Learn Real History online

[MrPeabody]

I recently signed up to a history course online. The course is free and the instructor is excellent. He discusses history from a conceptual perspective, showing that history can be explained by a situation, problem, solution, new situation paradigm. Also, in the first lecture, the instructor said that he was on the 9/11 commission. The class started this week, so I am not sure if they are still accepting members.


“This is a survey course in modern world history for students, beginning or advanced, who wish to better understand how the world got to be the way it is today. The course begins with the revolutions of the late 1700s, tracks the transformation of the world during the 1800s, and analyzes the cataclysms of last century, concluding with the new phase of world history we are experiencing today.

In order to understand modern history, a global perspective is essential. This is true whether you are interested in economics, warfare, philosophy, politics, or even pop culture. This course can therefore be essential for students in many fields, a base equipping them with tools for lifelong learning.

It is tempting to think that if we can just understand the big patterns, we don't have to get too caught up in the details. In this course, though, we care about chronology. We care about individuals. Without some careful attention to sequences of cause and effect, without tracing how big changes come from the choices made by particular people, history can turn into just a series of descriptions, a somewhat tiresome recitation of one thing after another. Not this course. So a big part of what we will do is not only offer a set of remarkable stories, but also offer you training in how to analyze a situation and how to think about problems of explaining change.â€￾

https://class.coursera.org/modernworld- ... ttheCourse

[MrPeabody]

To sign up, you have to register at this webpage and find the course and add it to your profile.

https://www.coursera.org/courses

[MrPeabody]

Here is an interesting article on the history course currently being taught by Professor Zelikow. There are over 40,000 people taking the course. It will be graded and there is a Discussion Forum to interact with the professor, assistants, and other students. Professor Zelikow was the executive director of the 9/11 commission. This is really leading edge education. And it’s free.

University launches new MOOC era with history course

The University's partnership with Coursera kicked off Tuesday afternoon

History Prof. Philip Zelikow began teaching one of the first Massive Open Online Courses at the University Tuesday afternoon.

The University partnered with the online education program Coursera to broadcastHIST 2002, “The Modern World: Global History since 1760,â€￾ to more than 40,000 students worldwide and two 60 student sections here at the University.

“It’s a pretty radical design,â€￾ said Zelikow. “You can’t use your standard lecture and do this. I’m creating 91 distinct video presentations … It builds on my own classroom material.â€￾

Brandon Kist, recent University graduate and lead course assistant for the course, helped Zelikow create the class. For the program, Zelikow began planning last semester and recorded the first video presentations in the beginning of October. He had to pre-record lectures, editing them to create a polished online lecture series.
“It’s a really extended process,â€￾ Kist said.

The online classes are currently offered for free and do not count for any credit.

The ability to use MOOCs created new teaching avenues for Zelikow. Since the lectures have been pre-recorded, Zelikow uses the assigned lecture time to instead have a prolonged discussion with University students. Students, both in and out of the University, will watch the lectures online, but the University students will get the benefit of an in-person interaction with the professor.
“The time in the classroom is with a different vibe,â€￾ Zelikow said. “Instead of having the discussion with the graduate student, [University students] get the discussion with the high-price professor.â€￾

University students also enjoy another component in addition to the online lecture and professor-led discussion: graduate-student-led history labs. During these labs, students review primary source documents from a specific era and region of the world, then delve deeper into the topics with the graduate student instructors.

“I’m leveraging the MOOC to do something here which is really interesting,â€￾ Zelikow said.

http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/20 ... ory-course

[odbo]

Professor Zelikow was the executive director of the 9/11 commission. This is really leading edge education. And it’s free.

so its either really good or really bad.

[MrPeabody]

I completed my first week of lectures and took the first quiz. So far I have been impressed. It’s really an interesting course. In the first week he describes the profound transition of the world from traditional to modern which started around the 1760s and what he calls “The Great Divideâ€￾. He described the world in the 1760s when the most powerful country was the Qing Empire of China and the wealthiest region was the Caribbean. In the remaining time, he will go through the entire world history to the present through a pattern analysis: situation -> problem -> solution -> new situation. At each era the people at that time were living in a situation which created problems. The solution to their problems describes the “whyâ€￾ of history and the new situation creates more problems for the next generation. Thus a chain of causality leads us to our present situation.