TED Studies- the world's most interesting courses

You’ll agree with me that most of the TED lectures are both interesting in their own fields, and inspirational. Imagine that you could take a complete degree program through these lectures.

A new initiative allows lecturers to integrate TED lectures into the courses that they teach. TED, in conjunction with John Wiley & Sons, have begun to produce courses combining TED lectures and Wiley academic materials.

TED is a non-profit organization which invites people from all over the world to lecture at its annual conference, on a wide range of subjects, including science, art, design, politics, education, culture, business, technology and so on. The organization’s motto is “Ideas Worth Spreading.” Most of the lectures also appear on the organization’s website, and many of them have even been translated into Hebrew.

Their new program is called TED Studies. The program offers lecturers content from academic courses based on TED lectures, with a supporting framework of academic articles, assignments and activities. The first two courses available to lecturers are in psychology – “Understanding Happiness,” and in statistics – “Visualizing Data.” Proposals for additional courses will soon be made available, such as:

• Government and politics: The Web – Influence and Power
• Religion: Understanding Islam
• Linguistics: Researching the Evolution of Language
• Urban planning: The Ecology of Cities
• Marine biology: Deep Oceans
• Communications and journalism: Covering World News

The advantage of courses based on TED lectures is the immediate connection with inspirational, groundbreaking lecturers and researchers in relevant areas. The range of lecturers offers a variety of points of view, a number of research directions and diverse opinions on the area being studied. In addition, lectures from those most active in specific fields make the courses more relevant and meaningful.

So, which course would you like to take?