Researchers of the Intercontinental Academia detail course on Time

Presentation of the MOOC's details

At the end of the second phase of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA) in Nagoya, on March 18, the 13 participants presented the details of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on "Time" they have been working on since the first phase of the project in São Paulo.

The MOOC is the practical activity that has been asked to the participants as outcome of the ICA and was inspired by conferences, debates and workshops on the subject "Time", held both in São Paulo and in Nagoya.

The MOOC will be called 'Frontiers of Time: Exploring the Last Great Mystery' and will be hosted at Coursera's database, an online course platform created by five major American universities, of which USP is a partner.

There will be five lessons plus a video about the production of the course. Each lesson will take about one hour and have a text with approximately 7,000 words. The topics of the classes will be:

1. Introduction: Aspects of Time

2. Is the Present Special?

3. Time, Change and Cultural Differences

4. Is Time Different for Humans and Non-Humans?

5. How Do We Evaluate Time?

Each class will be divided into thematic sections. The first of them (Introduction: Aspects of Time), for example, will have four sections: 1) What is Time? 2) How do we perceive time? 3) How Do We Think About Time? 4) How do we use Time?.

The scripts will be ready in June and the filming is scheduled for August. One of the proposals is that the filming - with the performance of some of the participants - occurs at the research base of USP's Oceanographic Institute in Ubatuba, on the north coast of the State of São Paulo. Other alternative locations for the class production will still be considered.

Photo: IAR / Nagoya University