Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society About the Course This is a course aimed at making you a better designer. The course marries theory and practice, as both are valuable in improving design performance. Lectures and readings will lay out the fundamental concepts that underpin design as a human activity. Weekly design challenges test your ability to apply those ideas to solve real problems. The course is deliberately broad - spanning all domains of design, including architecture, graphics, services, apparel, engineered goods, and products. Student Testimonials from Earlier Sessions of the Course:"An amazing course - a joy to take. "When I signed up for this course I didn't know what to expect; the experience was so good and rewarding. See examples of student projects: here Recommended Background No specific background is required. Suggested Readings To get a feel for the style of the instructor and the material in the course, this book is a good place to start: Ulrich, K.T. 2010. Product Design and Development by Karl T.
How to learn math About This Course You can now register for the current offering of this course. If you are interested in Jo Boaler's "How to Learn Math: For Students" course, the course is available here: How to Learn Math: For Students This course offers important new research ideas on learning, the brain, and math that can transform students’ experiences with math. This course first ran last summer (June - Sep 2013) but will soon be re-opening and will run for an extended time, probably April-October. More than 40,000 people took the last class – mainly teachers, parents and school administrators. 95% of people completing the end of course survey said that they would change their teaching or ways of helping as a result of the course. An accompanying student intervention course will be offered in similar months in the 2013-14 school year (May/June) and through the summer. Concepts 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Prerequisites There are no prerequisites for this course. Course Staff Frequently Asked Questions No.
Critical Perspectives on Management This course is designed for students of all backgrounds who have an interest in how firms are governed, the forces that have helped define modern management practice, and the outcomes of that practice not only for the firm itself, but also for the societies in which they operate. For students who are thinking of a career in management, it may also prove useful as a basic introduction to some of the conceptual vocabulary and ideas behind modern theories of management. Using a wide disciplinary approach - from economics and history to social theory and even a smattering of biblical criticism - the course will invite students to consider several core management strategies and priorities from often unexpected perspectives in order to judge their success or failure. Topics include: the function of the firm; the role of incentive; the ways in which narrative forces shape decision making, and how market relationships define the managerial culture in ways that can lead to sub-optimal outcomes.
social network analysis About the Course Everything is connected: people, information, events and places, all the more so with the advent of online social media. A practical way of making sense of the tangle of connections is to analyze them as networks. Course Syllabus Week 1: What are networks and what use is it to study them? Concepts: nodes, edges, adjacency matrix, one and two-mode networks, node degree Activity: Upload a social network (e.g. your Facebook social network into Gephi and visualize it ). Week 2: Random network models: Erdos-Renyi and Barabasi-Albert Concepts: connected components, giant component, average shortest path, diameter, breadth-first search, preferential attachment Activities: Create random networks, calculate component distribution, average shortest path, evaluate impact of structure on ability of information to diffuse Week 3: Network centrality Concepts: betweenness, closeness, eigenvector centrality (+ PageRank), network centralization Week 4: Community Recommended Background
The Modern and the Postmodern In this course we shall examine how the idea of "the modern" develops at the end of the 18th century in European intellectual history, and how being modern (or progressive, or hip) became one of the crucial criteria for understanding and evaluating cultural change during the last two hundred years in the West. We shall be concerned with the relations between culture and historical change, and our materials shall be drawn from a variety of areas: philosophy, the novel, and critical theory. Finally, we shall try to determine what it means to be modern today, and whether it makes sense to go beyond the modern to the postmodern. The Modern and the Postmodern traces the intertwining of the idea of modernity with the idea of art or culture from the late 18th century until the present. Beginning with the Enlightenment, Western cultures have invested heavily in the notion that the world can be made more of a home for human beings through the development of culture (and technology).
Introduction to Environmental Law and Policy This course introduces the major substantive themes in environmental law and gives students insight and experience with critical thinking about these themes. Students will demonstrate mastery by learning how past environmental disputes have been resolved, and by applying insights and critical-thinking skills from past disputes to predicting how future ones might be addressed, including future disputes involving climate change. As a student enrolled in this course, you will have free access to selected chapters and content for the duration of the course. All chapters were selected by the instructor specifically for this course. You will be able to access the Coursera edition of the e-textbook via an e-reader in the class site hosted by Chegg.
Organizational Analysis About the Course Best MBA Mooc in 2013 as per review in the Financial Times! "The best [MBA Mooc] was Organizational Analysis taught by Stanford's Dan McFarland" - Philip D. Broughton MBA It is hard to imagine living in modern society without participating in or interacting with organizations. Each case is full of details and complexity. Through this self-paced course you will come to see that there is nothing more practical than a good theory. Join your future classmates and course alumni on Facebook! Course Syllabus Module 1: Introduction Module 2: Decisions by rational and rule-based procedures Module 3: Decisions by dominant coalitions Module 4: Decisions in organized anarchies Module 5: Developing organizational learning and intelligence Module 6: Developing an organizational culture Module 7: Managing resource dependencies Module 8: Network forms of organization Module 9: Institutions and organizational legitimacy Module 10: Summary Suggested Readings Course Format
Probabilistic Graphical Models About the Course What are Probabilistic Graphical Models? Uncertainty is unavoidable in real-world applications: we can almost never predict with certainty what will happen in the future, and even in the present and the past, many important aspects of the world are not observed with certainty. Probability theory gives us the basic foundation to model our beliefs about the different possible states of the world, and to update these beliefs as new evidence is obtained. In this class, you will learn the basics of the PGM representation and how to construct them, using both human knowledge and machine learning techniques; you will also learn algorithms for using a PGM to reach conclusions about the world from limited and noisy evidence, and for making good decisions under uncertainty. Course Syllabus Topics covered include: There will be short weekly review quizzes and programming assignments (Octave/Matlab) focusing on case studies and applications of PGMs to real-world problems:
Data Analysis About the Course You have probably heard that this is the era of “Big Data”. Stories about companies or scientists using data to recommend movies, discover who is pregnant based on credit card receipts, or confirm the existence of the Higgs Boson regularly appear in Forbes, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. This course is an applied statistics course focusing on data analysis. Recommended Background Some familiarity with the R statistical programming language ( and proficiency in writing in English will be useful. Course Format The course will consist of lecture videos broken into 8-10 minute segments.
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. The relevant background information for each global challenge will be provided to ensure that you can complete the exercises. Subtitles for all video lectures available: Portuguese (provided by the Lemann Foundation), English Course Format The course contains lectures, quizzes and exercises. This is a basic, informal and very pragmatic course, which focuses on getting you to think rationally and critically about evidence, and does not attempt to teach you about logic, reasoning and knowledge in a formal way.
Introduction to Sociology About the Course We live in a world that is changing very quickly. Sociology gives us the tools to understand our own lives and those quite remote from us. The premise of this class is that in order to benefit from the sociological perspective, we need to learn how to ask certain basic questions. We will strive to understand how interaction in micro-level contexts affects larger social processes and how such macro-level processes influence our day to day lives. Course Syllabus Week 1: The Sociological Imagination Week 2: Three Sociological Questions Week 3: Methods of Sociological Research Week 4: Us and Them Week 5: Isolation, Groups, and Networks Week 6: Cities Week 7: Social Interaction and Everyday Life Recommended Background None; all are welcome. Suggested Readings All assigned readings are open source materials which can be found through the web. and Introduction to Sociology (Eighth Edition) (both with Anthony Giddens, Richard P. Course Format Each week, there will be two sessions.
Model Thinking This course will consist of twenty sections. As the course proceeds, I will fill in the descriptions of the topics and put in readings. Section 1: Introduction: Why Model? In these lectures, I describe some of the reasons why a person would want to take a modeling course. To be an intelligent citizen of the worldTo be a clearer thinkerTo understand and use dataTo better decide, strategize, and design There are two readings for this section. The Model Thinker: Prologue, Introduction and Chapter 1 Why Model? Section 2: Sorting and Peer Effects We now jump directly into some models. In this second section, I show a computational version of Schelling's Segregation Model using NetLogo. NetLogo The Schelling Model that I use can be found by clicking on the "File" tab, then going to "Models Library". The readings for this section include some brief notes on Schelling's model and then the academic papers of Granovetter and Miller and Page. Notes on Schelling Granovetter Model Miller and Page Model
Introduction to Sustainability About the Course This course introduces the academic approach of Sustainability and explores how today’s human societies can endure in the face of global change, ecosystem degradation and resource limitations. The course focuses on key knowledge areas of sustainability theory and practice, including population, ecosystems, global change, energy, agriculture, water, environmental economics and policy, ethics, and cultural history. This subject is of vital importance, seeking as it does to uncover the principles of the long-term welfare of all the peoples of the planet. Course Syllabus Week 1: Introduction. Neo-malthusians, J-curves, S-curves and the IPAT equationWeek 2: Population. Course Format Each week of class consists of multiple 8-15 minute long lecture videos, integrated weekly quizzes, readings, an optional discussion assignment.
gamification About the Course Gamification is the application of digital game design techniques to non-game contexts, such as business, education, and social impact challenges. Video games are the dominant entertainment form of modern times because they powerfully motivate behavior. Game mechanics can be applied outside the immersive environments of games themselves, to create engaging experiences as well as assign rewards and recognition. Over the past few years, gamification adoption has skyrocketed. Game thinking means more than dropping in badges and leaderboards to make an activity fun or addicting. Subtitles forall video lectures available in: English, Russian (provided by Digital October), Turkish (Koc University), and Ukrainian (provided by Bionic University) Course Syllabus The course is divided into 12 units. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. Recommended Background This course is designed as an introduction to gamification as a business practice. Suggested Readings Course Format Yes.