Obscured by its apparent simplicity, cycling is a complex phenomenon. Being an almost perfect human-machine hybrid, cycling is deeply rooted in a plethora of socio-technological systems. Around the world cycling is embraced as an important ingredient to tackle a wide variety of individual and societal challenges. The Netherlands is often seen as an ideal living lab, because cycling has retained its significant share of mobility throughout the country. At the same time, there are large differences in developments across time and space, that allows for a better understanding of potential causal relations. This is also increasingly recognized by (inter)national top tier researchers from many different academic fields. They are uncovering reciprocal relations of cycling with spatial, ecological, historical, social, cultural, economic, biological and political structures. Unraveling the Cycling City bundles the state-of-the-art knowledge that emerges from research and practice on the Dutch cycling system. As such, it provides an easily accessible platform to learn about important causes and effects, to open minds for the complexity of the entire system and to support group deliberations around the world.

Being aware of the urgency and importance of climate change is not enough to tackle it effectively. To avoid the worst climate outcomes, decisive action has to be taken. But what realistic options do we have? Since our resources are limited, is it better to act now or wait until we have more advanced and less expensive technology? How big do our abatement efforts have to be? This MOOC will help you understand how economists try to answer these questions and find the optimal course of action. Most important, it will give you the conceptual tools to draw your own conclusions. In the first part of the MOOC, you will learn about the two main approaches used by economists to determine when and how much we should invest in the fight against climate change. The first method is the net-present-value approach. Here the social discount rate plays a central role in determining optimal policy, by showing how future benefits and costs can be compared and made comparable (‘present-valued’) with expenditures today. In the second approach you will learn how Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) work. In particular, you will study in detail the strengths and weaknesses of one of the most popular IAMs, the DICE model, developed by Nobel laureate Professor Nordhaus. This model tries to figure out the optimal course of action by providing a simplified account of the science, the technology and the economics of the problem. The second part of this MOOC then explores the different types of economic policies that decision-makers can adopt. You will be introduced to different methods used to control emissions, such as carbon taxes, regulations and standard-setting. You will also learn about the most developed emissions trading markets around the world and their effects on the economy. This MOOC is for those who wish to understand the economics of climate change and use this understanding to form their own informed opinion about the policies on which we can rely to tackle it. It is not necessary to have specialized prior knowledge, apart from basic familiarity with economic concepts such as utility functions. We do suggest, however, taking the first MOOC of this specialization before starting this one in order to gain a simple but solid understanding of the physical and technological aspects of the problems.

Welcome to the capstone on the specialisation on Privacy & Standardisation. This capstone will build on the knowledge you obtained in the courses: Standardisation & Technology, Privacy in the Western World, Privacy in the USA and Privacy in Europe. The capstone will help you build a comprehensive opinion and it will challenge you in all areas of present-day privacy protection. The assignments invite you to use and revisit the material of all the courses. This capstone will link historic milestones to current limitations and offer you a journey through jurisdictions and technological fields alike. Whereas in the previous courses you were assessed by quizzes, the capstone will require you to carefully consider all you have learned so far and detail your opinion. The assessment in this course will mainly be done by in-depth assignments. Use the few practice exercises well to give you a head start in the graded assignments!

By the end of this project, you will have created multiple tools to assist students in your classroom who need support for visual processing. Whether they would benefit from reading trackers or organizational supports for their work, you will become confident at how to support their needs in order to encourage their success in the classroom.

Many Deaf children around the world still leave school functionally illiterate. In some cases there is no allowance made for education of Deaf children at all. This 4 week course provides you with invaluable knowledge and skills about teaching Deaf children. You will learn about the importance of Deaf culture and community, the need for a language rich environment for the Deaf child from as young as possible, and that having access to sign language can help Deaf children academically, emotionally, and socially. We also cover various accommodations and modifications that you can apply in your classroom and learning environment to create an accessible learning experience for Deaf children. You will also find that a shift in attitude will enable you to connect with Deaf children with more understanding. This course does not teach sign language since each country has its own sign language. We hope that through this course you become an empowered teacher - for yourself, for your fellow teachers, and most importantly, for the Deaf children in your classroom. You will be able to purchase a Verified Certificate if you wish to show evidence of your achievements, but this is optional, and you may apply for Financial Aid if you are unable to pay the certificate fee.

In a world of information overload, how does one find reliable information? Science is supposed to be the answer to our society's complicated challenges. However, as the Covid-19 pandemic highlighted, not understanding what is fake news, misinformation or what is fact may lead to widespread public mistrust, or turn science into fuel for conspiracy theories or propaganda. Scientific findings are prone to change, making it difficult to effectively communicate them to the public. This fosters broad public skepticism towards major institutions, from the government to media to science. So, how can we communicate science effectively? And how can we rebuild trust in science? As a result, it is critical that we reconsider our science communication practices to recover public trust. This course offers a current overview of science communication. We cover a wide range of topics like fake news, mis- or disinformation, but also how to combat these practices. We explore how major stakeholders (scientists, policymakers, science communicators and citizens) can work together to improve science communication. And we tackle how people and organizations can earn and maintain public trust via effective science communication. We recommend this course to scientists, journalists, policymakers or any learners interested in science communication. More information can be found at www.trescaproject.eu (This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 872855.)

Being a successful journalist is more than hunting down information. How journalists process the information, then put it together, are key steps for news reports. You will learn the process, planning, requirements of how journalists develop their news reports. There are many ways to report news reports, and you will learn different forms of how to perform reporting and writing to serve different audiences. This course also explains the different formats within journalism, beyond the written word and how they are best utilized.

Designing and Building Institutional Antiracist Spaces (D-BIAS) is a course whose mission is to teach tenets of equity, anti-racism, and cultural justice and how to apply these ideas to achieve social change. The course is aimed at educators and administrators in educational spaces, lawyers and advocates in spaces that touch civil rights, equity, and whose Institutional mission it is to achieve greater cultural equity. The course involves creative approaches to social justice, racial justice, and advocacy while remaining open to anyone from any background who shares the same vision of the world, as social change entrepreneurs.

In this course, you will be introduced to some basic concepts of country-level Macroeconomics that are relevant for an integrated understanding of the macroeconomic environment in which your business (or future business) operates. In this course, the first three weeks will cover the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and its components deeply, and the fourth week will cover inflation, monetary policy, balance of payments, and the concept of real exchange rate. At the end of this course, you will be able to: - Understand the concept of GDP and its importance for businesses established in a country; - Analyze de GDP by breaking down its key components; - Understand the importance of inflation, monetary policy, balance of payments, and real exchange rate for a country’s macroeconomic environment. - And above it all. Understand how to make connections between those concepts and try to make good use of them when establishing your business plan or your investment decisions.

Popularized by movies such as "A Beautiful Mind," game theory is the mathematical modeling of strategic interaction among rational (and irrational) agents. Beyond what we call `games' in common language, such as chess, poker, soccer, etc., it includes the modeling of conflict among nations, political campaigns, competition among firms, and trading behavior in markets such as the NYSE. How could you begin to model keyword auctions, and peer to peer file-sharing networks, without accounting for the incentives of the people using them? The course will provide the basics: representing games and strategies, the extensive form (which computer scientists call game trees), Bayesian games (modeling things like auctions), repeated and stochastic games, and more. We'll include a variety of examples including classic games and a few applications. You can find a full syllabus and description of the course here: http://web.stanford.edu/~jacksonm/GTOC-Syllabus.html There is also an advanced follow-up course to this one, for people already familiar with game theory: https://www.coursera.org/learn/gametheory2/ You can find an introductory video here: http://web.stanford.edu/~jacksonm/Intro_Networks.mp4