FutureLearn announces new courses open for registration
The following free, online courses are now open for registration on FutureLearn, the first UK-led MOOC (massive open online course) provider.
To register click here
Global Food Security: Addressing the Challenge
Lead Educator: William Davies
Course start: 12 May
This course focuses on food supplies, the struggle for land, the impact on the environment and disciplines to required to solve the food security challenge. Our central concern is ‘How we will feed an extra two billion people by the middle of this century?’ Focussing both on UK agriculture and on food supply chains in other parts of the world, we will examine how food has shaped our environmental and social landscapes. We will see that, while everyone would agree that food security is ‘a good thing’, ideas about what it means in practice and how it should be achieved vary tremendously.
Cooperation in the Contemporary World
Lead educator: Jamie Johnson
Start date: 12 May
As world leaders seek to find a solution to crises in Syria and Ukraine; economists try to reinvigorate stalling global financial markets and a range of actors gather to find a consensus on climate change – there has never been a better time to understand the puzzle of cooperation. Achieving cooperation on such issues is the defining concern of international politics in the 21st century and this course will introduce you to the range of political strategies that have been employed to meet these challenges.
Archaeology of Portus: Exploring the Lost Harbour of Ancient Rome
Lead educator: Prof. Simon Keay, Dr Graeme Earl, Dr Dragana Mladenovic
Start date: 19 May
The Roman harbour city of Portus lay at the heart of an empire that extended from Scotland to Iraq. Established by Claudius and enlarged by the emperor Trajan with spoils of the Dacian wars, the port was the conduit for everything the city of Rome required from its Mediterranean provinces: the food and, particularly grain, that fed the largest urban population of the ancient world, as well as luxuries of all kinds, building materials, people and wild animals for the arena. On this course you will chart a journey from the Imperial harbour to its connections across the Mediterranean, learning about what the archaeological discoveries uncovered by the Portus Project tell us about the history, landscape, buildings, and the people of this unique place.
Lead educator: Helena Gillespie
Course start date: 16 June
With the introduction of a new subject, Computing, to British schools in September 2014, many schools are considering how to best prepare their staff for this change. This free online course aims to prepare teachers to deliver the new UK curriculum effectively to children in years 5, 6, 7 and 8. With a mixture of subject knowledge and pedagogical advice, this course is aimed at both ICT specialists and primary teaching non-specialists.
* Please note: This is part 2 of the course, but you can take it even if you didn’t do part 1. Part 1 will run again in the autumn of 2014.
