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Taste Our New Course: Managing Food and Beverage Companies

Coursera learners across China can now earn and purchase Verified Certificates for most courses with ease thanks to an integration with Alipay, China’s leading online payment platform. This announcement corresponds with Coursera reaching one million registered learners in China, the online education provider’s largest market outside of the U.S.

“We strive to put learners first, and provide them with the resources they need to be successful in their academic, personal and professional pursuits. We’ve learned that many of our Chinese learners wish to earn Verified Certificates, which has been challenging due to payment constraints,” said Coursera’s CEO Rick Levin. “Thanks to an integration with Alipay, all learners can now purchase certificates and share their accomplishments publicly, with employers and friends.”

Previously, Chinese learners had to have access to an international credit card in order to pay the fee necessary to earn a Verified Certificate, which would allow them to share their achievement on resumes and elsewhere publicly. In fact, Coursera heard stories of Chinese learners borrowing credit cards from their friends abroad in order to make the payment.

Now, learners in China, for the first time, can make payments from any account with just a few clicks on desktop or mobile thanks to Alipay, a leading third-party payment platform from Ant Financial Services Group. With more than 400 million registered users and 200 financial partners, Alipay is helping Coursera to extend its full array of learning resources to a population who greatly values learning achievements. According to an upcoming study Coursera and partner universities conducted around learner outcomes, 90 percent of Chinese learners report seeing career benefits after taking online courses.

Coursera is the first open online education provider to reach one million learners in China and there’s no sign of slowing down. Chinese learners can explore more than 120 courses from local and global universities on a wide variety of topics, offered in Chinese or with subtitles. 10 universities in China are offering courses on Coursera, including Peking University, Nanjing University, and HKUST.

Go here to browse all of our courses offered in Chinese.

  • June 30, 2015 @ 2:12 pm
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Specialization Spotlight: Interaction Design

UCSD
Course Spotlight Series: Interaction Design, always open for enrollment, is led by Professor Scott Klemmer of UC San Diego. This article, based on an interview with the instructor, was written by Charlie Chung of Class Central.

Instagram, the popular photo-sharing app, exploded onto the scene in 2011, reaching 10M users in less than a year. Why is it so popular? Observers point to many things, but all agree that it was thoughtfully designed and masterfully crafted. Good design is becoming increasingly more important for many products and services today.

Good design thinking in this day and age marries together the rich findings from cognitive science with artistic creativity, and design has become a combination of art + science. An example of the artistic element is in looking for hidden needs through close observation. Prof. Scott Klemmer calls this process “need-finding” and gives an example:

Prof. Klemmer will cover both the art and science aspects in his six-course Specialization on Interaction Design. The Specialization is geared towards those who want to be designers or product managers, and covers many of the key elements in the design process, including working with design briefs, determining user needs, and developing and testing prototypes. Upon completion of the courses, students can take the Capstone project, which was designed in partnership with–you guessed it–Instagram!

Read the full version of this article on Class Central’s blog.

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  • June 29, 2015 @ 2:08 pm
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Q&A with Psychology of Popularity Professor, Mitch Prinstein

UNC
This guest post is written by Dr. Mitch Prinstein, professor at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, introducing the course Psychology of Popularity starting June 22nd.

Prof. Mitch PrinsteinProf. Mitch Prinstein

Mitch Prinstein is a psychology professor in UNC-Chapel Hill’s Clinical Program and the instructor for the new course, Psychology of Popularity, on Coursera. His research uses a developmental psychopathology framework to understand how adolescents’ interpersonal experiences are associated with depression, self-injury, and health risk behaviors. His new popularity course presents research on the impact of early life experiences with popularity; how those experiences influence adult lives; and how an understanding of popularity can promote increased success at work, better parenting skills, and greater fulfillment in life.

Why is popularity valuable to study on a psychological level?

Our brains are programmed to care deeply about our social standing and our relationships. Popularity even changes our DNA! Not surprisingly, what happens with our social relationships in childhood and adolescence predicts a wide range of lifetime outcomes.

Many people think of popularity in terms of high school, but it goes beyond adolescence. How is the study of popularity helpful for both kids and adults?

We don’t always realize it, but our popularity in childhood has programmed our adult brain in ways that affect us every single day. We did not leave popularity behind in high school – it has affected who we are deeply, which is probably why so many contexts now still echo the same popularity dynamics. Whether it has to do with our personal relationships, office politics, our obsession with celebrities, or even how we are raising our children, popularity is still a factor we deal with today as adults.

What do you hope students will get out of your new Psychology of Popularity MOOC?

I hope adults can see their childhoods in a new light. I hope parents learn how to help their children grow up in a new world where popularity reigns more strongly than ever. And I hope that as adults, we can recognize patterns related to popularity dynamics at home, at work, and in our communities that can be changed so we don’t keep reliving our adolescence all over again.

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  • June 23, 2015 @ 3:48 pm
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Korea’s Oldest Private University, Yonsei Joins Coursera

Established in 1885 and situated minutes from downtown Seoul, Yonsei University has over 3,500 eminent faculty members conducting cutting-edge research across a variety of academic disciplines. With 18 graduate schools, 22 colleges and 133 subsidiary institutions, the university hosts a selective pool of students from around the world.

Their first course International Marketing in Asia will be taught by Dae Ryun Chang and launch on demand.

International Marketing in Asia
International Marketing in Asia
This course brings together two key subjects, International Marketing and Asia. It will provide the basic foundations of international marketing and explain them in the Asian context, more specifically marketing to Asia, marketing from Asia, and marketing with Asia (Asia as a brand).
  • June 22, 2015 @ 8:50 pm
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Starting in June: Business, Management, and Entrepreneurship courses

Business Foundations
Introduction to Financial Accounting
Introduction to Corporate Finance
Introduction to Corporate Finance
The Role of Global Capital Markets
The Role of Global Capital Markets
Managing Food & Beverage Companies
Managing Food & Beverage Companies
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A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment
Economics of Money and Banking, Part Two
Economics of Money and Banking, Part Two
Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing
Improving Business Finances and Operations
Improving Business Finances and Operations
Entrepreneurship: Launching an Innovative Business
Entrepreneurship: Launching an Innovative Business
Asset Pricing, Part 1
Asset Pricing, Part 1
  • June 17, 2015 @ 5:14 pm
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Coursera’s Launches First Chinese Language Specialization

The National Taiwan University is launching the first course on demand in Computer Aided Design and Building Information Modeling (CAD/BIM) today. The course is the the first Chinese language (Traditional Chinese) Specialization on Coursera.

The Specialization is designed for students and professionals focusing in areas of architecture, engineering, and the construction industries. Learners will have the opportunity to get familiar with BIM (Building Information Modeling) and also work on a Capstone Project with our industry partner Arup, the internationally renowned engineering firm. Arup will provide mentorship, feedback, and award top learners with prizes in the final Capstone project.

The Specialization consists of 7 courses launching On Demand, plus a Capstone project, to be offered 3-4 times a year. The first course launches today followed by the others starting 2 weeks apart through 9/15. There will be 4 courses on Computer Aided Design (CAD) and 3 on Building Information Modeling (BIM).

“I am excited to meet learners in this Specialization, and I believe the BIM courses we have prepared will significantly increase the professional competitiveness of the learners,” said Shang-Hsien Patrick Hsieh, who teaches the three BIM courses in the Specialization.

Business Foundations
Business Foundations




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  • June 15, 2015 @ 6:47 pm
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Course Spotlight: Learning Calculus

OSU
Course Spotlight Series: Calculus One, always open for enrollment, is led by Professor Jim Fowler of Ohio State University. This article, based on an interview with the instructor, was written by Charlie Chung of Class Central.

“I’m not a math person”. “I’m not great with numbers”. “I hate math”. These sentiments are commonly heard, and many people struggled with math during school (which may explain why the U.S. in the latest international PISA exams, ranked 27th out of 34 OECD countries). But how many students have been lucky enough to have a math teacher that is as passionate about teaching it as Prof. Jim Fowler, in the Department of Mathematics at Ohio State University?

Prof. Fowler’s goal is to transform peoples’ attitude about mathematics: “I really just want people to like math more.” He acknowledges that math can be difficult and requires practice. But it doesn’t have to be the drudgery that many people have experienced:

For a lot of people, their experience in math class has been so focused on drill problems and calculations. They didn’t even think about some of the ideas. Many people could actually do really well in terms of the calculus content, but they’re struggling a lot with the algebraic manipulations, which is primarily what we’re evaluating them on. But there are ways to get people to get attached to the calculus concept first and get them excited. A lot of math is about talking about ideas, evaluating those ideas, and discussing them.

Thus, doing math can also be a social activity. Prof. Fowler describes this aspect in the video clip below:

Read the full version of this article on Class Central’s blog. You too can learn calculus by signing up for Calculus One at any time.

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  • June 10, 2015 @ 4:28 pm
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Course Spotlight: A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment

ISB
Course Spotlight Series: A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment starts on June 15, led by Professor Rajagopal (Raj) Raghunathan. This article, based on an interview with the instructor, was written by Charlie Chung of Class Central.

Prof. Raghunathan studies the science of happiness and is a visiting faculty member at the Indian School of Business and writes a blog column for Psychology Today. He notes that while we all want to achieve happiness, we often pursue other things that don’t lead to it. He also notes the ‘Three Pillars of Happiness’ we should focus on:

  • Pursue meaningful work – Try to spend your energy in ways that are meaningful to you, at work or at home. From a career standpoint, Raghunathan recommends making passion a criterion for choosing your work: “you spend so much time at work you might as well make that a meaningful thing that you are doing in your life”. Perhaps this is not feasible for everyone at every point in their career, but it is surely a sound guiding principle, as it has been echoed by Steve Jobs, Thoreau, Gloria Estefan, and others.
  • Maintain close relationships – Most people consider the relationships they have developed with family, friends, colleagues, and others to be the most meaningful part of their lives. Relationships are investments that require time and attention, yet we are quick to downplay or dismiss them. Social science offers practical suggestions for improving relationships, such as: giving your brain a cooling off period when you are angry, seeing forgiveness as an integral part of freeing up your own mind, and cultivating face-to-face time in our mobile connected world.
  • Have a spiritual attitude – A strong sense of spirituality, whether religiously or otherwise based, has been associated with reduced stress levels, and we know we cannot be happy when we are over-stressed. There is also growing evidence that meditation practices have beneficial effects. In the MOOC, Prof. Raghunathan will have a couple of experts leading participants through the steps of the meditation process.

Read the full version of this article on Class Central’s blog.

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  • June 3, 2015 @ 5:53 pm
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Genomic Data Science

JHU
This guest post is written by Professors Kasper Hansen and Jeff Leek of Johns Hopkins University for the Genomic Data Science Specialization sarting today, June 1st.

President Obama recently announced a Precision Medicine Initiative, initially funded with $215 million in 2016, to understand the fundamental characteristics that make us unique and to explore how we can use that information to reduce risk, target therapies, and improve health. One of the cornerstones of this initiative is understanding how our individual genomes are related to disease, health risks and response to treatments. The White House has hired a Chief Data Scientist, DJ Patil, to help spearhead this effort.

Why on earth would a data scientist help lead an effort in precision medicine with genomics?

The answer is that the majority of precision medicine will involve what we call “genomic data science”. To gather information on people’s genomes we need to measure variations in DNA from person to person, usually by sequencing their DNA. Huge innovations in this technology have made DNA sequencing incredibly cheap–500,000 times cheaper than it was when the human genome was first sequenced in 2001. The challenge is no longer acquiring your genome; today the challenge is interpreting and understanding how your genome affects your health. This is a data science question. It requires computing to process piles of data, statistics to discover relationships between your genome and your health, and biology to tie it all together and make sense of those discoveries.

We developed the Johns Hopkins Genomic Data Science Specialization to get you up to speed on the ideas and tools you need to participate in the genomics revolution. In this specialization we will teach you about how sequencing technologies work, how you can use it to measure important biological molecules, and teach you skills to process and analyze this data. We will focus on teaching tools that are freely available, open source, widely recognized for their excellence, and supported by large communities of scientists. These are tools that we and other leading researchers in Genomic Data Science use every day. The goal is to take you from the very basics of genomic data science to learning how to execute and evaluate Genomic Data Science pipelines.

We will teach basic skills required to start analyzing high throughput biology data. The focus is on laying a foundation of skills and helping you learn where to look for information as technologies improve in this rapidly evolving field. Genomic data science is one of the biggest and most important data sciences, and along the way we will also point you to resources that will allow you to take a deeper dive into this new field.

Today we are launching the class “Introduction to Genomic Technologies”. This class is perfect for anyone who is interested in modern biological data. It is designed to be a conceptual course that can be taken by anyone as a general introduction to genomic data science. We think the class will be useful for researchers at all levels, ranging from people just starting out to seasoned researchers. Over the next two months we will be launching the rest of the specialization. These classes will cover using Galaxy, command line tools, the Python language, sequence algorithms, Bioconductor, and statistics. They are designed to be entry level classes but will require some programming experience, and will be easier if you have a background and interest in using computers. We will cover the whole process, from software installation to application and data interpretation. Our instructors are all active researchers in computational biology at Johns Hopkins University from the Departments of Computer Science, Biology, Biostatistics, Medicine and Biomedical Engineering. They are all authors of very widely used software and methods for Genomic Data Science.

This specialization was built by the Johns Hopkins Data Science Lab. This team is also responsible for the Johns Hopkins Data Science Specialization, the most successful massive open online classes (MOOCs) in existence.

Classes can be taken for free, but a fee is required to earn a certificate of completion. We are pleased to announce today a discount from $99 to $49 for all classes in the sequence. There has never been a better time to be a genomic data scientist and we are excited about helping you get started in this rapidly growing field.

Kasper Hansen + Jeff Leek
Co-Directors Johns Hopkins Genomic Data Science Specialization

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  • June 1, 2015 @ 3:48 pm
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Rock out with Coursera on demand

Taught by the University of Rochester’s John Covach, The History of Rock Parts One and Two, along with the Music of the Beatles and the Music of the Rolling Stones, have enrolled hundreds of thousands of students worldwide in the last two years. Now you can enroll for all four of these courses on-demand, allowing for the greatest access and the flexibility in learning.

The History of Rock, pt. 1
The History of Rock, pt. 1
The course traces rock music from its roots in pop music before 1955 to the end of the 1960s, covering Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and more.
TITLE
The History of Rock, pt. 2
Part 2 picks up the story in 1970 and continues through the 1990s, featuring discussion of Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, Elvis Costello, The Police, U2, Michael Jackson, Guns ‘n Roses, Nirvana, and others.
The Music of the Beatles
The Music of the Beatles
Learners focus on one of the most important bands in the history of popular music, beginning with the group’s earliest days. The course progresses through the exciting commercial breakthroughs in the UK and US, to the growing artistic elements on the band’s music in Rubber Soul, to the heady days of psychedelia and Sgt. Pepper, to the last great studio album, Abbey Road.
The Music of the Rolling Stones
The Music of the Rolling Stones
traces the band’s music and development from their earliest days in London’s blues revival scene in the early 1960s to It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll of 1974.

Taken together, these four courses provide both a broad survey of rock’s history and focused and in-depth studies of two of its most significant bands.

  • May 28, 2015 @ 8:52 pm
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