Introduction
Are you ready to learn more about social change and activism? Here are 7 MOOCs from Oxfam International and universities.
MOOCs stands for Massive Open Online Courses which are free online courses that have no entry requirements. Anyone with an internet connection can take part. Click on the titles to go to the course website.
Courses in Social Change and Activism
Make Change Happen
Understand how power dynamics, collaboration, opportunity and action can tackle injustice and bring positive change. Learn what drives positive social change in your role as a changemaker. If we want to make effective and lasting social change, we must understand power dynamics, social systems and how change really happens.
Created by: Oxfam International, The Open University
Developed in partnership with the University of Birmingham Developmental Leadership Program and La Trobe University, Australia.
Delivered by: FutureLearn
This course is for activists, artists, and thinkers who wish to better understand and participate in social change. We will focus on the prolific and exciting overlap between socially engaged art and cultural practices generated by recent social movements around the world. Rather than assess the political efficacy of activities like mourning, listening, organizing, dancing, or partying, the lectures examine such cultural activities next to, and within, contemporary art practice.
Created by: Creative Time, Duke University
Delivered by: Coursera
Psychology of Political Activism: Women Changing the World
Learn what motivates prominent women such as Gloria Steinem, Loretta Ross, and others to become involved in activism in this political psychology course. Have you ever wanted to change the world? Have you ever wondered what motivates some people to become activists? What experiences in your childhood or when you were a teenager may have shaped your political identity? Join us, along with Gloria Steinem, Loretta Ross, and others, in a seven-week exploration of these questions and more.
Created by: Smith College
Delivered by: EdX
DavidsonX: Unpacking Activism
We are currently in a moment of heightened activism, but many of us are unsure of how to act, or shudder at the thought of more people getting involved in a cause without deeply reflecting on what that means. Activist engagement comes with a responsibility to understand the workings of power and the contexts that inform what, how, and why activist endeavors exist in the ways that they do, and who is involved in them and in what capacity. It also requires that we understand how our identities and positions in society influence our actions and how they might be perceived.
This course will help you better understand our current moment and how you might best get involved by considering global and historical contexts for activism, learning skills to make sense of the activism you see, and (re)discovering why and how to act
Created by: Davidson College
Delivered by: EdX
Human Rights Activism, Advocacy and Change
Learn about the role of social movements, advocacy groups and activism in bringing about social change. It covers a range of social movement theories and concepts and explores specific movements and campaigns to illustrate the diversity of movement philosophies, methods and outcomes.
Created by: Curtin University, CurtinX
Delivered by: EdX
Social Norms, Social Change
This is a course on social norms, the rules that glue societies together. It teaches how to diagnose social norms, and how to distinguish them from other social constructs, like customs or conventions. These distinctions are crucial for effective policy interventions aimed to create new, beneficial norms or eliminate harmful ones. The course teaches how to measure social norms and the expectations that support them, and how to decide whether they cause specific behaviors. The course is a joint Penn-UNICEF project, and it includes many examples of norms that sustain behaviors like child marriage, gender violence and sanitation practices. This is Part 1 of the Social Norms, Social Change series. In these lectures, I introduce all the basic concepts and definitions, such as social expectations and conditional preferences, that help us distinguish between different types of social practices like customs, descriptive norms and social norms. Expectations and preferences can be measured, and these lectures explain how to measure them. Measurement is crucial to understanding the nature of the practice you are facing, as well as whether an intervention was or was not successful, and why. In Part 2, we will put into practice all we have learned in Part 1.
Created by: University of Pennsylvania
Delivered by: Coursera
Global Social Change
Learn how everyday people in China, Bangladesh, Mexico, and the U.S. transform the world around them and advocate for social change. What possibilities exist for a fairer world? Can one person truly make a difference? In this social sciences course, we sample the possibilities and limits of social change in an interconnected, inequitable global landscape.
Created by: WellesleyX
Delivered by: EdX
Let us know if you have come across any others and we will add them to the list. Have you done one of these courses? We would love to find out what you thought.
Note: Some courses may have already finished. Please contact the course providers to see if they will be holding more in the future.
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