Doris Kearns Goodwin Teaches U.S. Presidential History & Leadership

in History, Online Courses | November 26th, 2019

FYI: Pres­i­den­tial his­to­ri­an Doris Kearns Goodwin–author of Lead­er­ship: In Tur­bu­lent Times, Team of Rivals: The Polit­i­cal Genius of Abra­ham Lin­coln, and No Ordi­nary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roo­sevelt–has just released a new online course on Mas­ter­Class. Here’s the ground that the course cov­ers:

Alto­geth­er, she’s spent more than 50 years study­ing great Amer­i­can pres­i­dents and lead­ers of the past, writ­ing sev­er­al award-win­ning, best­selling biogra­phies, includ­ing No Ordi­nary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roo­sevelt: The Home Front in World War II, which won the Pulitzer Prize for His­to­ry. Now she’s shar­ing her knowl­edge and teach­ing you to lead like a pres­i­dent.

In Doris’s Mas­ter­Class, you can learn to devel­op the char­ac­ter­is­tics and human skills of excep­tion­al Amer­i­can lead­er­ship, from Lin­coln to Oba­ma. Doris brings to life the sto­ries and expe­ri­ences of four pres­i­dents she knows by heart—Lincoln, Ted­dy Roo­sevelt, FDR, and LBJ—and shares a tem­plate of human skills that make great lead­ers: humil­i­ty, empa­thy, resilience, self-aware­ness, self-reflec­tion, the abil­i­ty to cre­ate a team and com­mu­ni­cate through sto­ries, and shar­ing your ambi­tion for the greater good. She also uses exam­ples from oth­er his­tor­i­cal fig­ures, includ­ing Eleanor Roo­sevelt, Win­ston Churchill, and Mar­tin Luther King Jr., to teach effec­tive lead­er­ship qual­i­ties and prac­ti­cal wis­dom for every day. Learn how to make bet­ter deci­sions, man­age a cri­sis, and get a mes­sage across, whether you’re inter­act­ing with the media, com­mu­ni­cat­ing to a team at work, or deliv­er­ing a speech meant to inspire and empow­er thou­sands of peo­ple.

In this class, you’ll learn about:
• Devel­op­ing emo­tion­al intel­li­gence
• Expe­ri­ences and sto­ries of U.S. pres­i­dents
• Build­ing resilience
• Build­ing and lead­ing a team
• Mak­ing bet­ter deci­sions, big or small
• Nav­i­gat­ing a cri­sis
• Deliv­er­ing a mes­sage and con­sid­er­ing an audi­ence
• The pow­er of speech­es
• Replen­ish­ing your ener­gy
• Civic engage­ment

You can sign up for Kearns Good­win’s course here.

As a free unre­lat­ed bonus, you can stream Kearns Good­win’s long inter­view with Tim Fer­ris. There, she takes an engag­ing look at the lead­er­ship skills of four Amer­i­can presidents–Lincoln, FDR, Ted­dy Roo­sevelt and LBJ. It’s well worth a lis­ten…

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

How to Take Every Mas­ter­Class Course For Less Than a Cup of Good Cof­fee

The 2,000+ Films Watched by Pres­i­dents Nixon, Carter & Rea­gan in the White House

 

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Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour Teaches a Course on Creativity & Leadership

in Fashion, Magazines, Online Courses | September 19th, 2019

Imag­ine a famous mag­a­zine edi­tor, and smart mon­ey says the image that comes to mind has a bob hair­cut and sun­glass­es. No one has defined the role of mag­a­zine-edi­tor-as-cul­tur­al-force, and so con­sis­tent­ly lived it, more than Anna Win­tour, and the online edu­ca­tion com­pa­ny Mas­ter­class has some­how con­vinced her to take her hand off the wheel of Vogue — and put aside those over­sized shades — just long enough to star in a course about how she steers that behe­moth of a pub­li­ca­tion through the waters of fash­ion. “I know many peo­ple are curi­ous about who I am and how I approach my work,” Win­tour says in the trail­er above. “This is a class for those who want to under­stand my lead­er­ship style, and then under­stand the expe­ri­ences that have helped me become an effec­tive leader.”

You may well have already heard a thing or two about Win­tour’s lead­er­ship style, the famous­ly exact­ing nature of which has pro­voked dif­fer­ent reac­tions from dif­fer­ent peo­ple (and pos­si­bly even inspired a best­selling nov­el and its fea­ture-film adap­ta­tion).

But as Win­tour her­self explains it, “you need some­one who can push you, that isn’t pulling you back” — sen­si­ble advice even for lead­ers of com­pa­nies, teams, and class­rooms who don’t mind pro­ject­ing a some­what more laid-back image. But even for those who want to project as much indi­vid­ual strength and resolve as pos­si­ble, “it’s real­ly, real­ly impor­tant to sur­round your­self with a team whose opin­ions that you trust, who are not in any way fright­ened of dis­agree­ing with you, and you have to lis­ten.”

In her Mas­ter­class, Win­tour teach­es, in oth­er words, “how to be a boss.” That phrase appears at the top of its syl­labus, whose twelve lessons include “Anna’s Man­age­ment Tips” and “Edi­to­r­i­al Deci­sion-Mak­ing” as well as “Pho­tog­ra­phers and Mod­els,” “A Look Back at Icon­ic Cov­ers,” and “Trans­form­ing the Met Gala.” Though geared toward view­ers with an inter­est in the busi­ness of fash­ion (case stud­ies include the careers of Miuc­cia Pra­da and Michael Kors), “Anna Win­tour Teach­es Cre­ativ­i­ty and Lead­er­ship” also offers prin­ci­ples for any human endeav­or that requires inven­tion, group work, and meet­ing hard dead­lines over and over again. You can sign up for Win­tour’s course here.

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Annie Lei­bovitz Teach­es Pho­tog­ra­phy in Her First Online Course

Mar­garet Atwood Offers a New Online Class on Cre­ative Writ­ing

David Lynch Teach­es an Online Course on Film & Cre­ativ­i­ty

Enter “The Mag­a­zine Rack,” the Inter­net Archive’s Col­lec­tion of 34,000 Dig­i­tized Mag­a­zines

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Bill Cun­ning­ham (RIP) on Liv­ing La Vie Boheme Above Carnegie Hall

George Orwell Blasts Amer­i­can Fash­ion Mag­a­zines (1946)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Joyce Carol Oates Teaches a New Online Course on the Art of the Short Story

in Literature, Online Courses, Writing | August 7th, 2019

How on Earth does Joyce Car­ol Oates do it? Since her debut 56 years ago she has put out 58 nov­els, not to men­tion her poet­ry, plays, non­fic­tion, diaries, and thou­sands — lit­er­al­ly thou­sands — of short sto­ries. (In recent years, she’s also writ­ten no small num­ber of tweets.) But though she’s spent decades with the adjec­tive pro­lif­ic attached to her name, none of us would know her name in the first place if her work had noth­ing more dis­tinc­tive about it than its sheer vol­ume. No mat­ter how much a writer writes, all is for naught if that writ­ing does­n’t make an impact. The ques­tion of how to make that impact, in sev­er­al sens­es of the word, lies at the heart of Oates’ new online course offered through Mas­ter­class.

“The most pow­er­ful writ­ing often comes from con­fronting taboos,” Oates says in the course’s trail­er above. “As a writer, if one can face the dark­est ele­ments in one­self, and the things that are secret, you have such a feel­ing of pow­er.” The truth of that comes through in any of Oates’ nov­els, but also in her short­er works of fic­tion, even the ear­ly sto­ries that make up her very first book, 1963’s col­lec­tion By the North Gate.

We might call her one of the writ­ers whose short sto­ries offer dis­til­la­tions of their sen­si­bil­i­ties, and so it makes sense that her Mas­ter­class focus­es on “the Art of the Short Sto­ry.” Its four­teen lessons cov­er such aspects of short-sto­ry writ­ing as draft­ing, revis­ing, and shar­ing; observ­ing the world with a jour­nal; and of course, “explor­ing taboo and dark­ness.”

Oates draws exam­ples from her own vast body of work, of course, includ­ing her much-reprint­ed short sto­ry “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” But she also exam­ines the writ­ing of such pre­de­ces­sors as Vir­ginia Woolf, William Car­los Williams, and Ernest Hem­ing­way, as well as sto­ries writ­ten by the two stu­dents who appear in the class videos. This is as close as most of us will ever get to being work­shopped by Joyce Car­ol Oates, and if that appeals to you, you can take her Mas­ter­class by sign­ing up for a All-Access pass to every course on the site (includ­ing cours­es taught by nov­el­ists like Mar­garet Atwood, Judy Blume, and Neil Gaiman). But be warned that, how­ev­er daunt­ing the prospect of tap­ping into one’s own dark mem­o­ries and for­bid­den thoughts, the ques­tion of how Oates does it has anoth­er, poten­tial­ly more fright­en­ing answer: eight hours a day.

You can sign up for Oates’ course here.

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Writ­ing Life of Joyce Car­ol Oates

Mar­garet Atwood Offers a New Online Class on Cre­ative Writ­ing

How to Write a Best­selling Page Turn­er: Learn from The Da Vin­ci Code Author Dan Brown’s New Mas­ter­class

Judy Blume Now Teach­ing an Online Course on Writ­ing

The Artists’ and Writ­ers’ Cook­book Col­lects Recipes From T.C. Boyle, Mari­na Abramović, Neil Gaiman, Joyce Car­ol Oates & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Critical Thinking: A Free Course

in Online Courses, Philosophy | May 16th, 2019

In the playlist above, Gre­go­ry Sadler presents a 24-lec­ture course on “Crit­i­cal Thinking”–something the world could always use more of. Pre­sent­ed at Fayet­teville State Uni­ver­si­ty, the course fea­tures lec­tures on top­ics like Deduc­tive and Induc­tive Argu­ments, Fal­lac­i­es, Rhetor­i­cal Devices, Appeals to Author­i­ty and much more. The text­book used (and ref­er­enced) in the course was Moore and Park­er’s Crit­i­cal Think­ing. The indi­vid­ual lec­tures are as fol­lows:

  1. Issues, Claims, Argu­ments
  2. Argu­ments and Non-Argu­ments
  3. Val­ue Judge­ments 
  4. Deduc­tive and Induc­tive Argu­ments with Implic­it Premis­es
  5. Com­plex Argu­ments, Unstat­ed Premis­es
  6. Deduc­tive and Induc­tive Argu­ments 1
  7. Deduc­tive and Induc­tive Argu­ments 2
  8. Deduc­tive and Induc­tive Argu­ments 3
  9. Fal­lac­i­es of Com­po­si­tion and Divi­sion
  10. Infor­ma­tion Sources
  11. Experts and Appeal to Author­i­ty
  12. Crit­i­cal Think­ing and Adver­tis­ing
  13. Rhetor­i­cal Devices 1
  14. Rhetor­i­cal Devices 2
  15. Rhetor­i­cal Devices 3
  16. Fal­lac­i­es 1
  17. Fal­lac­i­es 2
  18. Fal­lac­i­es 3
  19. Fal­lac­i­es 4
  20. Fal­lac­i­es 5
  21. Fal­lac­i­es 6
  22. Induc­tive Argu­ments 1
  23. Induc­tive Argu­ments 2
  24. Induc­tive Argu­ments 3

Also find the com­plete playlist of lec­tures on YouTube here. Sadler’s YouTube chan­nel fea­tures oth­er cours­es and a wealth of phi­los­o­phy lec­tures.

“Crit­i­cal Think­ing” has been added to our list of Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn Phi­los­o­phy with a Wealth of Free Cours­es, Pod­casts and YouTube Videos

Oxford’s Free Course Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners Teach­es You to Think Like a Philoso­pher

32 Ani­mat­ed Videos by Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy Teach You the Essen­tials of Crit­i­cal Think­ing

Watch The Half Hour Hegel: A Long, Guid­ed Tour Through Hegel’s Phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy, Pas­sage by Pas­sage

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How to Take 70+ MasterClass Courses For Less Than a Cup of Good Coffee

in Online Courses | April 28th, 2019


FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Mas­ter­class has devel­oped a cat­a­log of online cours­es taught by “the world’s great­est minds.” As it stands, they have 85 cours­es cov­er­ing film­mak­ing, cre­ative writ­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, song­writ­ing and more, taught by fig­ures like David Lynch, Annie Lei­bovitz, Mal­colm Glad­well, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman, David Mamet and oth­ers. You can sign up for an indi­vid­ual course for $90. (Each course is list­ed below.) Or if you pur­chase an All Access Pass, you can take every course in the cat­a­log over a 12-month peri­od. The All Access Pass runs $180–which trans­lates to about $2.00 per course. Not bad, but if you want some­thing com­plete­ly free, see our col­lec­tion: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Act­ing

Helen Mir­ren Teach­es Act­ing

Samuel L. Jack­son Teach­es Act­ing

Natal­ie Port­man Teach­es Act­ing

Filmmaking/Directing

David Lynch Teach­es Cre­ativ­i­ty and Film

Spike Lee Teach­es Film­mak­ing

Wern­er Her­zog Teach­es Film­mak­ing

Mar­tin Scors­ese Teach­es Film­mak­ing

Ken Burns Teach­es Doc­u­men­tary Film­mak­ing

Jodie Fos­ter Teach­es Film­mak­ing

Ron Howard Teach­es Direct­ing

Mira Nair Teach­es Inde­pen­dent Film­mak­ing

Hans Zim­mer Teach­es Film Scor­ing

Dan­ny Elf­man Teach­es Music for Film

Pho­tog­ra­phy

Annie Lei­bovitz Teach­es Pho­tog­ra­phy

Jim­my Chin Teach­es Adven­ture Pho­tog­ra­phy

Sci­ence

Neil deGrasse Tyson Teach­es Sci­en­tif­ic Think­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion

Writ­ing: Fic­tion, Poet­ry, TV, Plays & More

Mal­colm Glad­well Teach­es Writ­ing

Mar­garet Atwood Teach­es Cre­ative Writ­ing

Neil Gaiman Teach­es The Art of Sto­ry­telling

David Mamet Teach­es Dra­mat­ic Writ­ing

Bil­ly Collins Teach­es Read­ing and Writ­ing Poet­ry

Dan Brown Teach­es Writ­ing Thrillers

Dominique Ansel Teach­es French Pas­try Fun­da­men­tals

David Bal­dac­ci Teach­es Mys­tery and Thriller Writ­ing

James Pat­ter­son Teach­es Writ­ing

Shon­da Rhimes Teach­es Writ­ing For Tele­vi­sion

Aaron Sork­in’s Mas­ter­Class

R.L. Stine Teach­es Writ­ing for Young Audi­ences

Joyce Car­ol Oates on  the Short Sto­ry

David Sedaris on Sto­ry­telling and Humor

Music and Song­writ­ing

Car­los San­tana Teach­es The Art and Soul of Gui­tar

Her­bie Han­cock Teach­es Jazz

Tom Morel­lo Teach­es Elec­tric Gui­tar

Itzhak Perl­man Teach­es Vio­lin

Armin van Buuren Teach­es Dance Music

Christi­na Aguil­era Teach­es Singing

deadmau5 Teach­es Elec­tron­ic Music Pro­duc­tion

Tim­ba­land Teach­es Pro­duc­ing and Beat­mak­ing

Ush­er Teach­es the Art of Per­for­mance

Hans Zim­mer Teach­es Film Scor­ing

Dan­ny Elf­man Teach­es Music for Film

Com­e­dy

Steve Mar­tin Teach­es Com­e­dy

Judd Apa­tow Teach­es Com­e­dy

Cook­ing

Wolf­gang Puck Teach­es Cook­ing

Gor­don Ram­say Teach­es Cook­ing

Gor­don Ram­say Teach­es Cook­ing II: Restau­rant Recipes at Home

Alice Waters Teach­es Home Cook­ing

Gabriela Cama­ra Teach­es Mex­i­can Cook­ing

Dominique Ansel Teach­es French Pas­try Fun­da­men­tals

Thomas Keller Teach­es Cook­ing Tech­niques

James Suck­ling Teach­es Wine Appre­ci­a­tion

Mas­si­mo Bot­tura Teach­es Mod­ern Ital­ian Cook­ing

Aaron Franklin Teach­es Texas-Style BBQ

Lyn­nette Mar­rero & Ryan Chetiyawar­dana Teach Mixol­o­gy

Fash­ion

Marc Jacobs Teach­es Fash­ion Design

Diane Von Fursten­burg Teach­es Fash­ion

Anna Win­tour Teach­es Cre­ativ­i­ty and Lead­er­ship

Bob­bi Brown Teach­es Make­up and Beau­ty

Archi­tec­ture and Design

Kel­ly Wearstler Teach­es Inte­ri­or Design

Frank Gehry Teach­es Design and Archi­tec­ture

Games

Gar­ry Kas­parov Teach­es Chess

Daniel Negre­anu Teach­es Pok­er

Phil Ivey Teach­es Pok­er Strat­e­gy

Will Wright Teach­es Game Design and The­o­ry

Sports

Stephen Cur­ry Teach­es Bas­ket­ball

Ser­e­na Williams Teach­es Ten­nis

Simone Biles Teach­es Gym­nas­tics Fun­da­men­tals

Busi­ness and Eco­nom­ics

Bob Iger Teach­es Busi­ness Strat­e­gy & Lead­er­ship

Jeff Good­by & Rich Sil­ver­stein Teach Adver­tis­ing and Cre­ativ­i­ty

Sara Blake­ly Teach­es Self-Made Entre­pre­neur­ship

Paul Krug­man Teach­es Eco­nom­ics and Soci­ety

Howard Schultz Lead­ing a Val­ues-Based Busi­ness

Chris Voss Teach­es the Art of Nego­ti­a­tion

Lead­er­ship

Bob Iger Teach­es Busi­ness Strat­e­gy & Lead­er­ship

Doris Kearns Good­win Teach­es US Pres­i­den­tial His­to­ry and Lead­er­ship

Anna Win­tour Teach­es Cre­ativ­i­ty and Lead­er­ship

Sundry

Jane Goodall Teach­es Con­ser­va­tion

David Axel­rod & Karl Rove Teach Cam­paign Strat­e­gy

Chris Had­field Teach­es Space Explo­ration

Misty Copeland Teach­es Bal­let Tech­nique and Artistry

RuPaul Teach­es Self-Expres­sion and Authen­tic­i­ty

 

This page will be updat­ed as more cours­es get added to the Mas­ter­Class cat­a­log.

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Billy Collins Teaches Poetry in a New Online Course

in Online Courses, Poetry | April 19th, 2019

In its lat­est release, Mas­ter­class has launched a new course, “Bil­ly Collins Teach­es Read­ing and Writ­ing Poet­ry,” which they describe in the trail­er above and the text below. You can sign up here. The cost is $90. Or pay $180 and get an annu­al pass to their entire cat­a­logue of cours­es cov­er­ing a wide range of sub­jects–every­thing from film­mak­ing (Wern­er Her­zog, David Lynch, Mar­tin Scors­ese), to act­ing (Helen Mir­ren) and cre­ative writ­ing (Mar­garet Atwood), to tak­ing pho­tographs (Annie Lei­bovitz) and writ­ing plays (David Mamet). Each course is taught by an emi­nent fig­ure in their field.

Known for his wit, humor, and pro­found insight, Bil­ly is one of the best-sell­ing and most beloved con­tem­po­rary poets in the Unit­ed States. He reg­u­lar­ly sells out poet­ry read­ings, fre­quent­ly charms lis­ten­ers on NPR’s A Prairie Home Com­pan­ion, and his work has appeared in antholo­gies, text­books, and peri­od­i­cals around the world.

Called “America’s Favorite Poet” by the Wall Street Jour­nal, Bil­ly served two terms as U.S. Poet Lau­re­ate and is also a for­mer New York State Poet Lau­re­ate. He’s been hon­ored with the Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poet­ry and a num­ber of pres­ti­gious fel­low­ships. He’s taught at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, Sarah Lawrence, and Lehman Col­lege, and he’s also a dis­tin­guished pro­fes­sor at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York. Now he’s teach­ing his first-ever Mas­ter­Class.

In his Mas­ter­Class on Read­ing and Writ­ing Poet­ry, Bil­ly teach­es you the build­ing blocks of poems and their unique pow­er to con­nect read­er and writer. From sub­ject and form to rhyme and meter, learn to appre­ci­ate the plea­sures of a well-turned poem. Dis­cov­er Billy’s phi­los­o­phy on the craft of poet­ry and learn how he cre­ates a poet’s per­sona, incor­po­rates humor, and lets imag­i­na­tion lead the way. By break­ing down his own approach to com­pos­ing poet­ry and enjoy­ing the work of oth­ers, Bil­ly invites stu­dents to explore the gifts poet­ry has to offer.

In this online poet­ry class, you’ll learn about:
• Using humor as a seri­ous strat­e­gy
• The fun­da­men­tal ele­ments of poet­ry
• Billy’s writ­ing process
• Turn­ing a poem
• Explor­ing sub­jects
• Rhyme and meter
• Sound plea­sures
• Find­ing your voice
• Using form to engage read­ers
• The visu­al dis­tinc­tions of poet­ry

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ani­ma­tion of Bil­ly Collins’ Poet­ry: Every­day Moments in Motion

Stream Bil­ly Collins’ Album, The Best Cig­a­rette, Free Online

Bill Mur­ray Reads the Poet­ry of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, Wal­lace Stevens, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins, Lorine Niedeck­er, Lucille Clifton & More

 

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Journalism Under Siege: A Free Online Course from Stanford Explores the Imperiled Freedom of the Press

in Current Affairs, Media, Online Courses, Stanford | March 25th, 2019

This past fall, Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies and the John S. Knight Jour­nal­ism Fel­low­ships teamed up to offer an impor­tant course on the chal­lenges fac­ing jour­nal­ism and the free­dom of the press. Called Jour­nal­ism Under Siege? Truth and Trust in a Time of Tur­moil, the five-week course fea­tured 28 jour­nal­ists and media experts, all offer­ing insights on the emerg­ing chal­lenges fac­ing the media across the Unit­ed States and the wider world. The lectures/presentations are now all online. Find them below, along with the list of guest speak­ers, which includes Alex Sta­mos who blew the whis­tle on Rus­si­a’s manip­u­la­tion of the Face­book plat­form dur­ing the 2016 elec­tion. Jour­nal­ism Under Siege will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Week­ly Ses­sions:

  • Week 1 –  First Draft of His­to­ry: How a Free Press Pro­tects Free­dom; Part One, Part Two
  • Week 2 –  Pow­er to the Peo­ple: Hold­ing the Pow­er­ful Account­able; Part One, Part Two
  • Week 3 – Pick­ing Sides? How Jour­nal­ists Cov­er Bias, Intol­er­ance and Injus­tice; Part One, Part Two
  • Week 4 – The Last Stand of Local News; Part One, Part Two
  • Week 5 – The Mis­in­for­ma­tion Soci­ety; Part One, Part Two

Guest Speak­ers:

  • Han­nah Allam, nation­al reporter, Buz­zFeed News
  • Roman Anin, inves­ti­ga­tions edi­tor, Novaya Gaze­ta, Moscow
  • Hugo Bal­ta, pres­i­dent, Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of His­pan­ic Jour­nal­ists
  • Sal­ly Buzbee, exec­u­tive edi­tor, Asso­ci­at­ed Press (AP)
  • Neil Chase, exec­u­tive edi­tor, San Jose Mer­cury News
  • Audrey Coop­er, edi­tor-in-chief, San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle
  • JenĂ©e Desmond-Har­ris, staff edi­tor, NYT Opin­ion, New York Times
  • Jiquan­da John­son, founder and pub­lish­er, Flint Beat
  • Joel Konopo, man­ag­ing part­ner, INK Cen­tre for Inves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ism, Gaborone, Botswana
  • Richard Lui, anchor, MSNBC and NBC News
  • Geral­dine Mori­ba, for­mer vice pres­i­dent for diver­si­ty and inclu­sion, CNN
  • Bryan Pol­lard, pres­i­dent, Native Amer­i­can Jour­nal­ists Asso­ci­a­tion
  • Cecile Prieur, deputy edi­tor, Le Monde, Paris
  • Joel Simon, exec­u­tive direc­tor, Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists
  • Alex Sta­mos, for­mer Face­book chief secu­ri­ty offi­cer
  • Mari­na Walk­er Gue­vara, win­ner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Explana­to­ry Report­ing for coor­di­nat­ing the Pana­ma Papers inves­ti­ga­tion

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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Oxford’s Free Course Critical Reasoning For Beginners Teaches You to Think Like a Philosopher

in Online Courses, Philosophy | March 21st, 2019

Image by Pablo Fer­nán­dez, via Flickr Com­mons

When I was younger, I often found myself dis­agree­ing with some­thing I’d read or heard, but could­n’t explain exact­ly why. Despite being unable to pin­point the pre­cise rea­sons, I had a strong sense that the rules of log­ic were being vio­lat­ed. After I was exposed to crit­i­cal think­ing in high school and uni­ver­si­ty, I learned to rec­og­nize prob­lem­at­ic argu­ments, whether they be a straw man, an appeal to author­i­ty, or an ad hominem attack. Faulty argu­ments are all-per­va­sive, and the men­tal bias­es that under­lie them pop up in media cov­er­age, col­lege class­es, and arm­chair the­o­riz­ing. Want to learn how to avoid them? Look no fur­ther than Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners, a top rat­ed col­lec­tion of lec­tures led by Oxford University’s Mar­i­anne Tal­bot.

Tal­bot builds the course from the ground up, and begins by explain­ing that argu­ments con­sist of a set of premis­es that, log­i­cal­ly linked togeth­er, lead to a con­clu­sion. She pro­ceeds to out­line the way to lay out an argu­ment log­i­cal­ly and clear­ly, and even­tu­al­ly, the basic steps involved in assess­ing its strengths and weak­ness­es.

The six-part series, which was record­ed in 2009, shows no sign of wear, and Tal­bot, unlike some phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sors, does a ter­rif­ic job of mak­ing the con­tent digestible. If you’ve got some time on your hands, the lec­tures, which aver­age just over an hour in length, can be fin­ished in less than a week. That’s peanuts, if you con­sid­er that all of our knowl­edge is built on the foun­da­tions that this course estab­lish­es. If you haven’t had the chance to be exposed to a class on crit­i­cal thought, I can’t rec­om­mend Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners with enough enthu­si­asm: there are few men­tal skills that are as under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed, and as cen­tral to our dai­ly lives, as crit­i­cal think­ing.

Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners is cur­rent­ly avail­able on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford web­site in both audio and video for­mats, and also on iTunes and YouTube. You can find it list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, part of our col­lec­tion of 1300 Free Online Cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Oxford’s Free Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy: Stream 41 Lec­tures

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps â€“ Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty 

200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies.

Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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