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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
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.
Adapting to the Effects of Climate Change on Quality of Life
As stated in the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report, human activities are causing global warming, primarily through greenhouse gas emissions, and the Earth's surface temperature is rising. Climate change affects people's lives in many ways, including health, crop damage, and disasters. To cope with global climate change, mitigation and adaptation must be pursued simultaneously. In this course, participants will gain an understanding of the global and Japanese context of climate change, and learn about the impact of climate change on the quality of life of local people and adaptation measures, using Japanese case studies. The course, which consists of four modules, introduces the global and Japanese situation regarding climate change, basic information on the impacts on people's quality of life, impacts and responses in fruit tree production sites, adaptation measures in the field of urban planning and design, impacts on urban infrastructure and assets and their management Mitigation and adaptation through the management of urban infrastructure and assets, and understanding the impacts and risks of climate change on transport systems, through case studies.
Sustainability Science - A Key Concept for Future Design
Sustainability is indispensable for the future of humankind. Sustainability science has emerged as an effort to tackle the complex problems the world is facing today. Lecturers from different disciplines provide a holistic overview of key issues in sustainability including industrial pollution, an aging society, human-nature connection, urban planning, resilience, environmental governance, and education for sustainable development. In this course, you will learn about historical and current sustainability issues that have emerged around the world, as well as some of the approaches that have been used to solve them. You will be exposed to industrial and water pollution control issues, in addition to challenges caused by an aging and shrinking population. You will also learn about the human-nature connection and initiatives that aim to create sustainable societies in harmony with nature, based on the concept of Socio-Ecological Production Landscapes and Seascapes (SEPLS). You will explore how ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction (Eco-DRR) approaches can be used to reestablish the human-nature connection through re-naturalization of damaged environments. This course will also consider an urban planning point of view by exploring the value of an urban-rural land use mixture to create new sustainable societies and resilient megacities. Finally, you will learn about environmental governance, a crucial element for progress towards a sustainable future. You will be introduced to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as a learning method for sustainable development and discuss international debates on ESD. Japanese perspectives are emphasized throughout the course in the hopes of providing concrete value to solving contemporary sustainability issues.
Contemporary Japanese Society: What Has Been Happening Behind Demographic Change?
The main aim of this course is to give an overview of how contemporary Japanese society has been stratified, from the perspective of changing demographic, familial, and socio-economic structure. Basic statistics will be presented to provide a concrete idea of the changes that have taken place in Japan. By the end of the course, students should have an awareness of similarities and differences across nations regarding social issues including ageing population, gender gaps in work and family, and socio-economic inequalities.
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