McGill is offering free online course on Human Population Dynamics: Births, Deaths and Migrations. In this eight week course, applicants will explore the impact of births, deaths and migrations on us as citizens, on our societies, and the environment.
In this course, we will discuss why population age-sex structures and the demographic variables themselves matter, and should matter, to all of us as citizens insofar as they constrain the options available to us and limit the choices we and our societies are asked to make.
User Review
( votes)Course At A Glance
Length: 8 weeks
Effort: 3-5 hours pw
Subject: Social Sciences
Institution: McGill and edx
Languages: English
Price: Free
Certificate Available: Yes, Add a Verified Certificate for $49
Session: Closed
Providers’ Details
Founded in Montreal, Quebec, in 1821, McGill is a leading Canadian post-secondary institution. It has two campuses, 11 Faculties, 11 professional schools, 300 programs of study and some 39,000 students, including more than 9,300 graduate students.
About This Course
We are born, we usually move around during our lifetimes, and then, in time, we die. These three aspects of our daily lives – births, movements, and deaths – constitute the building blocks of population dynamics. Fertility, mortality, and migration, as they are more formally known respectively, comprise the central processes of population studies or demography.
Why Take This Course?
The composition of the population in which we live as characterized by its age-sex structure, and especially changes in it over time, shape many of our life-chances and have important socio-economic and political consequences for the societies that we have and what they can and are likely to become.
Learning Outcomes
You will learn:
- How births, movements, and deaths are defined and measured in population studies;
- Ways to “visualize” a population’s age-sex structure and its implications for various social structures and institutions;
- Why data is the life-blood of demography;
- To ask the right kinds of questions in relating the population variables to other significant societal and personal events and changes;
- About the environmental impact of human populations and their activities;
- What policies have been implemented to deal with the three demographic variables?
Instructors
Anthony Masi
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Prof Masi, attended Colgate University on academic and athletic scholarships (but by his own admission was a much better student than he was a football player) and holds a doctorate in sociology-demography from Brown University.
Requirements
None
How To Join This Course
- Go to the course website link
- Create an edX account to SignUp
- Choose “Register Now” to get started.
- EdX offers honor code certificates of achievement, verified certificates of achievement, and XSeries certificates of achievement. Currently, verified certificates are only available in some courses.
- Once applicant sign up for a course and activate their account, click on the Log In button on the orghomepage and type in their email address and edX password. This will take them to the dashboard, with access to each of their active courses. (Before a course begins, it will be listed on their dashboard but will not yet have a “view course” option.)
