Every year there is an increase in the number of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) available on sustainability topics. These courses are available for free online and open to anyone with an interest in the topic, lasting between three and fourteen weeks and taking three to eight hours per week to complete. Below is a selection of such courses offered this Winter 2017 from PRME as well as some non-signatory schools. The first part focused on courses that relate to social and environmental issues while the second part focuses on economic issues and how business specifically is embedding sustainability topics.
Social Issues
Principles of Designing for Humans: This course surveys theories and findings from the social sciences with special attention to how these concepts influence the way we design for human interaction. It will cover how people perceive and process information, motor capabilities and limitations, decision-making and problem solving, and how emotion and social factors impact user experience. From University of Michigan – starts January 17.
Top 10 Social Issues for the President’s First 100 Days: A collaborative learning project which taps into the knowledge and ideas of University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice faculty to examine the most pressing social justice issues facing the United States. Starts January 20.
Social Norms Social Change: This course explores social norms, the rules that glue societies together. It teaches how to diagnose social norms, and how to distinguish them from other social constructs, like customs or conventions. These distinctions are crucial for effective policy interventions aimed to create new, beneficial norms or eliminate harmful ones. From University of Pennsylvania and UNICEF – starts January 2.
Human Rights: This courses focuses on human rights as a multidisciplinary field from history to activism, development and more. From Curtin University – starts February 13.
International Human Rights Law: This course looks at how an individual’s human rights are protected from both public and private power by international laws. From Universite Catholique de Louvain – starts January 10.
Anthropology of Current World Issues: This course uses anthropological ideas to see the world from a range of perspectives and points of view. From The University of Queensland Australia – starts January 4.
Reconciliation Through Indigenous Education: This course explores how indigenous histories, perspectives, worldviews, and approaches to learning can be made part of the work done in classrooms, organisations, communities, and everyday experiences in ways that are thoughtful and respectful. From The University of British Columbia – starts January 24.
Readings in Global Health: This course explores the most pressing issues in global health through a series of reviews and interviews with leading experts. From Harvard University – starts January 23.
Education in a Changing World: This courses looks at education as a social institution charged with communicating the knowledge, skills and cultural values that society considers most important. It looks at how the aims of education have changed over time in response to changing and competing views and what is considered a ‘good society’ and ‘good person’ as well as changes that come from new understandings of a constantly changing world. From Open2Study – starts January 9.
Environmental Issues
Water in a Thirsty World: This course explores the journey of water – how it began, and its availability today in light of global warming and urbanization. It explores the natural environment is reaching a threshold and the impact that it has for us and for the water supplies that we rely on. Open Study – January 9.
Agriculture and the World We Live in: This course looks at the world’s population and the crucial role of agriculture in feeding the steadily increasing number of people. It focuses on how climate and soil dictates the types of farms we see in different regions and countries. From Massey University – starts January 9.
Global Environmental Management: This course explores the best environmental technologies for a sustainable development and how they are managed in various settings around the world. It covers global trends that influence our environment and the living conditions and how different management systems and approaches that are used around the world to management the environment. From Technical University of Denmark – starts January 2.
Contemporary Issues in Ocean Governance: This course considers the nature of how the world’s oceans are regulated. It will go through how ocean governance has evolved through time and how it actually works. From University of Wollongong – starts January 9.
Climate Change: This course explores how climate change will affect us, why we should care about it, and what solutions we can employ. From Macquarie University – starts January 9.
Our Energy Future: This course introduces students to the issues of energy in the 21st century – including food and fuels – which are inseparably linked – and will discuss energy production and utilisation from the biology, engineering, economics, climate sciences, and social science perspectives. From University of California San Diego – starts now.
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