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Health, Sports & Psychology
Are you driven to distraction?
Can you drive safely and work effectively at the same time? If you ever need to make your vehicle a mobile office, by having hands free phone conversations, how confident are you that neither your work, nor your driving suffers?
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History & The Arts
Discovering music through listening
This free course, Discovering music through listening, will introduce you to the musical elements used by musicians to create a piece of music: pulse, tempo, metre, harmony, structure, texture, timbre and dynamics. You'll learn how to identify the different musical elements by taking a particular approach to listening to the music, known as close listening. Alongside developing your listening skills, you will learn how to explain what you hear using technical language.
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History & The Arts
What is a literary festival?
Literary festivals have gained traction in recent years, and perhaps one of the better-known literary festivals in the UK is ‘The Hay Festival of Literature & Arts’.
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History & The Arts
The importance of planning a musical performance
Many of us have had the festival experience as a spectator, but what’s it like to actually perform at a festival in front of hundreds of thousands of people? Dr Sean Williams, Lecturer in Music Technology, shares his experience DJing at Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert.
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History & The Arts
Classical Studies: festivals
‘Festival’ at its very essence, is a collective event where people come together to enjoy life’s simple pleasures – music, dancing, food and drink. But it isn’t a modern concept. Academics within our Classical Studies discipline share their favourite ancient Greek and Roman festivals, the only difference being, that in antiquity, the gods were at the centre of everything.
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History & The Arts
Celebrating festivals from the past and present
The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) has curated a virtual festival to showcase and celebrate some of the lesser-known festivals of the past and present. Explore festivals dating back to Ancient Greece and Rome, discover the rise of literary festivals and ‘protestivals’, plus take a look at two very different sides to Glastonbury.
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History & The Arts
Glastonbury and the festival
Glastonbury, a town nestled in southwest England, is one of the most popular and sacred pilgrimage sites, and it also happens to host one of the world’s most famous music festivals!
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Money & Business
You and your money
An important aspect of personal finance is the way in which individuals and households manage their debt, how much it costs and the different types of credit they can or cannot access. This free course, You and your money, explores these issues, with respect to the wider, changing, social and economic context.
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Society, Politics & Law
Critical criminology and the social sciences
This free course, Critical criminology and the social sciences, will provide you with an insight into some of the main disciplines within the social sciences, focusing in particular on critical criminology. It will begin by outlining some of the defining characteristics of the social science disciplines of psychology, law, sociology and critical criminology. Using the global financial crisis of 2007-8 as a case study, the course will then provide you with an insight into how academics working in some of these different disciplinary backgrounds make sense of a similar topic in different ways. The course will conclude by considering the place of critical criminology within the social sciences.
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Health, Sports & Psychology
Making sense of ourselves
This free course, Making sense of ourselves, introduces you to well-known psychological topics by asking and answering everyday questions, such as Why don’t we like one another? Why would I hang around with you? Do you see what I see? What’s the point of childhood? You’ll learn how psychologists can go about addressing these questions using different research tools and approaches.
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Level
History & The Arts
Discovering music: the blues
This free course, Discovering music: the blues, will introduce you to a musical tradition with roots in the nineteenth century but which is still relevant to making music today. You will learn about how the lyrics of blues songs reflect the social environment in which they were created, and about the musical techniques that underpin the structures of blues songs. You do not need to play an instrument, to sing or have any prior musical knowledge to be able to complete this course.
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Level
History & The Arts
Icarus: entering the world of myth
This free course, Icarus: entering the world of myth, will introduce you to one of the best-known myths from classical antiquity and its various re-tellings in later periods. You will begin by examining how the Icarus story connects with a number of other ancient myths, such as that of Theseus and the Minotaur. You will then be guided through an in-depth reading of Icarus’ story as told by the Roman poet Ovid, one of the most important and sophisticated figures in the history of ancient myth-making. After this you will study the way in which Ovid’s Icarus myth has been reworked and transformed by later poets and painters.