Yale Center for Teaching and Learning

Online Learning for Alumni

Yale currently offers online courses on a variety of platforms including Coursera, Open Yale Courses, YouTube, and iTunes U. Yale’s philosophy of teaching and learning begins with the goal of providing a broadly based and highly disciplined approach to higher education.

Yale on Coursera:

Yale has partnered with Coursera, a MOOC platform, to amplify the impact of great teaching beyond the campus. Coursera allows free access to high-quality educational materials with a social, interactive approach designed to assess learning.

Open Yale Courses:

Open Yale Courses (OYC) provides lectures and other materials from selected Yale College courses to the public. The courses span the full range of liberal arts disciplines, including humanities, social sciences, and physical and biological sciences.   Registration and enrollment is not required and course do not offer credit hours, degrees, or certificates.

Yale on YouTube:

The Yale Courses channel on YouTube provides entry into the core of the University via its classrooms and academic programs. This channel includes complete sets of lectures from the Open Yale Courses initiative. Complementary syllabi, transcripts, and other resources may also be accessed from the Open Yale Courses site.

Yale on iTunesU:

Listen to Yale faculty, visitors, and performers from a variety of on-campus events and lectures.

Constitutional Law

This course is designed to introduce you to one of the most important texts in human history—the United States Constitution. Why and how did this document come into existence in the 1780s? How and why has it been amended over the years? Who decides what it means? What are the ground rules for proper constitutional interpretation? How does the written Constitution interact with unwritten sources of constitutional authority, such as judicial decisions, presidential proclamations, landmark statutes, and widespread popular understandings?

Find this course on: Coursera  

Principles of Evolution, Ecology and Behavior

This course presents the principles of evolution, ecology, and behavior for students beginning their study of biology and of the environment. It discusses major ideas and results in a manner accessible to all Yale College undergraduates. Recent advances have energized these fields with results that have implications well beyond their boundaries: ideas, mechanisms, and processes that should form part of the toolkit of all biologists and educated citizens.

Find this course on: YouTube  iTunes U  

Fundamentals of Physics I

This course provides a thorough introduction to the principles and methods of physics for students who have good preparation in physics and mathematics. Emphasis is placed on problem solving and quantitative reasoning. This course covers Newtonian mechanics, special relativity, gravitation, thermodynamics, and waves.

Find this course on: YouTube  iTunes U  

Cervantes' Don Quixote

The course facilitates a close reading of Don Quixote in the artistic and historical context of renaissance and baroque Spain. Students are also expected to read four of Cervantes’ Exemplary Stories, Cervantes’ Don Quixote: A Casebook, and J.H. Elliott’s Imperial Spain. Cervantes’ work will be discussed in relation to paintings by Velázquez. The question of why Don Quixote is read today will be addressed throughout the course. Students are expected to know the book, the background readings and the materials covered in the lectures and class discussions.

Find this course on: YouTube  iTunes U  

Philosophy and Science of Human Nature

Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature pairs central texts from Western philosophical tradition (including works by Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Hobbes, Kant, Mill, Rawls, and Nozick) with recent findings in cognitive science and related fields. The course is structured around three intertwined sets of topics: Happiness and Flourishing; Morality and Justice; and Political Legitimacy and Social Structures.

Find this course on: YouTube  iTunes U  

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