Online courses directory (363)

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…

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

Ecology is the study of interactions between organisms and between organisms and their environments.  Population ecology is the subfield of ecology that identifies those ecological factorsin the community or in the ecosystemthat regulate a population’s size. Ecosystems and communities involve complex interactions that have evolved over long periods of time.  The species that are present and the interactions we see between them are the result of evolution under the unique environmental pressures that exist in a given environment.  These interactions may be delicately intertwined, such that the loss of a single species from a community could mean the collapse of the entire community in a domino effect.  Thus, biologists are concerned with the preservation of biodiversity in ecosystemsretaining as many different species in the ecosystem as possible so the intricate relationships among species are preserved. In recent years, we have seen a decrease in the biodiversity of ecosystems.  Human activities a…

This course will ask you to apply the knowledge you have acquired over the course of the entire mechanical engineering curriculum.  It draws upon what you have learned in your courses in mechanics, CAD, materials and processing, thermal and fluid systems, and dynamics and control, just to name a few.  This course is equivalent to the capstone course or senior design project that you would need to complete as a senior in a mechanical engineering program in a traditional American university setting. This course begins in Unit 1 by introducing you to the stages of the design process.  We will then focus on tools and skill sets that are particularly important for succeeding in a design project, including design planning, teamwork skills, project management, and design reporting. Unit 2 covers important design principles and considerations.  You will learn about economic implications (you must keep cost in mind while designing!), the ethical, societal, and environmental impacts of design decisions, and pro…

Existentialism is a philosophical and literary movement that first was popularized in France soon after World War II by figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. The roots of this movement can be traced back to the religious writings of Blaise Pascal in the seventeenth century and those of Søren Kierkegaard in the nineteenth century. The common thread that unites existentialists is a focus on existence, particularly the concrete existence of individual human beings. Unlike rationalist thinkers such as René Descartes and G.W. F. Hegel, existentialists reject the premise that human beings are primarily rational creatures who live in an ordered, well-designed universe. They also do not believe that the answers to life’s challenges can be solved through thoughtful consideration and reasoned deliberation. Instead, existentialists view human beings as creatures whose reason is subordinate to human passions and anxieties, and who exist in an irrational, absurd, and insignificant universe. In such…

Have you ever wondered what qualities billionaire Warren Buffet, visionary Steve Jobs, or upcoming Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com all have in common?  After you finish studying business practices in this course, you may discover that you have some of the same qualities as other successful entrepreneurs. This course is designed as a survey course that will expose you to business terminology, concepts, and current business issues.  The intent is to develop a viable business vocabulary, foster critical and analytical thinking, and refine your business decision-making skills.  These skills will be acquired by the reading materials, exercises, and research assignments in this course that simulate the workplace today.  By delving into the five units of this course, you will be able to fine tune your direction and choice of career in business. A major goal of your education is to help you become a citizen who can contribute and compete in an increasingly global environment.  Elements of this course will focus on…

This course is an upper division computer science course that studies the design of programming languages. While most of the industry uses either procedural or object-oriented programming languages, there are entire families of other languages with certain strengths and weaknesses that make them attractive to a variety of problem domains.  It is important to know about these less well-known yet powerful languages if you find yourself working in an area that could utilize their strengths.  In this course, we will discuss the entire programming language family, starting with an introduction to programming languages in general and a discussion of the features and functionality that make up the modern programming language.  From there, each unit will discuss a different family of programming languages, including Imperative, Object-Oriented, Functional, Scripting, and, Logical. For each language, you will learn about its computational model, syntax, semantics, and pragmatic considerations that shape the langua…

This course will introduce you to the field of literary theory, a central component of contemporary studies in English and world literature. As you progress through this course, you will gain knowledge of the various premises and methods available to you as a critical reader of literature. You will identify and engage with key questions that have animated - and continue to animate - theoretical discussions among literary scholars and critics, including issues pertaining to ideology, cultural value, the patriarchal and colonial biases of Western culture and literature, and more. The structure of this course is historically based, arranged as a genealogy of theoretical paradigms, beginning in the early 20th century - when literary theory first developed as a formal discipline - and following the evolution of literary theory into the present day. From text-centric Russian formalism to contemporary gynocriticism and trauma theory, you will explore the basic principles and preeminent texts that have defined many o…

The Romantic Period in England spans the decades of the 1780’s through the 1830’s. It was the age of revolutions - a span of time that saw not only the rapid industrialization of Europe but two significant national revolutions - one in France and one in America. This revolutionary spirit in many ways fed and sustained the Romantic Movement in English literature; its chief practitioners believed that poetry could literally transform the world and the way in which we understand it. In this course, we will examine this revolutionary energy alongside a number of other English Romantic characteristics, including a fascination with nature and the natural world; a desire to boldly experiment, explore, and renew literature; and a focus on the individual’s capacity for imagination and vision. First, we will discuss the broader socio-historical and literary context in which English Romantic poetry thrived. Second, we will examine the three main concerns of English Romantic poets, which have been roughly divided a…

This course will survey physics concepts and their respective applications.  It is intended as a basic introduction to the current physical understanding of our universe.  Originally part of “Natural Philosophy,” the first scientific studies were conducted after Thales of Miletus established a rational basis for the understanding of natural phenomena circa 600 BCE.  One of the Seven Sages of Greek philosophy, Thales sought to identify the substances that make up the natural world and explain how they produce the physical phenomena we observe.  Prior to Thales, humans had explained events by attributing supernatural causes to them; his work represents the very beginning of scientific analysis. The Scientific Method used today builds on this early foundation, but adds the essential underpinnings of evidence based on experiments or observation.  Briefly, the modern scientific method involves forming a hypothesis about the cause of a general phenomenon, using that hypothetical model to predict the outc…

This Research Methods course is part one of the two-part Research Methods series, which also includes the Research Methods Lab course. Research is the foundation on which any solid science is built. This course will introduce you to research methodologies frequently used in the social sciences and especially those used in the field of psychology. It is important that you are able to not only identify the techniques used by others but also employ them yourself. The course is designed to provide you with the foundation you will need to apply certain techniques in the search for your own answers. The course will begin with an overview of how research, and its appropriate methodology, came about in science and, more specifically, psychology. We will then go over the ABCs of conducting research, learning how to define “variables” and why they are important. While this course will also touch upon statistics and their importance, it will not require a comprehensive knowledge of the subject. The course will concl…

US firms maintain their competitive advantages by holding on to resources their competitors cannot obtain.  What do we mean by “resources?”  The term “resources” can refer to anything from rights to a certain oil field, the patent on touchscreen technology, or an exclusive contract with the government.  More often than not, however, a company’s most valuable resources are its employees.  Often, having the “right” employees  the individuals capable of developing iPhones or finding new oil fields  separates the highly successful firms from their less successful competitors.  As you begin the journey of this course, you might be saying to yourself, "My company may say I am its most valuable resource, but it really do not treat me like I am valued."  This feeling is one of many elements associated with managing human capital. In the United States, the subfield of Human Resource Management (alternatively known as Human Capital Management) has a history that dates back almost a century, bu…

Though we may not recognize them in our everyday activities, databases are everywhere.  They are hidden behind your online banking profile, airline reservation systems, medical records, and even employment records.  This course will provide students with a general overview of databases, introducing you to database history, modern database systems, the different models used to design a database, and Structured Query Language (SQL), which is the standard language used to access and manipulate databases.   Many of the principles of database systems carry to other areas in computer science, especially operating systems.  Databases are often thought of as one of the core computer science topics, since many other areas in the discipline have been derived from this area.

Public Finance rests at the intersection of two disciplines: Public Economics and Public Choice.  Public Economics deals with issues of social optimality: how much of a good (or ill) does a society desire (or tolerate), and how do we incentivize producers and consumers to attain that amount?  Public economics concerns itself with externalities, which are costs that are borne by persons not involved in a market transaction.  There are both positive and negative externalities; public economists want to know how we get more of the good and less of the bad.  Public choice is the field of economics that looks into the behavior of voters, politicians, and bureaucrats and studies how they choose given different policy institutions. The field of Public Finance studies the interaction between these two disciplines, asking questions like: How do the incentives of the political actors shape the policies they craft?  How does that in turn affect the outcomes in the marketplace?  Alternately, students of Public Fi…

At the outset of the 16th century, Europeans tended to dismiss English literature as inferior to continental literary traditions; the educated Englishman was obliged to travel to the continent and speak in other languages in order to “culture” himself.  By the end of the Renaissance, however, some of the greatest works in the English languagefrom Shakespeare’s dramas to Thomas More’s Utopiahad been written.  In this course, we will read and examine these works, situating them within their socio-historical and literary contexts, while attempting to determine how the art of English language and letters came into its own during this dynamic period. We will begin with an overview of European history during the centuries leading up to the Renaissance in order to acquaint ourselves with the profound cultural and social changes brought about by the Italian Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, nationalism/colonialism, and the growing power of the middle class.  We will then embark upon a genre study,…

Many scholars consider Dante the ultimate Italian poet of his time.  He introduced innovative stylistic techniques to the poetic tradition while also drawing from the philosophy, history, and mythology of the ancient world.  As we will see in the course, he composed his works in the Italian vernacular, setting an important precedent in the literary world of his time, when most of his contemporaries wrote only in Latin.  In this course, we will consider Dante’s literature for its stylistic and thematic contributions to the body of Medieval and Italian literature, as well as for its inventive appraisal of Christianity. Before we look at Dante’s specific literary works, we will first consider him as a writer who worked in a particular historical context and will accordingly begin by taking a look at Dante’s life as well as the culture of Medieval Italy on a broader level.  We will then take a look at some of Dante’s shorter works, most notably his early philosophical treatises.  We will devote the…

“Why is math important?  Why do I have to learn math?”  These are typical questions that you have most likely asked at one time or another in your education.  While you may learn things in math class that you will not use again, the study of mathematics is still an important one for human development.  Math is widely-used in daily activities (e.g. shopping, cooking, etc.) and in most careers (e.g. medicine, teaching, engineering, construction, business, statistics in psychology, etc.).  Math is also considered a “universal language.”  One of the fundamental reasons why you learn math is to help you tackle problems, both mathematical and non-mathematical, with clear, concise, and logical steps.  In this course, you will study important fundamental math concepts. This course begins your journey into the “Real World Math” series.  These courses are intended not just to help you learn basic algebra and geometry topics, but also to show you how these topics are used in everyday life.  In thi…

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…

Biochemistry is the study of the chemical processes and compounds, such as cellular makeup, that bring about life in organisms.  It is a combination of multiple science fields; you can think of it as general and cell biology coupled with organic and general chemistry.  Although living organisms are very complex, from a molecular view, the material that constitutes “life” can be broken down into remarkably simple molecules, much like the breakdown of our English language to the English alphabet.  Although there exists thousands upon thousands of molecules, they all breakdown into four core components: nucleic acids, amino acids, lipids, and carbohydrates.  As we can make hundreds of thousands of words from just 26 letters, we can make thousands of different biomolecules from those 4 components.  For example, the human genome, containing the necessary information to create a human being, is really just one very long strand of 4 different nucleotides. This course is structured around that approach, so…

The advent of computers transformed science.  Large, complicated datasets that once took researchers years to manually analyze could suddenly be analyzed within a week using computer software.  Nowadays, scientists can use computers to produce several hypotheses as to how a particular phenomenon works, create computer models using the parameters of each hypothesis, input data, and see which hypothetical model produces an output that most closely mirrors reality. Computational biology refers to the use of computers to automate data analysis or model hypotheses in the field of biology.  With computational biology, researchers apply mathematics to biological phenomena, use computer programming and algorithms to artificially create or model the phenomena, and draw from statistics in order to interpret the findings.  In this course, you will learn the basic principles and procedures of computational biology.  You will also learn various ways in which you can apply computational biology to molecular and cell…