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What is a MOOC ?
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are free online courses that anybody can take, and those who complete the course can earn an official certificate for a fee. Top universities around the world offer MOOCs, and the total number of registered learners on the Coursera and edX platforms has reached more than 130 million. Along with self improvement, learners are using MOOCs to improve their professional skills, and the individually validated certificates are helping learners advance in the workplace and make career changes.
Featured Courses
Contemporary Garden City Concept from Asia
The course focuses on contemporary urban planning issues, particularly the Garden City concept, addressing the global trend of integrating green spaces into cities to combat environmental challenges. Cities worldwide are striving to introduce green elements regardless of location, driven by concerns such as climate change, natural disasters, and political instability. The course discusses the transition from traditional urban structures to dispersed green matrices, emphasizing the importance of green spaces in enhancing their resilience. It contrasts Western cities' vertical agricultural integration with historical Japanese cities' horizontal integration, advocating for a new approach to urban agriculture. Let's consider the concept of a contemporary Garden City, focusing on the symbiotic relationship between urban and rural land uses. Through a mixture of theoretical discussion and practical examples, this course explores strategies for realizing this urban planning vision. The course is offered in Japanese and English and is available at all times. Anyone can take the course from the Coursera website.
Let’s Read! Learning Japanese through Science & Technology-1
This course focuses on improving Japanese reading comprehension through vocabulary and expressions retention, with a theme of Science and Engineering research at the University of Tokyo. In addition to reading, illustration videos and interview videos allow you to practise "listening" and "writing" skills. You can also broaden and deepen your knowledge in the related areas.
Four Facets of Contemporary Japanese Architecture: City
This is the third course in the “Four Facets of Contemporary Japanese Architecture” series, which focuses on the third facet: city. After the 1970s, Japanese architects are said to have stopped conceptualizing cities and instead focused on designing the individual buildings that make up the cities. However, as cities continue to undergo significant transformations in response to globalization, the advent of information technologies, and so on, Japanese architects are once again engaging the city, and doing so in unique ways. This course on “City” will review the works of those architects who have attempted to conceptualize cities through their architecture and examine the changes over the last half century as well as the issues for the future. Fumihiko Maki, Itsuko Hasegawa, Riken Yamamoto, Kengo Kuma, Jun Aoki, and Atelier Bow-Wow (Yoshiharu Tsukamoto & Momoyo Kaijima) visit their buildings to discuss the ideas behind their respective works.
Visualizing Postwar Tokyo, Part 1
Tokyo emerged out of the ruins of war to become a large city of 10 million people in only a quarter of a century. During this process of change, the capital of a military empire that once invaded East Asia experienced occupation by the U.S. armed forces, hosted the Olympic Games, and transformed into a consumer hub where young people could enjoy economic “wealth.” It is important to know that this process was recorded in countless photographs, documentary films, TV programs, and so on. We will retrieve many of these archived pictures and videos and analyze what happened in postwar Tokyo from different perspectives. In Part 1, you will look at the changes that occurred in postwar Tokyo over a quarter of a century from four different perspectives: 1) occupation and Americanism; 2) imperial gaze and royal wedding; 3) The Olympic city; and 4) economic-cultural clash in Shinjuku. This examination of urban history will provide you with the insights necessary when considering changes in other large cities in Asia, such as Seoul, Beijing, and Bangkok, at the end of the twentieth century.
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