Coursera.org. About the Course About 2 million years ago our human ancestors were insignificant animals living in a corner of Africa.

Their impact on the world was no greater than that of gorillas, zebras, or chickens. Today humans are spread all over the world, and they are the most important animal around. The very future of life on Earth depends on the ideas and behavior of our species. This course will explain how we humans have conquered planet Earth, and how we have changed our environment, our societies, and our own bodies and minds. . · We rule the world because we are the only animal that can believe in things that exist purely in our own imagination, such as gods, states, money and human rights. · Humans are ecological serial killers – even with stone-age tools, our ancestors wiped out half the planet's large terrestrial mammals well before the advent of agriculture. · The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud – wheat domesticated Sapiens rather than the other way around.

Part IV. Coursera.org. About the Course Intended for both newcomers who are curious about video games and experienced gamers who want to reflect on their passion, this course will explore what happens to stories, paintings, and films when they become the basis of massively multiplayer online games.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy—the novels, films, and video game—are our central example of how “remediation” transforms familiar stories as they move across media. The course is designed as a university-level English literature class—a multi-genre, multimedia tour of how literature, film, and games engage in the basic human activity of storytelling. Our journey will enable us to learn something about narrative theory, introduce us to some key topics in media studies and cover some of the history and theory of video games. It will also take us to some landmarks of romance literature, the neverending story that lies behind most fantasy games: J.R.R.

Reviews of the last offering: Course Syllabus Week 1: Game on! J. 1. The Camera Never Lies. Coursera.org. In this class, we will ask and answer a series of questions about the role and practice of archaeology in the world today. If archaeologists are trained to investigate the past, what is left for us to study? Who gets to be an archaeologist? How and why do archaeologists hunt for “treasures”, and what do we do once we’ve discovered them?

What can we know, and not know, about people in the past? What do archaeologists know about the past that most people would never guess – and why aren’t we telling you? Archaeology famously involves getting dirty in the line of duty. Unit #1: Just what are these secrets anyway? Unit #2: What has survived for us to find? Unit #3: So how do you find things? Unit #4: How do you get a date? Unit #5: What do you do with what you find? Unit #6: What is involved in the archaeology of people? Unit #7: Where does archaeology happen? The Ancient Greeks. Coursera.org. E-learning and Digital Cultures. Critical Thinking in Global Challenges. About the Course Critical thinking is the ability to gather and assess information and evidence in a balanced and reflective way to reach conclusions that are justified by reasoned argument based on the available evidence.

Critical thinking is a key skill in the information age, valuable in all disciplines and professions. This introductory course will give you the opportunity to better understand what critical thinking is, and to practice and enhance your critical thinking skills. To do so, we will use the context of some important global challenges that affect us all, and to which we have no clear “correct” solutions: for example, the risk and spread of serious infectious diseases in epidemics in modern societies, the implications of increasing human population on global resources, energy, environment and climate, and the challenges of human health and wellbeing in the modern world. Subtitles for all video lectures available: Portuguese (provided by the Lemann Foundation), English.

Think Again: How to Reason and Argue.