NEWS
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.
From the Big Bang to Dark Energy
We have learned a lot recently about how the Universe evolved in 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang. More than 80% of matter in the Universe is mysterious Dark Matter, which made stars and galaxies to form. The newly discovered Higgs-boson became frozen into the Universe a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang and brought order to the Universe. Yet we still do not know how ordinary matter (atoms) survived against total annihilation by Anti-Matter. The expansion of the Universe started acceleration about 7 billion years ago and the Universe is being ripped apart. The culprit is Dark Energy, a mysterious energy multiplying in vacuum. I will present evidence behind these startling discoveries and discuss what we may learn in the near future.
Learn How to Teach by 6 Min. Micro Teaching
How should we work on class design and improvement? This is a program to learn specifically how to design and improve classes through the creation of a 6-minute microteaching class. The program is designed for current and prospective teachers from elementary to higher education, and can be completed in three weeks. The program is designed to help learners understand the significance of the “6-minute microteaching class,” and practice the necessary knowledge and theory based on the “ADDIE Model,” a concept for creating such classes, through a variety of work (hands-on experience). Then, through creating a graphic class design and a class design sheet, learners design and conduct a microteaching class. Afterwards, learners will review the microteaching class and work on improvement. In addition to watching videos and completing worksheets (individual work), the course also emphasizes the expansion and deepening of learning through interaction with other learners in the learning community, such as discussion forums.
Transnational Studies - Japan and the World
The contemporary world is marked by a curious state of tension. On the one hand, it is deeply globalized, with goods, people, culture and ideas circulating across borders on an unprecedented scale. Neither can two of the major crises we are facing, climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, be contained on the level of individual states. Yet, nation states are still the most powerful political entities in the world, and nationalism is resurging, mobilizing the imagination and aspirations of people everywhere. Academic knowledge, too, is still often aligned with national borders and categories. Transnational studies is an interdisciplinary field that lives in the interstices of this tension. It reflects on why the “nation” has come to have such a powerful grip on the human imagination and social organization. It offers approaches that follow the historical and contemporary movement of ideas, things, people and practices beyond (= “trans”) national borders, explores how they are transformed along the way, and analyzes what enables and limits these movements. In this course, you will gain foundational knowledge about how to think transnationally. An initial module which introduces key concepts and approaches in transnational studies will be followed by four modules that use concrete case studies centered on Japan to spotlight how the transnational can be fruitfully employed across different disciplines, from history to sustainability studies. In doing so, the course offers foundational knowledge in how to navigate the complexities of our globalized world.
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