Do you wonder what the European Union is all about? What challenges does it face and can it survive them? How will the eurozone crisis, the refugee crisis, Brexit and the COVID-19 outbreak reshape Europe? This is the course for you! In this course, we will introduce you to key concepts and historical turning points, which have shaped contemporary Europe. What is national sovereignty and can it be shared? What impact has the 1989 collapse of communism had on Europe and is the East-West divide still relevant today? Can the North-South division triggered by the eurozone crisis be overcome, or will it be reinforced through the COVID-19 outbreak? And finally, what is the best size for a political unit? The course’s ultimate focus is on the function and status of national and European borders and the question of what it means to belong to a political community: who is in, who is out? How and why are people included or excluded? And, what, finally, is the future of a borderless Europe? Taught by a skeptical European who lived, studied and worked in Germany, Slovakia, Ireland, Australia and Hong Kong, this course includes a number of interviews with leading scholars, practitioners and best-selling authors, including Timothy Garton Ash, David Goodhart, Kalypso Nicolaïdis, George Papandreou and Helen Thompson. The European Union pervades all aspects of people’s lives. But the course will be of particular interest to many professionals dealing with the EU whether they are EU citizens, or not.
An excellent online course offered by edX: how it works
edX courses consist of weekly learning sequences. Each learning sequence is composed of short videos interspersed with interactive learning exercises, where students can immediately practise the concepts from the videos. The courses often include tutorial videos that are similar to small on-campus discussion groups, an online textbook, and an online discussion forum where students can post and review questions and comments to each other and teaching assistants. Where applicable, online laboratories are incorporated into the course.
edX offers certificates of successful completion and some courses are credit-eligible. Whether or not a college or university offers credit for an online course is within the sole discretion of the school. edX offers a variety of ways to take courses, including verified courses where students have the option to audit the course (no cost) or to work toward an edX Verified Certificate (fees vary by course). edX also offers XSeries Certificates for completion of a bundled set of two to seven verified courses in a single subject (cost varies depending on the courses).
An edX learning programme under Other Experiences
