courses directory (1728)

This course, the first installment of the multi-part Poetry in America series, covers American poetry in cultural context through the year 1700. The course begins with Puritan poets--some orthodox, some rebel spirits--who wrote and lived in early New England. Focusing on Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, and Michael Wigglesworth, among others, we explore the interplay between mortal and immortal, Europe and wilderness, solitude and sociality in English North America.

Led by Harvard Professor Elisa New, Poetry in America surveys nearly 400 years of American poetry. Through video lectures, archival images and texts, expeditions to historic sites, interpretive seminars with large and small groups, interviews with poets and scholars, and conversations about poems with distinguished Americans, Poetry in America embarks on a journey through the literature of a nation. Distinguished guests, including President Bill Clinton, Elena Kagan, Henry Louis Gates, Eve Ensler, John McCain, Andrea Mitchell, Michael Pollan, Drew Faust, Tony Kushner, and Nas, among others, bring fresh perspectives to the study of American Poetry.

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.

This module, the third installment of the multi-part Poetry in America series, focuses on the poetry of Walt Whitman, a quintessentially American writer whose work continues to bear heavily upon the American poetic tradition. We will explore Whitman’s relationship to the City, the Self, and the Body through his life and poetry. Distinguished guests in this module include Tour de France champion Greg LeMond, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, and Whitman scholar Karen Karbiener.

Led by Harvard Professor Elisa New, Poetry in America surveys nearly 400 years of American poetry. Through video lectures, archival images and texts, expeditions to historic sites, interpretive seminars with large and small groups, interviews with poets and scholars, and conversations about poems with distinguished Americans, Poetry in America embarks on a journey through the literature of a nation. Distinguished guests, including President Bill Clinton, Elena Kagan, Henry Louis Gates, Eve Ensler, John McCain, Andrea Mitchell, Michael Pollan, Drew Faust, Tony Kushner, and Nas, among others, bring fresh perspectives to the study of American Poetry.

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.

Interrupted time series analysis and regression discontinuity designs are two of the most rigorous ways to evaluate policies with routinely collected data. ITSx comprehensively introduces analysts to interrupted time series analysis (ITS) and regression discontinuity designs (RD) from start to finish, including selection and setup of data sources, statistical analysis, interpretation and presentation, and identification of potential pitfalls.

At the conclusion of the course, students will have all the tools necessary to propose, conduct and correctly interpret an analysis using ITS and RD approaches. This will help them position themselves as a go-to person within their company, government department, or academic department as the technical expert on this topic.

ITS and RD designs avoid many of the pitfalls associated with other techniques. As a result of their analytic strength, the use of ITS and RD approaches has been rapidly increasing over the past decade. These studies have cut across the social sciences, including:

• Studying the effect of traffic speed zones on mortality
• Quantifying the impact of incentive payments to workers on productivity
• Assessing whether alcohol policies reduce suicide
• Measuring the impact of incentive payments to physicians on quality of care
• Determining whether the use of HPV vaccination influences adolescent sexual behavior

South Korea presents a compelling story of economic growth. It’s one of few countries that made the transition from a resource-poor, low-income nation to a high-income economy in only three decades. It offers a model for developing countries and in this MOOC, leading experts will explain how South Korea achieved this outcome by implementing an export-led industrial strategy.

This course examines South Korea’s past developmental experience as well as its current strategy and policy initiatives to overcome global and domestic challenges, and sustain economic growth into the 21st century. You’ll have an opportunity to consider and discuss institutional and policy lessons applicable to the developmental challenges facing your own countries.

The course will be of interest to all those wanting to learn how South Korea was transformed into a high-income, with the help of a highly skilled workforce, and the development of high-end manufacturing and services sectors. Also of great interest is Korea’s creation of a futuristic city, Songdo, equipped with smart and green technologies. This MOOC will be of particular interest to policymakers involved in economic development.

The course has been developed by the World Bank Group in collaboration with Korea Development Institute, and is taught by prominent representatives of academic and research institutions in South Korea and the United States.

Descripción del curso

La evidencia científica documenta que los efectos de la adversidad durante la primera infancia perduran en el tiempo y tienen consecuencias sobre el aprendizaje, la trayectoria escolar, los comportamientos de riesgo, el empleo, la salud y otras variables claves para la acumulación de capital humano y el bienestar de las personas.

Este curso pretende fortalecer las capacidades de quienes diseñan, implementan y evalúan programas y políticas de desarrollo infantil, con énfasis en aspectos relacionados a la calidad.

Está comprobado que la calidad es indispensable para que los programas desarrollo infantil resulten en cambios en la trayectoria de desarrollo de los niños sostenibles en el tiempo.

En la última década los países de América Latina y el Caribe han demostrado un compromiso político y financiero para fortalecer las políticas de desarrollo infantil. Sin embargo, a pesar de estos esfuerzos, todavía existen retos significativos. Por ejemplo, hay muchos niños y familias de los estratos más pobres que no reciben servicios de desarrollo infantil. Además, se sabe que la calidad de estos servicios en la región es baja.

What is a PMO, and how does it work?

This course focuses on the Project Management Office (PMO) and the governance techniques used to monitor and control the delivery of projects and programs.

You’ll learn all about Portfolio management and the different kinds of PMOs in use today. You’ll also explore various approaches for building, maintaining and closing a PMO, as well as monitoring techniques to ensure that projects are completed successfully.

This course is offered in an experimental format. Students are welcome to audit the course, and participate in all course activities. Certificates will not be issued.

Many early childhood educators report feeling ill equipped to meet the needs of children with challenging behavior and frustrated in their attempts to develop safe and nurturing early learning environment. If you work with young children, you are not alone in your feelings! Increasing evidence suggests that an effective approach to addressing problem behavior is the adoption of a model that focuses on promoting social-emotional development, providing support for children’s appropriate behavior, and preventing challenging behavior. In this class, you will learn a framework for addressing the social and emotional development and challenging behavior of young children.

The overarching goal of this course is to learn evidence-based practices to support the social and emotional development of infants and young children. We will read current research on the developmental trajectory of children with early-onset aggressive behaviors; positive behavior support program models; and intervention efforts that promote positive early childhood mental health. Evidence-based classroom management skills will also be studied and you will leave the course with a solid understanding of how to design supportive environments. This course incorporates a community with which you can learn from others, share your own current approaches and discuss your attempts to incorporate the learnings of this course into your early childhood practice.

Everyone involved in higher education has questions. Students want to know how they’re doing and which classes they should take. Faculty members want to understand their students’ backgrounds and to learn whether their teaching techniques are effective. Staff members want to be sure the advice they provide is appropriate and find out whether college requirements accomplish their goals. Administrators want to explore how all of their students and faculty are doing and to anticipate emerging changes. The public wants to know what happens in college and why.

Everyone has questions. We have the chance to help them find answers.

Practical Learning Analytics has a specific goal: to help us collectively ponder learning analytics in a concrete way. To keep it practical, we will focus on using traditional student record data, the kinds of data every campus already has. To make it interesting, we will address questions raised by an array of different stakeholders, including campus leaders, faculty, staff, and especially students. To provide analytic teeth, each analysis we discuss will be supported by both realistic data and sample code.

For the first hundreds of years of modern medicine, progress was a process of trial and error, and to be honest, it was often fatal error, such as bloodletting, which killed the first US president George Washington. Where diseases were clearly understood, and where treatments obviously worked on most patients, such as penicillin for pneumonia, there was no need to delve deeper into questions of effectiveness. But for most conditions, the treatment benefits were modest and there was a need for improved ways of telling whether a new intervention was better than the previous standard treatment. And so scientists introduced a testing procedure for new treatments - the randomized controlled trial.

As the cost of developing new treatments grew, it became very important to detect the slightest improvement that could be attributed to the new drug in order to get it licensed and marketed. So the usual randomized trial was answering the following question: does this treatment work (for otherwise well people with just this single disease, with perfect adherence, treated by the best doctors, under idealised conditions)? But most patients have multiple diseases, imperfect adherence, ordinary doctors and non-ideal circumstances. These patients want to know whether a new treatment is likely to reduce important harms for ordinary people like them, receiving usual care. This mismatch meant that most trials were overestimating the real world effectiveness of new interventions.

In this MOOC, we are going to study this mismatch, and see what its effect is on modern medical care. One example of the studies we will discuss is the VIGOR trial. This influential drug trial resulted in the widespread global overuse of this drug, at a cost of wasted billions of dollars. Ironically, this drug, intended to reduce a problem in individuals, ended up causing more of the same problem in the population!

After we understand the consequences of designing the wrong kinds of trials, we will also look at how best to design pragmatic randomized trials, which answer the important questions that ordinary patients and decision makers in the real world most often ask. We will also explore how these can be combined with economic evaluations and qualitative research – to answer important questions about how much these interventions cost, and how they are experienced by the recipients.

Mathematics is the language of Science, Engineering and Technology. Calculus is an elementary Mathematical course in any Science and Engineering Bachelor. Pre-university Calculus will prepare you for the Introductory Calculus courses by revising four important mathematical subjects that are assumed to be mastered by beginning Bachelor students: functions, equations, differentiation and integration. After this course you will be well prepared to start your university calculus course. You will learn to understand the necessary definitions and mathematical concepts needed and you will be trained to apply those and solve mathematical problems. You will feel confident in using basic mathematical techniques for your first calculus course at university-level, building on high-school level mathematics. We aim to teach you the skills, but also to show you how mathematics will be used in different engineering and science disciplines.

Education method

This is a course consisting of 6 modules (or weeks) and 1 final exam. The class will consist of a collection of 3-5 minute lecture videos, inspirational videos on the use of mathematics in Science, Engineering and Technology, (interactive) exercises, homework and exams.

Exercises, homework and the exams will determine the final grade. The course material will be available for the students online and free of charge. 

This course was awarded the Open MOOC Award 2016 by the Open Education Consortium.

LICENSE

The course materials of this course are Copyright Delft University of Technology and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC-BY-NC-SA) 4.0 International License.

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

* 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.

In this college-level Precalculus course, you will prepare for calculus by focusing on quantitative reasoning and functions. You’ll develop the skills to describe the behavior and properties of linear, exponential, logarithmic, polynomial, rational, and trigonometric functions.

Content in this course will be adaptive, allowing you to achieve mastery in a certain concept before moving on to the next. Utilizing the ALEKS learning system, students in this personalized, self-paced course will be instructed on the topics they are most ready to learn while also providing individualized coaching as you move through each topic.

Before taking this course, you should already have a strong understanding of algebraic skills such as factoring, basic equation solving, and the rules of exponents and radicals.

This 3 credit hour course satisfies the Mathematical Studies (MA) general studies requirement at Arizona State University. This course may satisfy a general education requirement at other institutions; however, it is strongly encouraged that you consult with your institution of choice to determine how these credits will be applied to their degree requirements prior to transferring the credit.

Humans have always sought to know their own future, be it the destiny of an empire or an individual's fate. Across cultures and history, we find people trying to find their place in the Universe by attempting to gaze into the future.

Join us for this one-week, immersive learning experience as we explore “pre-scientific” prediction systems ranging from ancient Chinese bone burning to the Oracle of Delphi to modern astrology and tarot, with practitioners and Harvard faculty leading the journey. We will examine the details of over a dozen prediction systems as well as theoretical frameworks connecting them.

This module is a part of PredictionX, which examines our efforts to predict the future over all of recorded history. PredictionX courses will cover topics from omens and oracles in ancient civilizations, which this course discusses, to the evolution of the general approach to science most take today (which includes the course John Snow and the Cholera Outbreak of 1854) as well as modern computer simulations and the role they play in predicting our futures today.

In 1854, a cholera epidemic swept through the London neighborhood of Soho. In the course of about three weeks, over 600 people died. This incident was, tragically, not unusual in London or the rest of the 19th century world as a whole. The scourge of cholera seemed unstoppable and, even worse, unpredictable. But one doctor -- ignored by the scientific community at large -- set out to prove that he knew how cholera was spread.

Join us for this one-week, immersive learning experience. We will explore John Snow’s London, from the streets of Soho to the dataset that helped create the map that changed our understanding of cholera and epidemiology forever.

This course features interactive tools including an interactive ArcGIS map of the 1854 cholera outbreak and a Timeline JS of John Snow’s investigation. 

This module is a part of PredictionX, which looks at the history of attempts to predict the future. PredictionX courses will cover topics from omens and oracles in ancient civilizations to modern computer simulations.

Decision makers often struggle with questions such as: What should be the right price for a product? Which customer is likely to default in his/her loan repayment? Which products should be recommended to an existing customer? Finding right answers to these questions can be challenging yet rewarding.

Predictive analytics is emerging as a competitive strategy across many business sectors and can set apart high performing companies. It aims to predict the probability of the occurrence of a future event such as customer churn, loan defaults, and stock market fluctuations – leading to effective business management.

Models such as multiple linear regression, logistic regression, auto-regressive integrated moving average (ARIMA), decision trees, and neural networks are frequently used in solving predictive analytics problems. Regression models help us understand the relationships among these variables and how their relationships can be exploited to make decisions.

This course is suitable for students/practitioners interested in improving their knowledge in the field of predictive analytics.  The course will also prepare the learner for a career in the field of data analytics. If you are in the quest for the right competitive strategy to make companies successful, then join us to master the tools of predictive analytics.

The course topics include modern atomic theory, periodic table and trends, stoichiometry, bonding, molecular structure, kinetics, thermodynamics, equilibrium, acids and bases, gases, liquids and solids, electrochemistry and solubility. This material conveyed using video lectures, practice questions and review exams may be used for self-study by students and teachers. This is a self-paced, asynchronous course. It is meant to be a useful resource without much staff support or involvement. The quizzes and assignments will be auto-graded. While students are welcome to interact with fellow students on the discussion boards, there are no opportunities to interact with the course instructor or staff directly.

The course topics include modern atomic theory, periodic table and trends, stoichiometry, bonding, molecular structure, kinetics, thermodynamics, equilibrium, acids and bases, gases, liquids and solids, electrochemistry and solubility. This material conveyed video lectures, practice questions and review exams may be used for self-study by students and teachers. This is a self-paced, asynchronous course. It is meant to be a useful resource without much staff support or involvement. The quizzes and assignments will be auto-graded. While students are welcome to interact with fellow students on the discussion boards, there are no opportunities to interact with the course instructor or staff directly.

Preparing for the AP Calculus AB exam requires a deep understanding of many different topics in calculus as well as an understanding of the AP exam and the types of questions it asks. This course is Part 1 of our XSeries: AP Calculus AB and it is designed to prepare you for the AP exam.

In Part 1, you will be learning about limits and derivatives. Limits are an integral part of calculus and many important ideas, definitions, formulas and theorems in calculus are derived from a limit. Derivatives are used to describe the rate of change of one variable with respect to another variable, allowing you to understand change in a variety of contexts. You will be learning to apply derivatives to real-world applications such as related rates, optimization, and growth/decay models.

As you work through this course, you will find lecture videos taught by expert AP calculus 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 should be ready to take on the AP exam!

Preparing for the AP Calculus AB exam requires a deep understanding of many different topics in calculus as well as an understanding of the AP exam and the types of questions it asks. This course is Part 1 of our XSeries: AP Calculus AB and it is designed to prepare you for the AP exam.

In Part 2, you will use and apply the meaning and interpretations of derivatives from Part 1 to the integral, antiderivatives and differential equations. You will learn some applications of integrals including finding volumes of solids and solids of revolution, volumes with known cross sections and applications to Velocity-Time graphs. We will close with an introduction to differential equations and see how they are used.

As you work through this course, you will find lecture videos taught by expert AP calculus 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 should be ready to take on the AP exam!

Get ready to ace your AP Physics 1 exam in this interactive prep course! Whether you are preparing for an upcoming exam or looking for a more challenging Physics course to add to your current curriculum, this is a great place to start. This challenging course is designed to help high school students prepare for the AP Physics 1 test, and covers all of the material for the test supported by videos, simulations, and online labs.

Topics include motion, forces, gravitation, energy and momentum, rotation, harmonic motion, and an introduction to electric charge and basic circuits. Each module ends with an assessment, with questions similar in style to those on the AP test, and the course wraps up with a mock AP test.

You may choose to take this course simultaneously with a high school AP course, or on its own to help you prepare for the AP exam. 

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

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.

This course covers topics in a traditional AP Chemistry sequence. It includes modern atomic theory, periodic table and trends, stoichiometry, bonding, molecular structure, kinetics, thermodynamics, equilibrium, acids and bases, gases, liquids and solids, electrochemistry and solubility. The material which includes video lectures, practice questions and review exams may be used for self-study by students and teachers. This is a self-paced, asynchronous course. The course material will be released on a weekly basis. It is meant to be a great resource without heavy staff support or involvement. This means that students can proceed through the material at a pace that suits their personal schedule. While students are welcome to interact with fellow students on the discussion boards, there are no opportunities to interact with the course staff directly.

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

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.