Introduction to Ancient Greek History: A Free Online Course by Yale Historian Donald Kagan (RIP)

in History, Online Courses, Yale | August 17th, 2021

Ear­li­er this month, Yale his­to­ri­an Don­ald Kagan passed away at age 89 in Wash­ing­ton D.C. In their obit­u­ary, The New York Times writes:

Pro­fes­sor Kagan was con­sid­ered among the country’s lead­ing his­to­ri­ans. His four-vol­ume account of the Pelo­pon­nesian War, from 431 B.C. to 404 B.C., was hailed by the crit­ic George Stein­er as “the fore­most work of his­to­ry pro­duced in North Amer­i­ca in the 20th cen­tu­ry.”

He was equal­ly renowned for his class­room style, in which he pep­pered nuanced read­ings of ancient texts with ref­er­ences to his beloved New York Yan­kees and inven­tive, some­times com­ic exer­cis­es in class par­tic­i­pa­tion, like hav­ing stu­dents form a hoplite pha­lanx to demon­strate how Greek sol­diers marched into com­bat.

If you nev­er sat in Kagan’s class­room, you can still expe­ri­ence his teach­ing style online. Record­ed in 2007, Kagan’s course Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek His­to­ry traces “the devel­op­ment of Greek civ­i­liza­tion as man­i­fest­ed in polit­i­cal, intel­lec­tu­al, and cre­ative achieve­ments from the Bronze Age to the end of the clas­si­cal peri­od.” You can watch the 24 video lec­tures above, or find them on YouTube. The lec­tures also appear on iTunes in audio and video. Find the texts used in the course below. More infor­ma­tion about the course, includ­ing the syl­labus, can be found on this Yale web­site.

Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek His­to­ry will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online His­to­ry 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 Ancient Greek in 64 Free Lessons: A Free Online Course from Bran­deis & Har­vard

Roman Archi­tec­ture: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

The Ancient Greeks: A Free Online Course from Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty 

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Moralities of Everyday Life: A Free Online Course from Yale University

in Online Courses, Psychology | July 5th, 2021

How can we explain kind­ness and cru­el­ty? Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? Why do peo­ple so often dis­agree about moral issues? This course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, Moral­i­ties of Every­day Life, explores the psy­cho­log­i­cal foun­da­tions of our moral lives. Taught by psy­chol­o­gy & cog­ni­tive sci­ence pro­fes­sor Paul Bloom, the course focus­es on the ori­gins of moral­i­ty, com­pas­sion, how culture/religion influ­ence moral thought and moral action, and beyond. If you select the “Audit” option, you can take the course for free.

Moral­i­ties of Every­day Life will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er 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:

Intro­duc­tion to Psy­chol­o­gy: A Free Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy: A Free Online Course from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

A Crash Course on Psy­chol­o­gy: A 30-Part Video Series from Hank Green

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Take 193 Free Tech and Business Courses Online at Udacity: Product Design, Programming, A.I., Marketing & More

in Online Courses, Technology | June 29th, 2021

Each of us now com­mands more tech­no­log­i­cal pow­er than did any human being alive in pre­vi­ous eras. Or rather, we poten­tial­ly com­mand it: what we can do with the tech­nol­o­gy at our fin­ger­tips — and how much mon­ey we can make with it — depends on how well we under­stand it. Luck­i­ly, the devel­op­ment of learn­ing meth­ods has more or less kept pace with the devel­op­ment of every­thing else we now do with com­put­ers. Take the online-edu­ca­tion plat­form Udac­i­ty, which offers “nan­ode­gree” pro­grams in areas like pro­gram­ming, data sci­ence, and cyber­se­cu­ri­ty. While the nan­ode­grees them­selves come with fees, Udac­i­ty does­n’t charge for the con­stituent cours­es: in oth­er words, you can earn what you need to know for free.

Above you’ll find the intro­duc­tion to Udac­i­ty’s Prod­uct Design course by Google (also cre­ator of the Cours­era pro­fes­sion­al-cer­tifi­cate pro­grams pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture). “Designed to help you mate­ri­al­ize your game-chang­ing idea and trans­form it into a prod­uct that you can build a busi­ness around,” the course “blends the­o­ry and prac­tice to teach you prod­uct val­i­da­tion, UI/UX prac­tices, Google’s Design Sprint and the process for set­ting and track­ing action­able met­rics.”

This is a high­ly prac­ti­cal learn­ing expe­ri­ence at the inter­sec­tion of tech­nol­o­gy and busi­ness, as are many oth­er of Udac­i­ty’s 193 free cours­es, like App Mar­ket­ing, App Mon­e­ti­za­tion, How to Build a Start­up, and Get Your Start­up Start­ed.

If you have no par­tic­u­lar inter­est in found­ing and run­ning the next Google, Udac­i­ty also hosts plen­ty of cours­es that focus entire­ly on the work­ings of dif­fer­ent branch­es of tech­nol­o­gy, from pro­gram­ming and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to 2D game devel­op­ment and 3D graph­ics. (In addi­tion to the broad intro­duc­tions, there are also rel­a­tive­ly advanced cours­es of a much more spe­cif­ic focus: Devel­op­ing Android Apps with Kotlin, say, or Deploy­ing a Hadoop Clus­ter.) And if you’d sim­ply like to get your foot in the door with a job in tech, con­sid­er such offer­ings as Refresh Your Résumé, Strength­en Your LinkedIn Net­work & Brand, and a vari­ety of inter­view-prepa­ra­tion cours­es for jobs in data sci­ence, machine learn­ing, prod­uct man­age­ment, vir­tu­al-real­i­ty devel­op­ment, and oth­er sub­fields. And how­ev­er cut­ting-edge their work, who could­n’t anoth­er spin through good old Intro to Psy­chol­o­gy?

Find a list of 193 Free Udac­i­ty cours­es here. For the next week Nan­ode­grees are 75% off (use code JULY75). Find more free cours­es in our list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Udac­i­ty. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Udac­i­ty cours­es and pro­grams that charge a fee, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google’s UX Design Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate: 7 Cours­es Will Help Pre­pare Stu­dents for an Entry-Lev­el Job in 6 Months

Learn How to Code for Free: A DIY Guide for Learn­ing HTML, Python, Javascript & More

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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Google’s UX Design Professional Certificate: 7 Courses Will Help Prepare Students for an Entry-Level Job in 6 Months

in Design, Online Courses | June 22nd, 2021

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Google launched a series of Career Cer­tifi­cates that will “pre­pare learn­ers for an entry-lev­el role in under six months.” One such cer­tifi­cate focus­es on User Expe­ri­ence Design, or what’s called UX Design, the process design teams use to cre­ate prod­ucts that pro­vide mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences to users.

Offered on the Cours­era plat­form, the User Expe­ri­ence (UX) Design Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate fea­tures sev­en cours­es, includ­ing the Foun­da­tions of User Expe­ri­ence, Start the UX Design Process, Build Wire­frames and Low-Fideli­ty Pro­to­types, and Con­duct UX Research and Test Ear­ly Con­cepts. In total, this pro­gram “includes over 200 hours of instruc­tion and hun­dreds of prac­tice-based activ­i­ties and assess­ments that sim­u­late real-world UX design sce­nar­ios and are crit­i­cal for suc­cess in the work­place. The con­tent is high­ly inter­ac­tive and devel­oped by Google employ­ees with decades of expe­ri­ence in UX design.” Upon com­ple­tion, stu­dents can direct­ly apply for jobs with Google and over 130 U.S. employ­ers, includ­ing Wal­mart, Best Buy, and Astreya. You can start a 7‑day free tri­al and explore the cours­es. If you con­tin­ue beyond that, Google/Coursera will charge $39 USD per month. That trans­lates to about $235 after 6 months.

Explore the User Expe­ri­ence (UX) Design Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate by watch­ing the video above. Learn more about the over­all Google career cer­tifi­cate ini­tia­tive here. And find oth­er Google pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cates here.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Google Intro­duces 6‑Month Career Cer­tifi­cates, Threat­en­ing to Dis­rupt High­er Edu­ca­tion with “the Equiv­a­lent of a Four-Year Degree”

Cours­era and Google Launch an Online Cer­tifi­cate Pro­gram to Help Stu­dents Become IT Pro­fes­sion­als & Get Attrac­tive Jobs

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A History of Punk from 1976–78: A Free Online Course from the University of Reading

in Music, Online Courses | June 15th, 2021

From Matthew Wor­ley, pro­fes­sor of mod­ern his­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Read­ing, comes the free online course Anar­chy in the UK: A His­to­ry of Punk from 1976–78. (Wor­ley is also the author of the book, No Future: Punk, Pol­i­tics and British Youth Cul­ture.) The course cov­ers the fol­low­ing ground:

In the late 1970s, a new youth sub­cul­ture emerged in the UK. This, of course, was punk, and a cul­tur­al revolt was under­way.

In this course, you will learn about the emer­gence of punk and its diverse range of mean­ings. You’ll use that lens to explore how youth cul­tures pro­vid­ed space for peo­ple to reimag­ine, dis­cov­er and chal­lenge the soci­ety and com­mu­ni­ties in which they were com­ing of age.

You’ll explore punk as a tool of expres­sion for young peo­ple, and how it relat­ed to pol­i­tics and events. You’ll con­sid­er punk’s rela­tion­ship with gen­der, class, race, sex­u­al­i­ty and protest, draw­ing com­par­isons with the youth cul­ture of today…

This his­to­ry course also has an empha­sis on the cre­ative side of punk. You’ll explore DIY punk design and writ­ing, epit­o­mised by fanzines. You’ll learn how to cre­ate a real-life fanzine of your own, all the way to pub­lish­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion. This will help strength­en your com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills and encour­age inde­pen­dent thought and cre­ativ­i­ty.

Among oth­er things, the course will cov­er:

  • The diverse mean­ings of ‘punk’, its roots and its effects on British cul­ture.
  • The orig­i­na­tors and defin­ing events that led to punk’s spread across the UK and beyond.
  • The music: how the Sex Pis­tols opened the way for a wide range of sounds and bands.
  • Why fanzines became the per­fect medi­um for punk.
  • Punk’s influ­ence on pub­lish­ing, fash­ion, art and design.
  • Punk’s impact on issues of gen­der, class, race, sex­u­al­i­ty and protest.
  • Punk’s lega­cy and con­tin­u­ing influ­ence on soci­ety.

Anar­chy in the UK: A His­to­ry of Punk from 1976–78 can be tak­en for free on the Future­Learn plat­form. The course will be added to our list: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Clash Embraced New York’s Hip Hop Scene and Released the Dance Track, “The Mag­nif­i­cent Dance” (1981)

The Sex Pis­tols Riotous 1978 Tour Through the U.S. South: Watch/Hear Con­certs in Dal­las, Mem­phis, Tul­sa & More

The Sex Pis­tols Make a Scan­dalous Appear­ance on the Bill Grundy Show & Intro­duce Punk Rock to the Star­tled Mass­es (1976)

The Sex Pis­tols’ 1976 Man­ches­ter “Gig That Changed the World,” and the Day the Punk Era Began

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The Age of Cathedrals: A Free Online Course from Yale University

in Art, History, Online Courses | June 13th, 2021

Image by Rafes­mar, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

From Yale pro­fes­sor Howard Bloch comes Age of Cathe­drals, an online course that offers “an intro­duc­tion to some of the most aston­ish­ing archi­tec­tur­al mon­u­ments the world has ever known—Gothic cathe­drals,” includ­ing Notre Dame, Chartres, and Saint-Denis. The course descrip­tion adds: “We shall study the art, lit­er­a­ture, intel­lec­tu­al life, eco­nom­ics, and new social arrange­ments that arose in the shad­ow of the cathe­drals and that were such an impor­tant part of the revival of cities in the twelfth and thir­teenth cen­turies. The goal of the course is a bet­ter appre­ci­a­tion of the High Mid­dle Ages, a world that is still rec­og­niz­ably our own.”

You can take Age of Cathe­drals for free by select­ing the audit option upon enrolling. If you want to take the course for a cer­tifi­cate, you will need to pay a fee.

Age of Cathe­drals has been added to our list of Free His­to­ry 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:

Enroll in Harvard’s Free Online Archi­tec­ture Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the His­to­ry & The­o­ry of Archi­tec­ture

Mak­ing Archi­tec­ture: A Free Online Course from the IE School of Archi­tec­ture and Design

Euro­pean Paint­ings: From Leonar­do to Rem­brandt to Goya–A Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­dad Car­los III de Madrid (UC3M

Free Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the Art of the Ital­ian Renais­sance

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Blockchain and Money: A Free Online Course from MIT

in Finance, MIT, Online Courses, Technology | June 13th, 2021

Taught by MIT pro­fes­sor Gary Gensler, Blockchain and Mon­ey is “for stu­dents wish­ing to explore blockchain tech­nol­o­gy’s poten­tial use—by entre­pre­neurs and incumbents—to change the world of mon­ey and finance. The course begins with a review of Bit­coin and an under­stand­ing of the com­mer­cial, tech­ni­cal, and pub­lic pol­i­cy fun­da­men­tals of blockchain tech­nol­o­gy, dis­trib­uted ledgers, and smart con­tracts. The class then con­tin­ues on to cur­rent and poten­tial blockchain appli­ca­tions in the finan­cial sec­tor.”

You can watch all 23 lec­tures above, or on YouTube. A syl­labus and oth­er course mate­ri­als can be found on MIT’s web­site. More relat­ed cours­es are list­ed below.

Blockchain and Mon­ey has been added to our list of Free Busi­ness 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 

What Actu­al­ly Is Bit­coin? Princeton’s Free Online Course “Bit­coin and Cur­ren­cy Tech­nolo­gies” Pro­vides Much-Need­ed Answers

Bit­coin and Cryp­tocur­ren­cy Tech­nolo­gies: A Free Course from Prince­ton

Cryp­tocur­ren­cy and Blockchain: An Intro­duc­tion to Dig­i­tal Currencies–A Free Online Cours­es from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia

The Prince­ton Bit­coin Text­book Is Now Free Online

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The Illuminated Manuscripts of Medieval Europe: A Free Online Course from the University of Colorado

in History, MOOCs, Online Courses | June 11th, 2021

Dr. Roger Louis Martínez-Dávi­la and Ana B. Sanchez-Prieto–two aca­d­e­mics work­ing out of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado and Uni­ver­si­dad Com­plutense Madrid (Spain)–have teamed up to present Deci­pher­ing Secrets: The Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts of Medieval Europe. The free course cov­ers the fol­low­ing ground:

Per­haps no oth­er rel­ic of the Euro­pean Mid­dle Ages cap­tures our imag­i­na­tion more than illu­mi­nat­ed medieval man­u­scripts, or those doc­u­ments dec­o­rat­ed with images and col­ored pig­ments. Serv­ing as win­dows unto a lost world of kings, ladies, faith, war, and cul­ture, they com­mu­ni­cate com­plex visu­al and tex­tu­al nar­ra­tives of Europe’s col­lec­tive cul­tur­al her­itage and pat­ri­mo­ny. In this fash­ion, illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts are dynam­ic mes­sages from our com­mu­nal past that are still rel­e­vant today in fields like graph­ic design and typog­ra­phy.

In this sev­en-week course, stu­dents will explore the mate­r­i­al cre­ation, con­tent, and his­tor­i­cal con­text of illu­mi­nat­ed medieval Euro­pean man­u­scripts. Stu­dents will acquire an intro­duc­to­ry knowl­edge of their dis­tin­guish­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics, their cat­a­logu­ing and peri­odiza­tion (when they were cre­at­ed), the meth­ods uti­lized to pro­duce them, and their his­tor­i­cal con­text and val­ue.

You can take The Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts of Medieval Europe for free by select­ing the audit option upon enrolling. If you want to take the course for a cer­tifi­cate, you will need to pay a fee.

The Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts of Medieval Europe has been added to our list of Free His­to­ry Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Dis­cov­er the Great Medieval Man­u­script, the Book of Kells, in a Free Online Course

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece, the Book of Kells, Is Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

800 Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Are Now Online: Browse & Down­load Them Cour­tesy of the British Library and Bib­lio­thèque Nationale de France

160,000 Pages of Glo­ri­ous Medieval Man­u­scripts Dig­i­tized: Vis­it the Bib­lio­the­ca Philadel­phien­sis

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.