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Saylor Academy
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This course provides an introduction to critical thinking, informal logic, and a small amount of formal logic. Its purpose is to provide you with the basic tools of analytical reasoning, which will give you a distinctive edge in a wide variety of careers and courses of study. While many university courses focus on the presentation of content knowledge, the emphasis here is on learning how to think effectively. Although the techniques and concepts covered here are classified as philosophical, they are essential to the practice of nearly every major discipline, from the physical sciences and medicine to politics, law, and the humanities. The course touches upon a wide range of reasoning skills, from verbal argument analysis to formal logic, visual and statistical reasoning, scientific methodology, and creative thinking. Mastering these skills will help you become a more perceptive reader and listener, a more persuasive writer and presenter, and a more effective researcher and scientist. The first unit introduces the terrain of critical thinking and covers the basics of meaning analysis, while the second unit provides a primer in analyzing arguments. All of the material in these first units will be built upon in subsequent units, which cover informal and formal logic, Venn diagrams, scientific reasoning, as well as strategic and creative thinking.
- Subjects:
- Philosophy
- Keywords:
- Logic Critical thinking
- Resource Type:
- Courseware
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Courseware
This course introduces the basic concepts and methods of moral and political philosophy. We focus on the development of moral reasoning and how to apply these ideas to contemporary social and political issues. Although the course is organized around the concept of justice, we will discuss a wide range of philosophical topics and perspectives. We explore the value of human life, the moral standing of the free market, the notion of fundamental human rights, equality of opportunity, and the conditions for a moral community. We make extensive use of Michael Sandel's lecture series on justice, which was delivered at Harvard University in 2009. In addition to these lectures, we study several moral and political philosophers, such as Plato, Aristotle, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, and John Rawls. We also examine the contemporary thinkers Alasdair MacIntyre, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others, news articles, and primary source texts on important legal decisions. By the end of the course, you will have a better understanding of the philosophical issues involved in many contemporary debates in the public sphere, and a refined sense of your own moral and political positions and intuitions.
- Subjects:
- Political Science and Philosophy
- Keywords:
- Political science -- Philosophy Reasoning (Psychology) Political ethics
- Resource Type:
- Courseware
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Courseware
Descriptions of the 4 courses.
- Subjects:
- Philosophy
- Keywords:
- Logic Environmental ethics Critical thinking
- Resource Type:
- Courseware
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Courseware
We are all familiar with the science of operations management in some way, since we all have scarce resources and have to allocate those resources properly. Think about the process of preparing a meal: you have to gather all the proper ingredients and prepare them for cooking. Certain ingredients go in at certain times. Occasionally, you fall behind or get too far ahead, jeopardizing the entire meal. And, of course, if you find that you do not have enough ingredients, even more problems arise. All of these elements of meal preparation – purchasing ingredients, prepping the ingredients by dicing them up, mixing ingredients together, boiling or baking the dish, serving, and cleaning – can be seen as parts of operations management. In the realm of business, operations management is more complicated than preparing a family meal. There may be hundreds or thousands of participants rather than just you and your brother or wife or grandfather cooking in the kitchen. Each participant has a specific role in the operations process; if any step of the process is disrupted, the whole process can stall or fall apart. Smart operations managers will have contingency plans in the event that stoppages occur. In this course, you will learn the fundamentals of operations management as they apply to both production and service-based operations. Successful completion of this course will empower you to implement the concepts you have learned in your place of business. Even if you do not plan to work in operations, every department of every company has processes that must be completed; someone savvy with operations management will be able to improve just about any process.
- Subjects:
- Logistics
- Keywords:
- Production management
- Resource Type:
- Courseware
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Courseware
Principles of Finance will focus on what these managers, investors, and government agencies do with this information. It is an introductory course to various fields of finance and is comparable in content to courses that other institutions label as "corporate finance" or "financial management". Finance is a broad term; you will find that both managers that compile the financial reports we discussed in financial accounting and stockbrokers working on Wall Street will claim that they work in finance. So what exactly is finance? Finance is the science of fund management. It is distinct from accounting in that, whereas accounting aims at organizing and compiling past information, finance is geared towards deciding what to do with that information. In this course, you will be exposed to a number of different sub-fields within finance. You will learn how to determine which projects have the best potential payoff, to manage investments, and even to value stocks. In the end, you will discover that all finance boils down to one concept: return. In essence, finance asks: "If I give you money today, how much money will I get back in the future?". Though the answer to this question will vary widely from case to case, by the time you finish this course, you will know how to find the answer. You will learn how to use financial concepts such as the time value of money, pro forma financial statements, financial ratio analysis, capital budgeting analysis, capital structure, and the cost of capital. This course will also provide an introduction to bonds and stocks. Upon completion of this course, you will understand financial statements, cash flow, time value of money, stocks and bonds, capital budgeting, ratio analysis, and long term financing, and apply these concepts and skills in business decisions.
- Subjects:
- Finance
- Keywords:
- Business enterprises -- Finance Finance Corporations -- Finance
- Resource Type:
- Courseware
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Courseware
Management is the organization and coordination of work to produce a desired result. A manager is a person who practices management by working with and through people in order to accomplish his or her organization's goals. When you think of the term manager, you may be imagining your supervisor as he or she hires and terminates employees and makes major decisions above your authority. However, although you may not view yourself in this way, you yourself may also be a manager. In fact, many of us practice management skills in the workplace every day. You may have a team of employees that you manage, or lead a project that requires management strategy, or demonstrate leadership qualities among your peers. These are all scenarios that require you to apply the principles of management. In this course, you will learn to recognize the characteristics of proper management by identifying what successful managers do and how they do it. Understanding how managers work is just as beneficial for the subordinate employee as it is for the manager. This course is designed to teach you the fundamentals of management as they are practiced today. This course will illustrate how management evolves as firms grow in size. It is based upon the idea that the essential purpose of a business is to produce products and services in order to meet the needs and wants of the marketplace. A manager marshals an organization's resources (its people, finances, facilities, and equipment) toward this fundamental goal. In this course, you will explore the tasks that today's managers perform and delve into the key knowledge areas that managers need to master in order to run successful and profitable businesses.
- Subjects:
- Management
- Keywords:
- Management
- Resource Type:
- Courseware
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Courseware
In this course, we study some of the most important political revolutions that took place between the 17th century and today. We explore the causes of each revolution, analyze the ideologies that inspired the revolutionaries, examine revolutionary uses of violence, and consider how historical revolutions still shape contemporary politics. Close and critical readings of historical sources are critical to this process.
- Subjects:
- History
- Keywords:
- Political science Revolutions
- Resource Type:
- Courseware