The MOOCs That Move Us
Make it massive.
You may have seen a mention of something called a MOOC and thought, What now with the techy acronyms? Simplified, it’s a Massive Open Online Course—a course that an institution has opened up online, without regard for attendance limitations. In most cases they are free, though some platforms charge a nominal fee if you’d like to receive a certificate of completion. And we’re not talking “lesser than” offerings—you’ll find courses from the likes of Harvard and Yale in abundance. In fact, there are so many amazing classes that it can be a little daunting to know where to begin. But that’s why you come to The Verse: you know we’ve skinnied it down to the best of the best for you.
C’mon get happy.
Professor Laurie Santos’ The Science of Wellbeing has turned up as a top class, both on and off Yale’s New Haven campus. There’s a duh factor here—don’t we all want to be more productive and happy?—but there’s also some bona fide science to be found. You can also get a lot of Laurie’s learnings from her Happiness Lab podcast.
Art class: persuasion.
Maybe we’re wistful for our debate team days, but there is truly an art to persuading others. Of course, doing so in person gives us an expanded toolkit, but when writing is in order it tends to be a tougher lift. In this Harvard course, Rhetoric: The Art of Persuasive Writing and Public Speaking you’ll get the opportunity to sharpen both.
Clock in.
We weren’t surprised to see a class called Work Smarter, Not Harder: Time Management for Personal & Professional Productivity receive a top rating. The University of California syllabus promises to, among other things, teach you to delegate and say “no.” Yes, please.
Remotely successful.
In response to our new work order, the braniacs at Harvard have created a course called Remote Work Revolution for Everyone. The course not only spends time on specific tactics for remote collaboration, but gets to the issue of building the trust that must be fostered to gain comfort with our virtual reality.
To market.
No one has felt the digital revolution like veteran marketers, who must keep up with a richly complex data environment to succeed. This holds true for businesses big or small as well as for those who manage marketers. Accordingly, the University of Maryland’s Fundamentals of Digital Marketing feels like a properly timed primer.
And…action.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever watched a movie, show or play and thought,Yeah, I could do that. While you may be underestimating the actual work involved in such undertakings, we’ll also bet you’ll be better prepared to try your hand with this class from Cambridge called Building Your Screenplay. If anything, we think it will at least up our storytelling game—and who knows, maybe we’ll be coming to a theater near you.
Informed risk.
If there is anything we’ve tried to get our arms around these past few years (without a ton of success), it’s the inherent amount of risk and uncertainty present in our lives. And while we won’t fool ourselves into thinking we’re remotely in control of things like pandemics and natural disasters, we would like to understand how the people who make risk their business are thinking about it. Enter this popular MIT class, Probability - The Science of Uncertainty and Data, which feels like a safe bet.
