Online courses directory (148)

Build your earth science vocabulary and learn about cycles of matter and types of sedimentary rocks through the Education Portal course Earth Science 101: Earth Science. Our series of video lessons and accompanying self-assessment quizzes can help you boost your scientific knowledge ahead of the Excelsior Earth Science exam . This course was designed by experienced educators and examines both science basics, like experimental design and systems of measurement, and more advanced topics, such as analysis of rock deformation and theories of continental drift.

In the 1970s, the Chinese Communist leader Zhou Enlai was asked to assess the outcomes of the French Revolution of 1789.  He supposedly answered: “It is too soon to say.”  Though this story has a somewhat apocryphal status, it captures a fundamental truth about the world in which we live: it is a world which has been shaped by revolutions, and their legacies are always difficult to evaluate. In this course, you will gain a better understanding of the modern world by studying some of the most important political revolutions that took place between the 17th century and today.  You will seek to understand the causes of each revolution, analyze the ideologies that inspired the revolutionaries, examine revolutionary uses of violence, and consider how historical revolutions still shape contemporary politics.  Close and critical readings of historical sources will be crucial in this process. The course begins with a theoretical analysis of revolutions and a careful examination of pre-revolutionary Europe…

This course will focus on the emergence and evolution of industrial societies around the world.  We will begin by comparing the legacies of industry in ancient and early modern Europe and Asia and examining the agricultural and commercial advances that laid the groundwork for the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries.  We will then follow the history of industrialization in different parts of the world, taking a close look at the economic, social, and environmental effects of industrialization.  The course is organized chronologically and thematically.  Each unit will focus on key developments in the history of industry as well as on representative areas of the globe, using primary-source documents, secondary readings, and multimedia resources to illustrate the dynamic nature of industrial change.  By the end of the course, you will understand how industrialization developed, spread across the globe, and shaped everyday life in the modern era.

In the 1960’s, H. Marshall McLuhan, media theorist, critic, and visionary, asserted that societies are changed by the advances of technology, especially communication technologies.  He is well known for his prophecy that communication technology would one day make us one great “global village.”  In the end, the processes and theories regarding communication in our daily lives to exchange information, create meaning, and share understanding remain a critical component of human relationships.  Whether we are chatting with a stranger while waiting for a bus, solving a problem with a group of coworkers, or sharing our dreams and goals with our best friend, principles and practices of human communication are at the foundation of each of these human transactions. This course provides an introduction to the human communication concentration in the communications major.  This course will introduce you to communication principles, common communication practices, and a selection of theories to better unders…

Marketing is an understanding of how to communicate with the consumer.  It includes 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 the same thing.  In reality, advertising is but one of the 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 the products should be made available. 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 customer.  You will begin to intuitively ask: what does the customer need?  What does the customer…

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…

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…

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 is the third in a trilogy of short courses. In this final part, we integrate what we have learned in the previous two parts to investigate the evolution and implications of Chinese government policies designed to promote scientific and technological progress. Based on this, we will attempt to sketch a picture of the future of science and technology in China.

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 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…

This Research Methods Lab course is part two of the Research Methods series. You should not attempt this course without having first completed the Research Methods course (PSYCH202A [1]). This Lab extends beyond the basics of research methodology and the logic of experimental design, concepts you learned in PSYCH202A [2].  You will learn to put these concepts into practice while conducting laboratory experiments. While we may not explicitly apply all of the concepts introduced in the Research Methods lecture course, remember that each of them will remain relevant during the evaluation and review phases of your research. This course intends to acquaint the student with a variety of different research techniques.  Students will participate in every stage of experimentation, from creation and editing to evaluation and review.   As such, this course will not only review relevant concepts from the Research Methods lecture, but will also broach a number of practical matters, including the standard organizatio…

This course will introduce you to United States history from the colonial period to the Civil War and Reconstruction. You will learn about the major political, economic, and social changes that took place in America during this 250-year period. The course will be structured chronologically, with each unit focusing on a significant historical subject in early American history. The units will include representative primary-source documents that illustrate important overarching political, economic, and social themes, such as the development of British America, the founding of the American republic, and the crisis of the federal union that led to the Civil War. By the end of the course, you will understand how the American federal union was founded, expanded, and tested from 1776 to its collapse in 1861.

This course will focus on the history of Greek and Roman civilizations beginning with the origins of ancient Greek culture in the Aegean Bronze Age (c. 30001100 BCE) through the period of the Roman Empire at the height of its greatest extent and prosperity (c. 31 BCE235 CE). We will focus on the political, economic, and social factors that shaped the development and maturation of these two influential Mediterranean civilizations. The course will be structured chronologically. Each unit will include representative primary source documents that illustrate important overarching themes, such as the emergence and development of Greek civilization from the Aegean Bronze Age through the Greek Archaic period (c.700500 BCE), the contrast between democratic and oligarchic forms of government in Greek city-states of the classical era (c. 500350 BCE), the decline of the Greek city-states, the rise of Macedon and the spread of Greek culture to the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia in the Hellenistic period (c. 35031…

This course will focus on the wars and military conflicts that have shaped the social, political, and economic development of the United States from the colonial era through the present.  You will learn how these conflicts have led to significant changes in America social and political life during this 300-year period.  The course will be structured chronologically.  Each unit will include representative primary-source documents that illustrate important overarching themes, such as how colonial conflicts in the 18th century shaped the political organization of the United States, how regional conflicts in the 19th century culminated in the Civil War, how America cemented its status as a major world power through participation in the First and Second World Wars, how Cold War conflicts destabilized American social and political life, and how modern conflicts continue to redefine American social and political values and ideals.  By the end of the course, you will understand how three centuries of warfare have…

This course will introduce you to the history of the Age of Revolutions in the Atlantic World from 1776 to 1848. You will learn about the revolutionary upheavals that took place in the Americas and Europe during this period. Each unit will include representative primary-source documents that illustrate important overarching political, economic, and social themes, such as the secession of the American colonies from the British Empire, the outbreak of the French Revolution, the dissolution of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires in the Americas, and the spread of revolutionary ideals throughout the Atlantic World. Running alongside and extending beyond these political revolutions is the First Industrial Revolution. By the end of the course, you will understand how an Atlantic World, dominated by European empires in 1776, was transformed through revolution into a series of independent states by 1848 and of the profound changes that Europe would experience, and continue to experience, through the development and…

Personality psychology is the study of the development of personality, the effects of personality on important outcomes, and attempts to make beneficial changes to maladaptive personality characteristics.

This course will introduce you to the history of the European Middle Ages and Renaissance.  You will learn about the major political, economic, and social changes that took place between the fourth century and 1500.  The course is structured chronologically.  Each unit includes representative primary-source documents that illustrate important overarching political, economic, and social themes, such as the collapse of the Roman Empire, the rise of the Christian Church, the emergence of the feudal system, the advent of the Renaissance in Italy and northern Europe, and the significance of the European Age of Exploration.  By the end of the course, you will understand how Europe transformed from a collection of barbarian kingdoms into a continent with a sophisticated cultural and economic life that would later come to dominate the globe.

This course will introduce you to the fundamental principles of psychology and to the major subjects of psychological inquiry. It has been designed to not only provide you with the tools necessary for the study of psychology but to present you with a sampling of the major areas of psychology research. The course begins with a short overview of how psychology developed as an academic discipline and an introduction to a number of the principle methodologies most commonly deployed in its study. The subsequent units are arranged around broad areas of research, including emotion, development, memory, and psychopathology. We will focus on well-substantiated research and current trends within each of these categories.