Coursera - January 2015

The beginning of January is the lull period for Coursera courses just as it is winter break/between semesters for the universities that provide the content. I did two on-demand courses during the lull. I’ve finished all the videos for Introduction to Sustainable Development from Columbia University and am enjoying the first modules of the Astrobiology course from the University of Edinburgh.

The Sustainable Development course more about ‘why’ we need to do it rather than ‘how.’ It meshed well with the course from National Geographic about Water and the US Food System course from Johns Hopkins earlier this year. It is almost overwhelming how the big issues of our time are so interrelated.

The Astrobiology course also links well with other courses: The cosmology section of Philosophy and the Sciences (also from University of Edinburgh), Origins (from University of Copenhagen) and the Exoplanets course (from University of Geneva) that I finished last summer.  Having some of the same evidence discussed from a slightly different perspective deepens my overall understanding.

I struggle a little with the accented English of the lecturers in the Recovering the Humankind’s Past and Saving the Universal Heritage from Sapienza University of Rome…but I am still filling in some gaps in my knowledge.  It too links to some other courses from earlier this year - particularly The Art and Archaeology of Ancient Nubia from Emory University and Archaeology’s Dirty Little Secrets from Brown University.

Two new courses will start in January. Both are quite different that the courses I have taken recently….and are from universities new to my Coursera experience.