History at Boise State

History courses by Dr. E.L. Skip Knox can be accessed at Boise State University. You'll find four courses:

• History of Western Civilization
• The Crusades
• The Late Middle Ages
• The Reformation

Lots of good material here for lifelong learners. Be sure to check the copyright page.

Geology of National Parks at Salem State

Here's a great geology for non-majors course: Geology of National Parks GLS110 01, Fall 2008. This one includes an enormous amount of excellent material. Professor Lindley Hanson uses Annenberg's Earth Revealed geology videos as a core to present the geological history of the United States and its national parks.

Be sure to follow all the links to available material. You don't want to miss anything here.

Scottish Enlightenment at OpenLearn

Open University makes many of its courses available through OpenLearn. One extremely interesting course is Science in the Scottish Enlightment.

This is a good introductory course, a jumping off point to more indepth study for lifelong learners.

History of China At UC Berkeley

If you're searching for a framework within which to put your introductory study of the history of China, you might want to consider a course at the University of California at Berkeley. Professor Michael Nylan teaches this course, History 6A - Fall 2008 History of China: Origins to the Mongols.

This course is not podcast, so it is actually just a framework, but it does have a complete reading list, including books for further reading. With a little Google research, you should be able to find some of the additional reading material from the course reader which is not available, but the author and title of the articles are given.

This should be a good resource for lifelong learners interested in the history of China.

Political Philosophy at Yale

Open Yale Courses offers an excellent Fall 2006 course to lifelong learners, called PLSC 114: Introduction to Political Philosophy.

This course makes available a full set of materials for each class session, including audio, video and online readings.

Course description:

"This course is intended as an introduction to political philosophy as seen through an examination of some of the major texts and thinkers of the Western political tradition. The course will focus on three broad themes that are central to understanding political life: the polis experience (Plato, Aristotle), the sovereign state (Machiavelli, Hobbes), constitutional government (Locke), and democracy (Rousseau, Tocqueville). Particular attention will focus especially on the way in which different political philosophies have given expression to various forms of political institutions and our ways of life."

This course is a nice addition to the resources of lifelong learners with an interest in political philosophy.

A.P. European History

This course from historyteacher.net is not a college course, but a high school Advanced Placement European History course. However, it contains an enormous amount of study material.

Many, many primary document links are most welcome. Plus links to appropriate subject websites are mostly active--only a few broken. Some great PowerPoint slides are also available.

You'll be glad you checked this one out. Have fun.

UC Berkeley Podcast Schedule Up

Now we know which Fall 2008 courses Berkeley has chosen to podcast. In fact, the first lectures are already online. This time frame between lecture and posting is much-improved over previous years.

So, what's available? Check it out here. You will find biology, chemistry, computer science, cyber culture, economics, education, electrical engineering, engineering, English (literature), geography, history, international studies, law, mechanical engineering, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, public health, sociology and statistics.

Of course, as you see, my favorites professors, George Brimhall and Nathan Sayre, are no where to be found. I'm hoping they will be back on the list soon.

Biology at University of Hawaii

Offered by the University of Hawaii, Biology 101 Biology and Society is taught by Dr. George Wong, Botany Department.

This course website makes available 41 lecture pdf's and 18 sets of background links for some of the lectures. The only broken links found are for the Blue Planet Biomes in Lecture 7. I will see what site can be substituted for these and do an update shortly.

These materials will make a nice supplement for the lifelong learner's ecology projects.

International Relations at University of Oregon

Here's an interesting course taught by Professor Ronald Mitchell, PS205: Introduction to International Relations, at the University of Oregon.

What's available? Excellent resources, including:

• Syllabus
• Lecture notes for 20 class sessions
• Case study assignment, including a pdf of materials for assignment and links to use (great assignment for lifelong learners)
• Targeted links to websites pertinent to the course

This is definitely a course you will want to add to your independent learning resources for understanding how our world works today.

History of Science at Princeton

Take a look at History 398 Technologies and Their Societies: Historical Perspectives, taught by Professor Michael S. Mahoney.

This 2006 course website offers an enormous amount of information on the history of science, focusing on technology. Almost all of the links are active, though sadly, a few are broken. Each week has extensive readings and links to material pertinent to the current topic.

One link of note is to The Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850 - 1920 at Duke University. I was not familiar with this archive that contains over 9,000 images in this one collection, plus many more collections. One area which I found very interesting was the collection of advertising cookbooks from 1878 to 1929.

Lifelong learners should find this course an interesting addition to learning resources.

Geobiology at MIT

One of MIT Open Courseware offerings is 12.007 Geobiology. This course uses Steven Stanley's Earth System History and additional readings are recommended. Lecture slides (pdf's) and text lecture notes are available. Several assignments give lifelong learners guidance on how to structure learning projects. "Take-home" exams top off the materials offered.

The course home page uses this description: "The interactive Earth system: Biology in geologic, environmental and climate change throughout Earth history. Since life began it has continually shaped and re-shaped the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere and the solid earth. Introduces the concept of "life as a geological agent" and examines the interaction between biology and the earth system during the roughly 4 billion years since life first appeared. Topics include the origin of the solar system and the early Earth atmosphere; the origin and evolution of life and its influence on climate up through and including the modern age and the problem of global warming; the global carbon cycle; and astrobiology."

Even without podcasts, which we are always expecting in our courses now, this is an excellent independent scholar's resource.

Just a side note: The image used on the course home page is one of Ron Blakey's great maps. See this post on The Coconino Chronicles.

Astrobiology at University of Hawaii

This Spring 2008 course, A281 -- Astrobiology, taught by astronomer Karen Meech, is a great course, with syllabus, lecture slides, handouts and homeworks available for download.

The textbook used is Life in the Universe, 2nd edition, by Bennett and Shostak.

The extensive handouts include a 79-page Astrobiology Primer: An Outline of General Knowledge--Version 1, 2006.

Professor Meech is a working astronomer, involved, with the 8th NASA Discovery mission, Deep Impact and many other projects.

You may also want to check out the Institute for Astonomy and the Astrobiology Institute at the University of Hawaii.

Conservation Biology at UIUC

IB 451 (ENVST 420, CPSC 436) Conservation Biology is Professor Ken Paige's Spring 2007, course at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His course website contains excellent lecture slides and lab readings. All resources are accessible. The lectures are in PowerPoint, with lecture notes in Word, and the readings are pdf's, so they're all easy to download.

He uses the textbook: Principles of Conservation Biology, Martha J. Groom, Gary K. Meffe, C. Ronald Carroll, 3rd edition.

All in all, lots of good information for lifelong learners studying conservation biology.

Physical Geography at Sofia

Here's a really well structured Physical Geography course at Sophia Open Content, by Allison Lenkeit-Meezan, Foothill College.

Textbooks used are:

• Geosystems 5th edition (Christopherson)
• Goode’s World Atlas 20th edition (Hudson)

This is a complete introduction to geography course which includes:

• Syllabus
• Schedule--A frame-work for lessons, readings, labs, quizzes and finals
• Lessons--Eleven
• Assignments (labs)--Six
• Exams--Eleven quizzes, two study reviews, a midterm exam and a final

Everything you need to guide you through a "semester" of physical geography. This is expecially beneficial to lifelong learners who like to have all the pieces in one place.

Introduction to General Astronomy

Alex Filippenko says that his class, Astro C10 / LS C70U Introduction to General Astronomy, is a description of the entire cosmos. He also says that this is one of the golden ages of astronomy because there are so many discoveries being made.

This is an excellent overview of the universe and introduction to Astronomy.

This course has video podcasts, as well as mp3's. Each video presents excellent slides in addition to the instructor's powerful lecture. This is one case where you can say, "He knows his astronomy so thoroughly that he wrote the book." Literally, he is the co-author, with Jay M. Pasachoff, of the textbook used in this course, The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New Millennium.

The companion website to this book provides some additional study materials, plus a link out to Jay Pasachoff's Astronomy 101 The Cosmos course at Williams College. I just discovered this additional resource while preparing for this post, so I have not yet looked at any of these videos. This will be interesting to see the difference in the presentations of these two professors. Let's rethink this--after further review, it appears both of them may be doing these lectures. I'll update this post after I have time to explore these lectures.

So far, I have not found a course website for either of these.

Looking Forward to Fall

While doing the dinosaur post yesterday, I discovered that the course had already been updated for Fall 2008. It's always so much fun to see what the new semester will bring from our favorite professors.

Hopefully, this fall will also bring more new courses to the podcast world. I am especially looking forward to the Fall 2008 update to UC Berkeley Webcasts. For the last week, I have been checking every day. The shell is usually up early, with the names of the courses that will be podcast during the new semester. For the last few years, more courses have been added each semester, so I am hoping that will be the case this fall.

I know that I sometimes (often) repeat myself about how fortunate we are to have access to ever-increasing resources on the Internet. But, it is true and I know that we lifelong learners do appreciate the opportunities that we have.

If you want to share your favorite resources, please post a comment.

Dinosaurs at Dixie State College of Utah

Thinking about dinosaurs? Take a look at Dr. Jerry D. Harris' course, Geology 1040 - Introduction to Dinosaurs. It's been updated already for Fall 2008.

Looks like some very solid material contained in 23 lectures, downloadable in pdf or PowerPoint format. Note that the ppt files will need to be saved as read-only to download.

Hope this be be a good addition to geology and dinosaur resources.

Americans and the Global Forest at UC Berkeley

Professor Lynn Huntsinger has an impressive amount of material on the website for her course at Berkeley, ESPM C11: Americans and the Global Forest. She says that the "course explores different ways of thinking about forests and our relationship to them." It does indeed do that. I especially like that she uses Simon Schama's Landscape and Memory. Now, if I can only pull out of storage, that one box holding this book captive.

There are notes available for 15 lectures. A few of the pdf's are password protected, but most of them are not. These pdf's are lecture slides and readings. Even with the few files that are unavailable to us, this is an excellent addition to the lifelong learner's resources for environmental history.

Biology at Clermont College

The University of Cincinnati, Clermont College, Biology Home Page is the portal to biology courses. By selecting "Courses" you will have access to numerous biology courses, for both biology majors and non-majors.

Each course offers a wealth of resources. For those lifelong learners who want podcasts of course lectures, this may be a disappointment, but the courses offered here give an enormous amount of information online. Note there are also links to The Merck Manuals Online Medical Library.

These should prove to be good additions to our biology resources.

Introduction to Archaeology at UCSB

Here's another archaeology course you'll want to check out, Anthropolgy 3 Introduction to Archaeology at UC Santa Barbara. Lots of great content in the Study Guide. Assignments are laid out for you and two essay exams that you can use. Take a look at the Writing Guide.

One tip that might be helpful--as of this writing, I had a problem getting to the instructor's homepage, which has more interesting information. Dr. Stuart Tyson Smith's homepage is here.

Don't miss the "Hollywood" page. Looks like Dr. Smith was involved in the Mummy movies and Stargate.