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.
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. The ubiquity and variability of organizations means there is ample room for complexity and confusion in the organizational challenges we regularly face. 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 Suggested Readings No readings are required to complete this course. Here is the manual link: Please note the textbook is large and will take a while to download, so please secure a good connection before commencing the download process. Course Format
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. In this course you will learn about the structure and evolution of networks, drawing on knowledge from disciplines as diverse as sociology, mathematics, computer science, economics, and physics. 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 Week 3: Network centrality Concepts: betweenness, closeness, eigenvector centrality (+ PageRank), network centralization Course Format
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. 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. The free digital book is available at Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society. Other highly recommended reading is the textbook: Product Design and Development by Karl T. The textbook publisher McGraw-Hill has made available to you a version of the textbook Product Design and Development by Karl T. The PDF, found here, contains detailed instructions on how to purchase the text.
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. But how does one turn data into this type of insight? 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 need to know how to seek answers through methods that strive to be systematic and generalizable.We will begin with some of the essential questions: How are the things that we take to be natural socially constructed? 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
social defined networking About the Course This course introduces software defined networking, an emerging paradigm in computer networking that allows a logically centralized software program to control the behavior of an entire network. Separating a network's control logic from the underlying physical routers and switches that forward traffic allows network operators to write high-level control programs that specify the behavior of an entire network, in contrast to conventional networks, whereby network operators must codify functionality in terms of low-level device configuration. Logically centralized network control makes it possible for operators to specify more complex tasks that involve integrating many disjoint network functions (e.g., security, resource control, prioritization) into a single control framework, allowing network operators to create more sophisticated policies, and making network configurations easier to configure, manage, troubleshoot, and debug. Course Syllabus Module 3: Control Plane Prof.
Malicious Software and its Underground Economy: Two Sides to Every Story Cybercrime has become both more widespread and harder to battle. Researchers and anecdotal experience show that the cybercrime scene is becoming increasingly organized and consolidated, with strong links also to traditional criminal networks. Modern attacks are indeed stealthy and often profit oriented. Malicious software (malware) is the traditional way in which cybercriminals infect user and enterprise hosts to gain access to their private, financial, and intellectual property data. By mixing a practical, hands-on approach with the theory and techniques behind the scene, the course discusses the current academic and underground research in the field, trying to answer the foremost question about malware and underground economy, namely, "Should we care?". Students will learn how traditional and mobile malware work, how they are analyzed and detected, peering through the underground ecosystem that drives this profitable but illegal business.