Online courses directory (363)

In ASTR101, you will be introduced to our current understanding of the universe and how we have come to this understanding.  We will start with the ancient Greeks and their belief that the universe was an orderly place capable of being understood.  We will continue through history, as we acquired more information on the nature of the universe and our models of the universe changed to reflect this.  This will take us through several different worldviews. As noted above, we will begin with the Greek worldview, which was characterized by the belief that the earth was the immovable center of the universe; this was known as the “geocentric” model.  Although this worldview is wrong in many of its details, it was a very important first step.  It explained the universe well enough that it lasted almost two thousand years.  By 1600, this belief was beginning to be challenged by such people as Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo; finally, it was completely done away with by the physics of Newton.  By 1700, the…

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…

This course will introduce you to the concepts and ideas in the area of social psychology. Social Psychology aims to discover the different ways in which people interact with other individuals, groups, and the larger society as a whole, as well as why people act in certain ways. As with an anthropology or sociology course, social psychology looks at the inner workings of groups of people. However, it differs from these courses in terms of its focus; social psychology focuses primarily on the single individual’s psychology as part of the group or society, rather than the culture or group interaction (though both of these areas have some relevance in social psychology). This may seem to be quite a broad subject area and it is. Humans are social creatures (in other words, they have evolved to be able to interact and communicate at high levels with individuals of their own species) and almost invariably exist in a social context (even a situation in which society is absent could be studied by social psychologi…

This lab course supplements BIO304: Human Physiology [1].  Although we cannot virtually replicate the lab experience, this “lab” will familiarize you with scientific thinking and techniques and will enable you to explore of some key principles of human physiology. The material in this lab supplement relates to the material covered in the lecture and reading portion of the course.  While the lecture and reading portion focuses on big-picture concepts, here we will focus more on visual understanding, manipulation, and practical use of your knowledge.  You will review the physiology of the organ systems by using images of models, experiments, and videos.  Then you will be asked to assess your knowledge, which eventually can be put to practical or experimental use. Co-requisite: BIO304: Human Physiology [2]. [1] http://www.saylor.org/courses/bio304/ [2] http://www.saylor.org/courses/bio304/…

In this course, you will learn about the marketing process and examine the range of marketing decisions that an organization must make in order to sell its products and services. You will also learn how to think like a marketer, discovering that the focus of marketing has always been on the consumer. You will begin to ask, “Who is the consumer of goods and services?” What does the consumer need? What does the consumer want? Marketing is an understanding of how to communicate with the consumer, and is characterized by four activities: Creating products and services that serve consumers Communicating a clear value proposition Delivering products and services in a way that optimizes value Exchanging, or trading, value for those offerings Many people incorrectly believe that marketing and advertising are one in the same. In reality, advertising is just one of many tools used in marketing, which is the process by which firms determine which products to offer, how to price those products, and to whom th…

In this course, you will look at the properties behind the basic concepts of probability and statistics and focus on applications of statistical knowledge.  You will learn about how statistics and probability work together.  The subject of statistics involves the study of methods for collecting, summarizing, and interpreting data.  Statistics formalizes the process of making decisions, and this course is designed to help you use statistical literacy to make better decisions.  Note that this course has applications for the natural sciences, economics, computer science, finance, psychology, sociology, criminology, and many other fields. We read data in articles and reports every day.  After finishing this course, you should be comfortable evaluating an author's use of data.  You will be able to extract information from articles and display that information effectively.  You will also be able to understand the basics of how to draw statistical conclusions. This course will begin with descriptive statistic…

Math for Economists will help you assemble a toolkit of skills and techniques to solve fundamental problems in both macroeconomics and microeconomics.  The material covers both precalculus and calculus concepts and should help you identify the best approach to solving problems.  For example, an economist may be called upon to determine the right mix allocation of capital to a production process.  The tools in this course will help you evaluate the options and select from the best alternatives.  Advanced courses in economics typically utilize mathematical techniques beyond basic calculus; so, gaining practice in fundamental skills can serve as a good basis for further study.  Of note, this course applies precalculus and calculus; this is different from “applied math,” which economists typically use to refer to probability and statistics. This course begins with a survey of basic optimization tools and then applies them to solve problems over several periods in time.  These optimization tools descri…

Engineering design is the process of creating solutions to satisfy certain requirements given all the constraints.   This course will focus on the decision-making process that affects various stages of design, including resource allocation, scheduling, facilities management, material procurement, inspection, and quality control.  You will be introduced to the basic theoretical framework and several practical tools you can use to support decision making in the future.  The first two units provide an overview of engineering design process and theories and methods for making decisions, including Analytic Hierarchy Process, Lean Six Sigma, and Quality Function Deployment.  In Unit 3, you will learn about the basic principles of computerized decision support systems.  Unit 4 discusses several advanced mathematical methods used for support decision making, including linear and dynamic programming, decision tree, and Bayesian inference.

This course examines various topics related to the American presidency and the executive branch. Unit 1 begins with an introduction to the origins of the office and the early debates amongst the framers of the Constitution surrounding the institution of the presidency. The course will then focus on the components of the Constitution that pertain to presidential powers. A historical analysis of the expansion of these powers concludes the unit. Unit 2 and Unit 3 examine the relationship between the president and the other two branches of the federal government (Congress and the judiciary, respectively). Unit 4 assesses the presidency as it relates to national security, international diplomacy, and foreign policy. Unit 5 transitions into a broader discussion about the executive branch as an institution. It discusses the key players in the media spotlight (the vice president and cabinet), as well as the lesser-known, but essential, federal bureaucracy. This unit also discusses different models of White House orga…

The purpose of this course is to familiarize students with civil rights and civil liberties in the United States. While much of the reading will focus on court cases, it is not a course on the law or on the courts. Rather, this is a course on constitutional politics. The focus will center on understanding how a free society governs and controls itself. The material will address evolving opinions and doctrines of the United States Supreme Court that focus on the civil liberties and rights of both individuals and groups. This material will emphasize cases with particular relevance to political controversies of both the past and present such as the following: the civil liberties in a post-September 11th country, same-sex marriage, racial equality, gender equality, pornography, as well as speech and privacy in general. The design of this course will encourage students to take a historical view to understand contemporary issues. As mentioned above, this course primarily will explore the doctrines of the Court. T…

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…

Cultural Psychology reviews the cultural, community, and ecological factors that play a role in how people perceive their environment.  It is the integration of the nature and nurture phenomenas, whereby an individual’s psyche is determined, or at least influenced, by both that individual’s culture and those other cultures to which the individual is exposed.  This may include many layers and levels, such as those discussed by Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, including the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem. For example: On a small scale, it is easy to see how an individual living in New York City would encounter different psychosocial stressors than a person living on a farm in Iowa might.  On a much larger scale, a person living in the United States may differ greatly, in cultural terms, from an individual living in China.  It may be easy to tell that two cultures are different from one another, but identifying exactly what we meanand all that is encompas…

This course is the second installment of Single-Variable Calculus.  In Part I (MA101) [1], we studied limits, derivatives, and basic integrals as a means to understand the behavior of functions.  In this course (Part II), we will extend our differentiation and integration abilities and apply the techniques we have learned. Additional integration techniques, in particular, are a major part of the course.  In Part I, we learned how to integrate by various formulas and by reversing the chain rule through the technique of substitution.  In Part II, we will learn some clever uses of substitution, how to reverse the product rule for differentiation through a technique called integration by parts, and how to rewrite trigonometric and rational integrands that look impossible into simpler forms.  Series, while a major topic in their own right, also serve to extend our integration reach: they culminate in an application that lets you integrate almost any function you’d like. Integration allows us to calculat…

This course will introduce you to the history of the nations and peoples of the Middle East and Southwest Asia from 1919 to the present.You will learn about the major political, economic, and social changes that took place throughout the region during this 100-year period.This course will have a chronological structure.Each unit will include representative primary source documents that illustrate important overarching political, economic, and social themes, such as the emergence of nationalist movements following World War I, European political and economic imperialism during the first half of the 20th century, the creation of the nation of Israel, regional economic development, and the impact of secular and religious trends on Middle Eastern society and culture during the second half of the 20th century.By the end of this course, you will understand how the countries of the region have overcome significant social, economic, and political problems as they have grown from weak former colonies into modern natio…

This course will serve as your introduction to working in an engineering laboratory.  You will learn to gather, analyze, interpret, and explain physical measurements for simple engineering systems in which only a few factors need be considered.  This experience will be crucial to your success in analyzing more complicated systems in subsequent coursework and in the practice of mechanical engineering. We frequently encounter measurement systems in our everyday lives.  Consider the following examples: 1.      The many gauges found on the control panel of a motor vehicle indicate vehicle speed, engine coolant temperature, transmission setting, cabin temperature, engine speed, and oil pressureamongst many other measurements. 2.      A routine visit to a physician often entails several measurements of varying complexityinternal temperature, blood pressure, internal appearance, heart rate, respiration rate, and tissue texture, amongst many, many more. 3.      The experienced cook may use s…

This course deals with the transfer of work, energy, and material via gases and liquids.  These fluids may undergo changes in temperature, pressure, density, and chemical composition during the transfer process and may act on or be acted on by external systems.  You must fully understand these processes if you are an engineer working to analyze, troubleshoot, or improve existing processes and/or innovate and design new ones. In your everyday life, you will likely encounter examples of the thermal-fluid systems we will study in this course.  Consider the following scenarios: Read this recent report [1] by Gary Goettling for the Georgia Tech Alumni Association.*  In it, Goettling describes a refrigeration system with no moving parts based on improvements to a patent filed by Einstein and Szilard in 1930.  As an engineer, how would you go about evaluating this design for energy efficiency, safety, reliability, and manufacturing, operating, and installation costs? Have you ever wondered how the level se…

Comprehending the role that feminism has played in identifying, critiquing, and, at times, altering the distribution of political and economic power is integral to understanding democratic citizenship and government.  In this course, we will examine the history of feminist thought, beginning in the late eighteenth century and continuing through the early twenty-first century.  An overarching goal of this course is to encourage you to develop and shape your own concepts and ideas about feminist political thought as a potent and multifaceted global force.  In working toward this goal, we begin the course by defining feminism and engaging with some of the cultural and political stereotypes of feminism and feminist thinking in contemporary politics and popular culture.  Next, we explore the history of feminist thinking.  We conclude by examining current topics in feminist politics. Throughout the course, we will examine and discuss questions important to feminist politics, such as citizenship, political pa…

This course introduces learners to the principles of learning and behavior by surveying relevant theoretical and empirical approaches within psychology.  The overall emphasis is on the theoretical foundations of psychology as they relate to human learning and behavior.   The following topics will be reviewed: historical perspectives of early learning theories, prevailing theories of human development, classical and operant conditioning, effects stimuli have on learning and behavior, social learning, motivation, cognitive developmental theory in the context of learning stages and processes, memory and human information processing models, and problem-solving methods.  Understanding these human processes is an integral part of psychology and other domains of human behavior, such as marketing, sports, health, education and relationships. Learning theories are an outgrowth from philosophies of thought.  The philosophical approaches of rationalism and empiricism, and the works of Plato and Descarte form the…

This course will introduce you to the psychology behind gender and sexuality, or the study of the different ways our gender roles and sexual identities impact our lives. Although the terms “gender” and “sex” are often used synonymously in everyday speech, this course will assign the terms two different meanings. “Sex” refers to biological differencei.e. whether you are a female or male from a biological standpoint. “Gender” refers to the social and psychological attributes that come along with one’s sex. Though these terms are similar and relate to one another, there is a distinct difference between the two that you should recognize for the purposes of this course. In this course, we will take a look at how our understanding of our own gender and sex can affect different aspects of our functioning, while also identifying the factors in our lives that can impact our gender and sex. While we often assume we know a lot about how gender affects our lives and the lives of the opposite gender, t…

In this course, we will study the art of Classical Antiquity.  The different units of the course reflect the main chronological stages in art development in Ancient Greece and Rome, from the coming together of the Greek city-state and the emergence of “geometric art” (around 900 B.C.) to the fourth century A.D. shift that took place within Roman culture and art due to the growing influence of Christianity.  We will begin by underlining the unity of our subject matter: Rome not only conquered Greece, but it assimilated Greece’s cultural and artistic accomplishments.  In fact, much of what we know of Greek art today we learned through Roman copies. We will also explore the development of Greek architecture, sculpture, and painting up to the Hellenistic period, when Greek art began to influence new parts of the globe through the conquests of Alexander the Great.  We will also study the ways in which naturalism and idealism came together as Greek art developed over time.  Next, we will turn our atten…