These are the courses that will launch on 09/09/09. If successful, some of these courses may be repeated in future sessions, and we are also planning to add many other course offerings as we expand from the pilot. 

 

Behavioral Economics and Decision Making

Have you ever wondered if people are *really* rational? Economists for the last hundred years have built theory based on the underlying assumption that people are rational. The field of behavioral economics and decision making both challenge this fundamental assumption by showing in a variety context, people's judgments are not rational. In this brief six week course, we will give an overview of some of the main points in the field exploring things like prospect theory, the endowment effect, hyperbolic discounting, priming, moral decision making, nonconscious priming, among a variety of other topics.

 

Copyright for Educators

This course is for educators and learners who wants to understand how copyright affects use of learning materials, and how to use copyright to facilitate education. The goals of the course are to help you identify copyright issues in education and give you a firm grounding copyright, exceptions and, licensing, to help you recognise open licences, and find open licence material and apply open licences to work, and to get you thinking, writing, and dialoguing about enabling education through copyright exceptions and open licences.

 

Introduction to Cyberpunk Literature

This course covers the works of the  four major writers of cyberpunk: William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, and Pat Cadigan. Other theoretical and scholarly texts that articulate cyberpunk as a site of intellectual and literary investigation will be read and will inform discussions . Popular films (Blade Runner and The Matrix) which are good examples of cyberpunk films are will also be referred to.  The thematic concerns of cyberpunk, that speak directly to contemporary issues like globalisation, corporate ethics, postmodern politics and terrorism will also be discussed.

 

Land Restoration and Afforestation

This course discusses deforestation and ecological collapse, the cultural implications of deforestation, followed by an in-depth look at the ecological principles of restoration. In week 5, we will introduce a case study on Sadhana Forest in Southern India, and we will conclude by discussing post-restoration, agroforestry and socio-economics.

 

Neuroethics and International Biolaw

The goals of the course are to give you an overview on Neuroethics and a first introduction to International Human Rights Law. We will discuss the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights and develop an understanding of the connection between neuroethical issues, human rights and their protection. This course is intended for Law students and legal professionals who would like to know more about Neuroethics field and to neuroethicists who would like to have a first introduction to international human rights law.

 

Open Creative Nonfiction - Take Away Narratives 

This course concerns the writing of creative nonfiction, which involves the writing of true life events in creative form. Creativity comes into play with the style or manner in which the writer relates her story to the reader. Facts are raw, but also contextual. In creative nonfiction, context is perspective; and perspective is what makes a story interesting. Essentially, creative nonfiction is very similar (and some might even say nearly the same) to fiction; the main difference is whether the facts in the story concur with the facts in real life. In this course, we will explore the distance, or proximity, between fiction and nonfiction. 

 

Poker and strategic thinking

The appeal of poker analogies in analyzing real life situations is very obvious for anyone who gets to know the game. The goals of this course are to map the use of ideas from the poker world in skills of life, business, politics and international relations. The sense maker will draw the contours of the fields we will map, but the  investigation of the merits of poker in real life will be a group effort rather than a skill set that is handed to you throughout the course. For this reason, an intermediate understanding of the game is a pre-requisite for entering the course; you will be asked to complete a quiz after sign-up to acquire admission. We will specifically investigate the merits of poker in relation to strategic thinking, risk assessment and social science research.