Online courses directory (363)

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…

Geography is the study of the physical features of the Earth and its atmosphere including landscape development, weather and climate, and geologic concepts as well as the influence of human activity including cultural, economic, and political activity on those physical features.  Geography students, as they study the many aspects of our physically and culturally diverse world, tend to become more adept at tasks that require both spatial and critical thinking skills. World Regional Geography covers the basic elements noted above but within a regional context.  Ultimately, World Regional Geography is concerned with the physical and human characteristics that make the regions of our world distinctive.  As you progress through the course, the units will discuss each major world region in detail, placing particular emphasis on cultural and societal structures.  Regions will be discussed within a global framework in the hope that you will gain a better comprehension of how the world map is being defined a…

This course provides an introductory survey of the Western classical tradition, exploring music both as a phenomenon of sound and culture.  The focus of this course is the development of aural skills that lead to an understanding and appreciation of music.  Making use of live performances and streaming audio available on the Internet, we will listen to and explore some of the most important and influential repertoires and genres of music that emerged in the last four centuries: High Renaissance vocal music, the cantatas and oratorios of Bach and Handel, Mozart’s comic operas, the monumental orchestral works of the Romantic movement, and the major musical movements of twentieth-century Europe and America, revealing significant connections with contemporary pop and jazz styles.  These styles have become an enduring part of the world of music in the twenty-first century, traveling out of the concert hall and conservatory into the larger world via movies, television, and the Internet. This course will begi…

Sociology is the scientific study of society. As such, it closely examines human interactions and cultural phenomena, including topics like inequality and urbanization and the effects of these on groups and individuals. To do their work, sociologists rely on a philosophy of science called positivism, which you will study in Unit 1. The philosophy of positivism asserts that authentic knowledge, or truth, can only be gained through empirical observations. In other words, we need to be able to experience our observations or use scientific measurement with a form of sensory experience, as opposed to using faith-based or emotional experiences. Another central concept to sociology is that of the sociological imagination. The sociological imagination allows sociologists to make connections between personal experiences and larger social issues. For example, did you know the U.S. has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the industrialized world? In order to understand this trend, sociologists use scientific methods…

This course provides an introduction to the history of technology for the Science, Technology, and Society (STS) major. The course surveys major technological developments from ancient to modern times with particular attention to social, political, and cultural contexts in Europe and the United States. You will also think critically about the theory of technological determinism, the ways in which technology has defined “progress” and “civilization”, and the major ethical considerations surrounding today’s technological decisions. This course begins with discussions of the promotion of technology in centralized states of the ancient and medieval worlds: the Roman Empire, Song and Ming China, and the Islamic Abbasid Empire. After a period of relative decline, the states of Western Europe centralized and flourished once again, having benefited from the westward transmission of key ideas and technologies from the East. The focus of the course then shifts to the West, to the technologies of the Renai…

In this course, you will study basic algebraic operations and concepts, as well as the structure and use of algebra. This includes solving algebraic equations, factoring algebraic expressions, working with rational expressions, and graphing linear equations. You will apply these skills to solve real-world problems (word problems). Each unit will have its own application problems, depending on the concepts you have been exposed to. This course is also intended to provide you with a strong foundation for intermediate algebra and beyond. It will begin with a review of some math concepts formed in pre-algebra, such as ordering operations and simplifying simple algebraic expressions, to get your feet wet. You will then build on these concepts by learning more about functions, graphing of functions, evaluation of functions, and factorization. You will spend time on the rules of exponents and their applications in distribution of multiplication over addition/subtraction. This course provides students the opportuni…

English II is the second in a sequence of English courses for high school students. These courses seek to give you the necessary reading, writing, thinking, and research skills to find success in college or the workplace. As the second course, English II challenges you to look deeper within a text for its meaning and provide thoughtful, analytical, and persuasive responses. You will be expected to build literary analysis from the texts as well as outside sources of knowledge. You will first learn to dissect a text for varied levels of meaning, how to interpret this meaning with a critical eye, and how to look beyond the text for its relevance. You will then be expected to read a variety of fiction and nonfiction texts of different lengths, complexities, and genres, and respond to them through questions, annotations, independent research, and essay writing. Texts and assignments will gradually increase in rigor, challenging you to improve the efficacy and complexity of your analysis and writing skills. Bec…

Eighth-grade English Language Arts will provide you with a strong foundation for high school. Grounded in Common Core State Standards, the content of this course emphasizes critical reading, writing, and thinking. You will read and analyze high-quality literary and informational texts. You will write original texts in multiple genres. Language and its conventions will be emphasized throughout, and opportunities to examine the spoken word will be provided as well. Whether you choose to pursue higher education or the world of work, or both, you will be expected to have certain basic skills in reading, writing, speaking and listening. While you probably won

The SAT is a timed standardized test, taken by most students in their junior or senior year of high school, often required for college admission.  In the increasingly competitive college admission process, students today are looking for any and all ways to improve their candidacy.  One element of your college application that can definitely be improved on to help your chances of admission is your SAT score. The test is made up of 10 sections, drawn from three subjects: reading, mathematics, and writing.  All of these subjects review topics you have already learned in school: critical reading skills, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, grammar, and essay writing.  You already have basic knowledge on these subjects.  However, you can gain an extra edge and improve your score by reviewing the specific material that will be covered on the test and by becoming familiar with the rules and strategies specific to correctly answering SAT questions. Doing well on the test provides important information about you as…

Partial differential equations (PDEs) describe the relationships among the derivatives of an unknown function with respect to different independent variables, such as time and position. For example, the heat equation can be used to describe the change in heat distribution along a metal rod over time. PDEs arise as part of the mathematical modeling of problems connected to different branches of science, such as physics, biology, and chemistry. In these fields, experiment and observation provide information about the connections between rates of change of an important quantity, such as heat, with respect to different variables. These connections must be exploited to find an explicit way of calculating the unknown quantity, given the values of the independent variables  that is, to derive certain laws of nature. While we do not know why partial differential equations provide what has been termed the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences” (the title of a 1960 paper by physicist…

Please note: Our faculty members have indicated that several important changes need to be made in order to improve the course and your experience as a student. In 2013, we will be re-releasing this course under the simplified title: ARTH101: Art Appreciation and Techniques. Until then, you are welcome to work through this course at your own leisure; there

Please note: Our faculty members have indicated that several important changes need to be made in order to improve the course and your experience as a student. In 2013, we will be re-releasing this course under the simplified title: ARTH101: Art Appreciation and Techniques. Until then, you are welcome to work through this course at your own leisure; there

This introductory course in biology starts at the microscopic level, with molecules and cells. Before we get into the specifics of cell structure and behavior, however, let’s take a cursory glance at the field of biology more generally. Though biology as we know it today is a relatively new field, we have been studying living things since the beginning of recorded history. The invention of the microscope was the turning point in the history of biology; it paved the way for scientists to discover bacteria and other tiny organisms and ultimately led to the modern cell theory of biology. You will notice that, unlike the core program courses you took in chemistry and physics, introductory biology does not have many mathematical “laws” and “rules” and does not require much math. Instead, you will learn a great number of new terms and concepts that will help you describe life at the smallest level. Over the course of this semester, you will recognize the ways in which the tiniest of molecules are involved…

Welcome to BIO101B, Introduction to Molecular and Cellular Biology.  This course is intended for the student interested in understanding and appreciating common biological topics in the study of the smallest units within biology: molecules and cells. Molecular and cellular biology is a dynamic field.  There are thousands of opportunities within the medical, pharmaceutical, agricultural, and industrial fields (just to name a few) for a person with a concentrated knowledge of molecular and cellular processes.  This course will give you a general introduction of these topics.  In addition to preparing for a diversity of career paths, an understanding of molecular and cell biology will help you make sound decisions in your everyday life that can positively impact your diet and health. Note that this course is an alternative to BIO101A [1], and that you may choose to take either BIO101A or BIO101B in order to learn about Molecular and Cellular Biology.  These courses cover the same material, but in a slig…

This course is designed to introduce you to the study of calculus. You will learn concrete applications of how calculus is used and, more importantly, why it works. Calculus is not a new discipline; it has been around since the days of Archimedes. However, Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, two seventeenth-century European mathematicians concurrently working on the same intellectual discovery hundreds of miles apart, were responsible for developing the field as we know it today. This brings us to our first question, what is today’s calculus? In its simplest terms, calculus is the study of functions, rates of change, and continuity. While you may have cultivated a basic understanding of functions in previous math courses, in this course you will come to a more advanced understanding of their complexity, learning to take a closer look at their behaviors and nuances. In this course, we will address three major topics: limits, derivatives, and integrals, as well as study their respective foundations and appl…

American Government belongs to the Saylor.org CLEP® PREP Program. In taking this version of POLSC232, you will master the subject of American Government and Politics. This course is also designed to prepare you to take the CLEP® exam in American Government [1]. The CLEP® (College Level Examination Program) exams are designed by the College Board, the organization which administers the AP and SAT exam programs you may have encountered or taken in high school. CLEP® exams test for the mastery of college-level material that you may have acquired through any number of ways college-level course instruction, independent study, work experience, or any other program of study you have pursued. In other words, CLEP® exams are freestanding exams that any individual can pay to take in order to prove that he or she has mastered a given subject area at the college level. Over 2,900 US colleges and universities recognize and award college credit for a satisfactory score on a CLEP® exam. A student who earns a satisf…

This is the capstone course in the Saylor Customer Service certificate program which is currently under development. CUST105 is designed to teach you about the customer service work environment, methods for successful customer relations, and career advancement tactics. Future courses in the certificate program will provide a solid knowledge base in the areas of computer skills, business communications, and best customer service practices.

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…

Do you know what you’re watching? What you’re reading? You might think that what comes across your television or web browser, in your newspaper or magazine, or on your movie screen is pretty much the whole message; what you see is what you get. But the content we see, read, and hear is the product of complex forces − economic, governmental, historical, and technological. This course will explore those underlying forces and provide analytical tools to evaluate media critically. An overall goal is to become media literate, to gain an understanding of mass media as cultural industries that seek to influence our behavior and affect our values as a society. Unit 1 aims to define mass communication, mass media, and culture. It also will introduce the core concepts of media literacy and the concept of transmedia, the practice of integrating entertainment experiences across a range of different media platforms. Unit 2 will introduce selected theories that will help in analyzing mass communication and its effect…

Cryptography is essentially the science of writing in secret code.  In data and telecommunications, cryptography has specific security requirements, such as authentication, privacy or confidentiality, integrity, and non-repudiation.  To meet these security requirements, we employ secret key (or symmetric) cryptography, public-key (or asymmetric) cryptography, and hash functions. In the first part of the course, we will review a number of different ciphers that were used before World War II.  These ciphers would be easily broken nowadays, since cryptography has advanced quickly over the past couple of decades with the advent of modern computers.  We will cover block cipher algorithms and describe the advanced encryption standard for a symmetric-key encryption adopted by the U.S. government.  We will also learn about the important MD5 and SHA-1 hash functions as well as the message authentication code. This course will focus on public key cryptography, which is best exemplified by the RSA algorithm (na…