Critical reasoning skills are a key success factor for students entering their first year of college. They must be able to think logically and form arguments. This course, designed with incoming college freshmen in mind but open to anyone, provides an essential grounding in critical reasoning skills. Faculty from multiple disciplines at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill offer guidance on applying critical thinking skills in the context of specific disciplines. By developing these skills, students will learn more, enjoy their courses more, and experience greater academic success. This course will help you understand what critical thinking skills are and why they're so important. You will also learn how critical thinking skills vary across disciplines, as well as see them applied across several fields, including, chemistry, history, psychology, law, English, and American Studies. You will develop your own critical thinking skills by working through scenarios or problems posed by scholars across these fields, and you will better understand how your college courses will differ from your earlier education.

By the end of this project, you’ll get comfortable opening and using Inkscape. With Inkscape, a free vector graphics program, you can build graphics with clear lines, vivid colors, and the flexibility to resize again and again. You’ll get comfortable setting up Inkscape documents and using its most common tools: shape tools, selection and editing tools, the pen tool, and the text tool. You’ll also learn to pan and zoom around inside Inkscape. To build these skills, you’ll explore the differences between vector and raster graphics, practice panning and zooming in Inkscape, create a range of shapes, and edit those shapes. Note: This course works best for learners who are based in the North America region. We’re currently working on providing the same experience in other regions.

The course will explore the tone combinations that humans consider consonant or dissonant, the scales we use, and the emotions music elicits, all of which provide a rich set of data for exploring music and auditory aesthetics in a biological framework. Analyses of speech and musical databases are consistent with the idea that the chromatic scale (the set of tones used by humans to create music), consonance and dissonance, worldwide preferences for a few dozen scales from the billions that are possible, and the emotions elicited by music in different cultures all stem from the relative similarity of musical tonalities and the characteristics of voiced (tonal) speech. Like the phenomenology of visual perception, these aspects of auditory perception appear to have arisen from the need to contend with sensory stimuli that are inherently unable to specify their physical sources, leading to the evolution of a common strategy to deal with this fundamental challenge.

Arctic communities have diverse histories and roles in local, regional and global economies. However, the scope and scale of globalization has increased so quickly that vulnerable Arctic communities are facing new kinds of challenges to their survival. In this 3-week MOOC, a unique collaboration between the University of Alberta and UiT The Arctic University of Norway, you will investigate the challenges faced by Indigenous, North American, Russian and Nordic Arctic communities in a modern world. So join us as we venture above the 60th parallel North, and explore how these fascinating communities adjust to change while maintaining their ways of life, socio-economic histories, and cultural traditions.

By the end of this project, you’ll be able to create a custom typography design in Adobe Illustrator. During this project, you’ll explore some of Adobe Illustrator’s most useful tools, draw basic and complex letter designs, and add style to your type. By the end of the project, you’ll feel comfortable building your type designs from scratch.

Welcome to Course FOUR! In Modules 1-4 you will cover the final elements of the Specialization necessary to round out this introduction to the fundamentals of Photography, and prepare you for creating your own exciting project in the Capstone! You have come a long way since the beginning of this journey from Smartphone Basics to DSLR and Beyond. Just think of all the information you have absorbed and put to use in your assignments and quizzes, and the confidence you have gained that you CAN control the camera to make pictures you are proud to share. Here in Course Four you will start by gaining knowledge related to content in photography, from fact to fiction, documentary to purely expressive. Next you will learn principles, tips, and techniques for using the essential element of Light in Ambient/Natural settings. The flash/strobe unit, whether it is built-in to your camera or an add-on "hotshoe" model, will finally be something you, not the camera, controls! You will prove to yourself that those former mysteries of Controlled Continuous and Strobe lighting will no longer be mysterious, as you apply your knowledge to creation of assignment photographs in various situations. Sharing those pictures in Peer Review will give you the opportunity to learn from your fellow photographers' solutions to lighting challenges, and to gain insight into your own work and creative approaches too. There is an important word to share about Peer Review assignments for this course. As photographers who have accomplished the quiz and photography requirements of Courses One through Three, you have the knowledge and capability to create quality photographs at a much higher rate of success, and in a much shorter time, than when you began. You have also proven that you are a dedicated Learner, someone who has a passion for photography and is willing to put forth the extra effort necessary to accomplish your goals. This Course is the last before the Capstone Course, in which you will be tasked with creating a project over a 2-month period of dedicated photography. The Peer Review photography assignments have been structured with both your advanced capabilities and dedication in mind...in other words, they will require both! Be prepared to allocate more time than you have in previous Courses for the assignments, because they will take more time and because you will really enjoy them! Course Four ends with an overview of methods for finalizing your pictures in print form, including simple but effective matting techniques, and in web page designs as well. The pleasures and perils of sharing in social media sites are also yours to discover. Protecting your copyrights by understanding that concept and the ways that you can assert them, being careful about blogs and other outlets, and recognizing you are part of a community that respects the individual's creative effort, well that is important knowledge to have in preparation for the Capstone too! Let's get started with Module One!

It is often claimed that relativism, subjectivism and nihilism are typically modern philosophical problems that emerge with the breakdown of traditional values, customs and ways of life. The result is the absence of meaning, the lapse of religious faith, and feeling of alienation that is so widespread in modernity. The Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55) gave one of the most penetrating analyses of this complex phenomenon of modernity. But somewhat surprisingly he seeks insight into it not in any modern thinker but rather in an ancient one, the Greek philosopher Socrates. In this course created by former associate professor at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, Jon Stewart, we will explore how Kierkegaard deals with the problems associated with relativism, the lack of meaning and the undermining of religious faith that are typical of modern life. His penetrating analyses are still highly relevant today and have been seen as insightful for the leading figures of Existentialism, Post-Structuralism and Post-Modernism.

Welcome to this Big History course! In this course, renowned scientists and scholars from the University of Amsterdam and beyond will take you on a journey from the Big Bang until today while addressing key questions in their fields. After completing this journey you will have developed a better understanding of how you and everything around you became the way they are today. You will also have gained an understanding of the underlying mechanisms that have helped shape the history of everything and how they wil help shape the future. Last but not least, you will have developed the skill to use this knowledge to put smaller subjects into a bigger perspective with the aid of the little big history approach, which can help you develop some new ideas on these smaller subjects.

The workplace of tomorrow is an uncertain place. We live in a rapidly changing world, and design innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and big data are rapidly changing the fundamental nature of how we live and work. As these technologies continue to evolve at an exponential rate - it is becoming critical to understand their impact on contemporary work practices, and for businesses and employees to understand how to design a secure future amidst this disruption. What new, disruptive technologies are on the horizon? How will jobs change? What challenges will employers and employees face? How can the design process help businesses and employees to create innovative solutions to overcome such challenges? The course is a collaboration between UNSW Sydney Art & Design and AMP Amplify, AMP's innovation and ideas program. It brings together leading business and design thinking to help answer these questions, and investigates design strategies that businesses, employees and designers can adopt to find new opportunity in such a rapidly changing professional landscape. WHAT WILL I LEARN? The course provides you with a unique, authentic, and industry relevant learning opportunity. You will have access to current theory, industry examples and expert advice from leaders in the field. This course will help you to: • Recognise how the integration of design approaches are shaping technology and business practices, and how these changes bring immense possibility and uncertainty to the future of work • Analyse important skills and attributes that designers, employees, and businesses need to be successful in a speculative, technologically enhanced future • Understand the importance of unique human attributes in increasingly automated workplaces • Evaluate challenging issues related to potential change in processes, people and automation that might impact the future of your own employment or business • Plot your own possible, probable, and preferable trajectories, and synthesise a design strategy to maximise your ability to adapt, grow, and realise opportunities in your own work future. WHO WILL MY INSTRUCTORS BE? You will learn effective design thinking strategies from leading UNSW Australia Art & Design academics. You will also examine case studies from business and service design perspectives that demonstrate how design can transform business processes to become more adaptive to and predictive of technological and social change, and this can help to capitalise on new opportunities. Direct from our industry partner AMP’s innovative Amplify program, you’ll hear personal insights and advice about how to develop attributes and skills that will give you an advantage in the workplace of the future, from the following business leaders, futurists, entrepreneurs, and innovators from around the world: • Sean Brennan, Head of Design & Innovation, AMP • Megan Dalla-Camina, Co-Founder/CEO, Lead Like a Woman - via Amplify • Susan David Ph.D, CEO, Evidence Based Psychology - via Amplify • Dr. Norman Lewis, Director, Futures-Diagnosis Ltd - via Amplify • Heather McGowan, Author & Advisor, Work to Learn - via Amplify • Ramez Naam, Exponential technologies, Machine learning, Artificial intelligence, Singularity University - via Amplify • Dr. Andy Polaine, Regional Design Director, Asia-Pacific, Fjord • Michael Schrage, Research Fellow, Innovation Thought Leader, MIT Sloan School's Center for Digital Business - via Amplify • Chris Shipley, Curator, MIT Solve. via Amplify • Sue Suckling, New Zealand Qualifications Authority, Chair of Callaghan Innovation, Chair of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority - via Amplify • Professor Nick Wailes, Director, AGSM, and Deputy Dean, UNSW Business School. UNSW Sydney.

Based on one of the most popular open online courses in the world, this course gives you easy access to the learning techniques used by experts in art, music, literature, math, science, sports, and many other disciplines. No matter what your current skill level, using these approaches can help you master new topics, change your thinking and improve your life. This course explains: * Why sometimes letting your mind wander is an important part of the learning process * How to avoid "rut think" in order to think outside the box * The value of metaphors in developing understanding * A simple, yet powerful, way to stop procrastinating If you’re already an expert, these strategies will turbocharge your learning, including test-taking tips and insights that will help you make the best use of your time on homework and problem sets. We all have the tools to learn what might not seem to come naturally to us at first—the secret is to understand how the brain works so we can unlock its power. Filled with animations, application questions, and exercises, this course makes learning easy and fun!