How can we govern consumption and the sharing economy in our cities? This course explores cities, consumption and the sharing economy in Europe and around the world. We connect together the key themes of the sharing economy, cities, governance, consumption and urban sustainability. We explore how the sharing economy can contribute to increasing social, environmental and economic sustainability. And we argue that it is imperative that the sharing economy is shaped and designed to advance urban sustainability. This course was launched in May 2020, and it was updated in September 2021 with new podcasts, films and publications. This course is produced by Lund University in cooperation with partners from Sharing Cities Sweden – a national program for the sharing economy in cities with a focus on governance and sustainability. It features researchers, practitioners and entrepreneurs from a range organisations.

Most people make the incorrect assumption that economics is ONLY the study of money. My primary goal in this course is to shatter this belief. During this course, we will be addressing the above questions as well as many more relating to: -the environment -love and marriage -crime -labor markets -education -politics -sports -business My main goal is to show you the way economists think and how to use this analytical system to answer questions related not only to these and other important human issues but to anything you end up doing with your life after this class. After all, as you will quickly find out, I believe that everything is economics!

By the end of this project, you will learn about the concept of document similarity in textual analysis in R. You will know how to load and pre-process a data set of text documents by converting the data set into a corpus and document feature matrix. You will know how to calculate the cosine similarity between documents and explore and plot the output of your calculation.

In this course, learners will identify the types of actions that we can pursue to address climate change. These actions fall into two broad categories: 1) mitigation, which refers to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or enhance carbon sinks, and 2) adaptation, which refers to our preparations for climate impacts. We will explore the technologies, programs, and policies related to both mitigation and adaptation. Learners should leave the course with an improved ability to identify and evaluate climate actions undertaken by communities, governments, and businesses.

Student diversity is becoming the rule rather than the exception in education systems across the world. Students bring to classroom different characteristics such as ability and disability, socio-economic background, race, ethnicity, and cultural background, beliefs and religion, and gender characteristics. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 4 aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all (United Nations, 2015). However, creating inclusive quality education for all remains a ubiquitous challenge faced by educators faced with increasing student diversity. And certain groups of students are more likely to experience barriers to access, participate and success in education. During this course, you will: Develop a critical understanding of the concepts and assumptions about diversity and difference, including notions of ability and disability, socio-economic background, race, ethnicity, and cultural background, beliefs and religion, and gender. Develop awareness of historical and contemporary definitions of inclusive education, taking into account policy, theories and models. Develop the ability to critically analyse contexts in order to identify barriers to developing inclusive and equitable quality education for all learners. Develop knowledge about ways to develop inclusive and equitable quality education for all learners, taking into account their diverse characteristics and needs.

Perfect markets achieve efficiency: maximizing total surplus generated. But real markets are imperfect. In this course we will explore a set of market imperfections to understand why they fail and to explore possible remedies including as antitrust policy, regulation, government intervention. Examples are taken from everyday life, from goods and services that we all purchase and use. We will apply the theory to current events and policy debates through weekly exercises. These will empower you to be an educated, critical thinker who can understand, analyze and evaluate market outcomes.

“Taiwan Law in Focus” is the first online course provided by the College of Law, National Taiwan University. This course will give you an introduction to the legal system in Taiwan, which includes the topics of Constitution, administration law, criminal law, civil law, corporative law, and some related issues. You will learn about the brief history of Taiwan’s legal system and its transition in recent decades. Each week we will focus on different aspects of Taiwan’s legal system. Video lectures and some discussions are included to enable you to learn about the key issues. Whether taking this as an independent course, or as the preparation for the College of Law’s LLB degree at National Taiwan University, you will find this course interesting and helpful.

In this course, you will get an overview of the impact of contemporary ESG ratings and how a company balances ESG issues against its financial performance. You will evaluate the effectiveness of corporate authenticity and the impacts of politics when building corporate ESG policy. You will also learn about social activism’s ability to disrupt markets, and the roles that stakeholders play when dealing with financial markets. Next, you will learn about corporate Boards, and the importance of creating independent Directors that can maintain neutrality to protect the interests of both the business and shareholders. You will also learn how Board structure is managed, methods for selecting Board members, and the role that Boards play when crafting ESG policy. Lastly, you will look at the necessity of creating a diverse and inclusive culture within an organization and will examine best practices for boards to create strong crisis and risk management policies. By the end of this course, you will have a comprehensive understanding of how social activism affects the corporate world in the 21st century, how to build a Board of Directors that can incorporate ESG issues into risk management and governance strategies, and how encouraging diverse and inclusive culture benefits companies.

This course explores animals within the context of the functional relationships that sociologists call “institutions.” We first examine the use of animals in laboratory science. We then examine the controversial transformation of animals into “livestock” and "meat." We also explore the perspectives of people committed to rejecting the construction and use of animals as food. Next, we focus on some of the roles of animals in human entertainment with particular attention to dog fighting and zoos. Finally, we investigate animal health and welfare through the lens of dilemmas in veterinary medicine and decisions in animal shelters.

In this course, we dive into the topic of child development. You will learn that child development is complex and is influenced by a surprisingly rich number of factors at many different levels of organization. You will see that development can be studied in various domains and at various levels of understanding, from different angles and disciplines. Importantly, you will come to understand that processes within and between the various domains and levels of organization continuously interact to shape development. This implies that understanding development requires taking an interdisciplinary approach. In order to help you organize your thinking about this complexity you will learn more about the developmental systems approach and theories related to that. We will look, amongst other things, at the brain and motor development, cognitive, language and social-emotional development and all the factors that have an influence on development. To illustrate how an interdisciplinary approach helps to understand child development you will see how researchers from various disciplines and backgrounds study child development at Utrecht University. These scientists will give a look in their field of knowledge and their collaboration with colleagues, to illustrate how the theory you will learn translates to practice. In sum, we invite you to follow us on a journey to understand child development from synapse to society!