In a recent Times article, film critic Manohla Dargis writes about the growing number of female action heroes on the big screen. Ms. Dargis even refers to herself as “a critic who loves women who talk back, who fight back, who walk alone — women who own their power and ferociously, unapologetically, own the screen.”
Who are some of your favorite female characters in film, on television or on the page? Do you revere them for their strength or find them endearing for their flaws? What qualities do you think makes for a strong female character?
Tell us in the comments, then read the related article to learn more about “women who wallop.”
Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
1. After looking closely at the image above (or at the full-size image), think about these three questions:
2. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say.)
3. After you have posted, try reading back to see what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting another comment. Use the “Reply” button or the @ symbol to address that student directly.
Each Monday, our collaborator, Visual Thinking Strategies, will facilitate a discussion from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern time by paraphrasing comments and linking to responses to help students’ understanding go deeper. You might use their responses as models for your own.
4. On Thursday afternoons, we will reveal at the bottom of this post more information about the photo. How does reading the caption and learning its back story help you see the image differently?
By: Ji Su Lee and Eli Fogle, Coursera Teaching and Learning team
Many learners are new to online learning. It can be an isolating environment without the in-person opportunities to connect with the instructor and other learners. Creating an environment where learners can succeed includes many factors, and key among them is for students to feel comfortable, safe and well-represented.
Specifically, it is important to represent diverse populations in your course content, as our learners come from a wide range of backgrounds. For example, the population in the United States is nearly 40 percent non-white [PBS]. The Pew Research Center estimates that by 2055, the country will not have one racial or ethnic majority group. In fact, commercial film content featuring casts with 31-40% minority populations report the highest revenues. There is good reason to expect similar success in the educational realm! And of course, Coursera is a global platform with learners worldwide, so international representation is equally important.
Be sure to consider this context as you think about the audience for your course content. Learners will greatly appreciate and benefit from seeing diverse representation in your course and resulting course community.
Creating content that is diverse and inclusive is critical to learner success. Research has shown that diverse representation can help close gender and race gaps in education, and can create inclusive and productive course communities for all learners. Thus, educators have an important role to play in creating diverse and inclusive content.
Here are just a few examples of how learners may benefit from more inclusive content:
Research suggests that the racial diversity of the teaching workforce can help to close the achievement gap [US Department of Education].
Studies show that stereotype threat can adversely affect underrepresented minorities in educational settings. Stereotype threat is the pressure to avoid confirming negative stereotypes of their group. Research summaries in the Annual Review of Psychology report that stereotype threat accounts for 50 to 82% of the gender gap on the SAT-Math test. It also accounts for 25% to 41% of the White/Latino gap and 17%-29% of the White/Black gap on the SAT. Educators have an important role to play in mitigating these risks. Diverse representation and inclusive course engagement can communicate to learners that they are welcomed and supported.
Diverse representation in course content will help learners feel like they belong. Seeing one’s own demographic characteristics reflected in content can be a motivating factor for many students [PBS], as they can be strong role models for learners. Research shows that inclusion of successful female examples in STEM and sharing evidence of women gaining ground in these fields improves female performance in those subjects. In fact, these strategies effectively closed the gender gap in controlled academic experiments [Sex Roles].
If your course is targeting learners wishing to re-skill or up-skill, your efforts to increase representation can contribute to a greater sense of belonging in the learners’ desired professions and/or industries and increase chances of success.
Inclusion of diverse instructors and instructional designers in designing your content can greatly influence how you structure and deliver the content. Similarly, diversity in instructors can bring diverse perspectives to how online content can be delivered and how that content might be consumed.
Interaction with diverse groups through course discussion forums or the Coursera Community can help decrease reliance on media stereotypes to formulate one’s ideas about those outside one’s race [Forbes].
Increasing representation can help to differentiate your course from other similar courses with less representation, and attract more diverse learners to your course.
Here are a few strategies for including a more diverse population in your course content. They range from early production efforts to assessment design choices that can be implemented with lower lift. We hope that you’ll consider using a few of these strategies as you plan out your course material.
Hire diverse instructors as on-air talent. The on-air talents define the first few interactions that a learner has with your material. It is also very likely that video content is the most frequent instructional content type in your course. For the reasons shared above, learners will greatly appreciate seeing their demographic be represented in the on-air talent.
As another way to add diversity to your video content, add interview videos with practitioners of a diversity of backgrounds. With practitioner interviews, consider adding personal anecdotes and real-world applications of the content. This strategy can help ground the material, and hiring diverse talents for these videos makes the content more relatable and motivating.
Do avoid generalizing or assuming an individual represents a larger group (e.g. assuming a Black engineer will discuss underrepresented minorities in leadership positions just because they are Black).
If you have a background in your video featuring other students or instructors (for example, for a video on location), make sure that these individuals represent diverse backgrounds. We have conducted studies with the University of Michigan showing that even background representation can affect learner perception of the content (see image below). Your inclusion of diverse populations through various aspects can encourage diverse learners to progress with their coursework and enhance their sense of belonging.
For quiz questions or project instructions, be sure to include a wide range of character names that represent those of different races and genders. Additionally, check that these characters are not only conforming to jobs or roles that are stereotypical (e.g. a range of genders taking on leadership roles, and/or underrepresented minorities representing characters in STEM jobs).
It is equally important to encourage inclusive engagement in your course community. Here are a few strategies for creating an inclusive climate in your course.
Add a Reading item about discussion forum etiquette. Remind learners that their peers may not be from countries that speak the same language as them, or they may be learning the course language as a second or third (or even fourth!) language.
Avoid using colloquial language or idioms specific to a region. Region-specific terminology can be misinterpreted by more global audiences.
Try to respond to a variety of learners. Do you notice whether your responses tend to be for learners with names similar to your race and gender and/or nationality?
Recruiting mentors and teaching assistants is also a great way to include a variety of demographics in your course content. On Coursera, you can recruit a diverse group of mentors to help moderate discussion forums and support learners to reach their learning goals.
Leverage and/or create online communities. At Coursera, we have the Coursera community where we encourage learners to participate in our global forum of learners. Here, they can exchange information about course recommendations, career outcomes, educational goals, as well as resources and tips for reaching those objectives.
Make sure that your content is accessible to learners of varying levels of cognitive, motor, and sensory abilities. Creating accessible content will allow more learners to spend time fully engaging with content and actively participating in discussion forums. For example, not including alternative captions may prevent some learners from understanding the visual example in a discussion prompt.
If you’re just getting started on the path to learning to code, it can feel daunting. How long will it take until you know how to code?
Just like any complex topic that you want to learn about or master, you can break it down into smaller pieces and tackle each of those in turn. You just need to be realistic about how much time you have to spend on learning and where that will take you in the long run.
We’ll take a look at just how long it’ll take to learn to code and what the time commitment may look like for you. In addition to that, we’ll discuss the milestones you can expect to hit as you learn to code and the real-world applications of what you’re learning.
What are the different time frames for learning to code?
As you can imagine, the more time you spend practicing and learning, the quicker you’ll learn to code and put your skills to use solving problems. But each of us has a different amount of time to dedicate to our learning journey. So let’s start by identifying a few different types of learners and how long it will likely take each of them to learn to code.
Are you a casual learner?
Casual learners are looking to pick up skills one at a time. They aren’t in a rush, and they aren’t sure what they need to learn, so they just try new things. This type of learner will take the longest amount of time to learn to code, but that’s ok because they are approaching the task as a hobby or a long-term goal. For these learners, it’s likely to take a couple of years to learn to code.
Are you a career advancer?
Career advancers are learning to code because they know that it will help them do their job better. They already know where they need to start, and that means they can focus on learning what they need to know for a specific task. It’s hard to pinpoint an exact timeframe for learning to code, but for a career advancer, a year or so is a good estimate.
Are you a career changer?
The last type of learner is a career changer. These are people who want to learn to code so that they can do this as a career. They bring a focused effort to the task of learning what they need to, and their approach is similar to a gym; the more consistently they work on their skills and the more intensity they bring to their practice, the faster they’ll learn to code. These learners are likely to reach their end goal in under a year with dedicated focus to their career change of becoming a programmer.
If you’re thinking about a career in coding, we recommend checking out our Career Paths. Career Paths are designed to take you through everything you’ll need to learn to get an entry level job. There are four Career Paths to choose from: Data Scientist, Full-Stack Engineer, Front-End Engineer, and Back-End Engineer.
How to learn to code more quickly
As you’re starting out on your learning journey, regardless of the which type of learner you are, you want to set a realistic weekly time commitment for yourself. Now, everyone’s situation is different, so don’t put any extra pressure on yourself. Just put enough time into your pursuit so that you can make some decent progress each week. We’d recommend somewhere between five and 15 hours per week.
If your goal is “learn to code” in a general sense, it can feel overwhelming, and it’s almost impossible to know when you’ve succeeded. To get a better idea of how long it might take you to reach your goal of learning to code, here are a few tips to get clear on your path.
Figure out what type of work do you want to do
First, ask yourself this question. Once you know the type of work you want to do in this world, you can narrow in on the type of programming language you might need to learn as well as foundational skills and practice projects. You’ll also be much more clear about where to start and what tools are going to help you.
We’ve all been tempted to learn the latest and greatest thing when it comes to programming. But if you don’t know where it’ll apply in your work or daily life to make things easier, then it isn’t worth learning. Knowing what you want to do with code will allow you to hone in on the specific skills required for your specific work.
Start solving real-world problems as soon as possible
After you’ve learned some foundational skills and completed a couple of tutorials, start to put your skills into practice on problems you want to solve. Take your new skills on a test drive and try to solve a real-world problem. There really is no substitute for what you’ll learn when you start to take the training wheels off your learning-to-code journey.
Don’t waste time on memorization
Because of how many of us learned back in our grade school days, we think we need to memorize aspects of code to be a good programmer. But actually, being a good programmer isn’t about how much you know; it’s about how well you learn.
You might be surprised to hear that programmers often joke among themselves that their job is really just to be professional Googlers. There’s no need to get hung up on needing to know every last thing. Instead, most programmers are happy to keep moving forward with a task and look things up along the way.
Learning milestones you can look forward to reaching
While we’re all on our own timelines when it comes to learning to code, there are some common milestones to look forward to. Here are four main milestones that you’ll encounter on your way to learning to code:
The first a-ha moment when something you’ve been struggling to learn finally clicks
The first time your code runs without any bugs or errors
The first time you figure out what’s wrong in the code and why
The first time you’re no longer afraid of working in the terminal
If you’ve already reached some of these milestones, congratulations! You’re well on your way to learning to code. A few possible next milestones may be updating the styling on a website, learning HTML basics, or crafting an email campaign in HTML or CSS.
Don’t forget to celebrate each of these milestones along the way. You’re putting in real effort, carving out time to learn, and improving with every hour you set aside. With realistic and focused learning goals, you’ll reach the finish line in no time!
But many of the things you once had to experience in person, you can now experience online, and you can review any of those that fit into the categories of expression outlined above. Stream a theatrical performance, visit a virtual art gallery, watch dance on YouTube or laugh at comedy on Zoom. Remember, your digital experience — good or bad — can be part of your review.
And, of course, consider the things you can do outside safely, like visiting a piece of architecture, watching an outdoor performance or checking out public art.
Is there anything I can’t write about?
We invite you to review anything that fits into a category of creative expression covered by The Times. For example, you could review BTS’s latest album because The Times reviews music; but you could not review Santa Cruz decks and wheels because The Times does not review skateboards.
In addition, keep in mind that the work you send in should be appropriate for a Times audience — that is, something that could be published in a family newspaper (so, please, no curse words).
Can I have someone else check my work?
We understand that students will often revise their work based on feedback from teachers and peers. That is allowed for this contest. However, be sure that the final submission reflects the ideas, voice and writing ability of the student, not someone else.
Do I need a Works Cited page?
Our submission form does not allow for a separate Works Cited page for this contest. If you are quoting from another source or referencing someone else’s ideas, you should give appropriate credit in the review itself.
Here is an example of how to do so from one of last year’s winning reviews about New York City’s Penn Station:
As Vincent Scully, the late art critic, famously noted, “One entered the city like a god … One scuttles in now like a rat.” That blustery Friday afternoon, it wasn’t too hard to see Mr. Scully’s point.
_________
Questions About Judging
How will my review be judged?
Your work will be read by New York Times journalists as well as by Learning Network staff members and educators from around the United States. We will use this rubric to judge entries.
Mr. Van Halen structured his solos the way Macy’s choreographs its Independence Day fireworks shows: shooting off rockets of sound that seemed to explode in a shower of light and color. His outpouring of riffs, runs and solos was hyperactive and athletic, joyous and wry, making deeper or darker emotions feel irrelevant.
… Van Halen recorded its debut album for the label in just three weeks, employing few overdubs, the better to capture its in-concert brio. Released in early 1978, the album broke the Billboard Top 20 and, in the process, reasserted the power of hard rock at a time when disco, punk and new wave dominated.
“My name is Benson Samuel. I am from India and I am presently working in Kuwait as a safety officer. I have been studying with Alison for two years now.”
How did you learn about Alison?
I came across the website when I was searching for free online courses on Google.
What was your first course on Alison, and why did you choose it?
It was a safety course and I chose it as it was related to my job.
What’s your favourite way to relax from studying?
To take it easy on Friday and the weekend.
What’s next for you, in terms of education or work?
To enhance my career and to continue to learn new things about new subjects.
What would you say to someone if they asked you about Alison? Would you recommend it and why?
Alison is the best because it gives you full access to many subjects to study. I recommend Alison because their courses have the best curriculum.
“My name is Kelly Steinberg. I worked as a general manager for McDonald’s for 37 years. McDonald’s was my first job and it taught me many life skills. People are my passion.”
How did you learn about Alison?
I came across Alison online.
What was your first course on Alison, and why did you choose it?
Human Resources. I picked this course because, though I have a lot of managerial skills, I wanted to dig deeper into the field of HR.
What’s your favourite way to relax from studying?
I like to read and to go to see live concerts.
Where are you working and what are you studying now?
I am not currently working due to Covid-19. I am reskilling and learning bookkeeping and accounting. Alison courses are helping me towards my next career.
What’s next for you, in terms of education or work?
As far as work goes, I will choose a job I can do from home, while continuing to further my knowledge through Alison courses.
If you could learn absolutely anything in the world from an Alison course, what would it be?
A sign language course.
What would you say to someone if they asked you about Alison? Would you recommend it and why?
Alison has a wide range of classes and I like you that you can get certified which is good for your profile. I have recently recommended Alison to my friends and four of them have already started classes. I recommended Alison to them because you can learn at your own pace. I haven’t taken any classes since high school and, with these classes, I found I felt confident about the learning process. Alison has made me feel like I can complete any course with ease.
5. Mr. Chang writes that the space station has “turned into the linchpin for spurring capitalism in space.” What evidence does he provide to support that claim?
6. What is the future of the International Space Station? What will happen when it is retired? What role will private companies play?
7. The article concludes with the reflections of Michael T. Suffredini, who served as NASA’s space station program manager for a decade, from 2005 to 2015:
Mr. Suffredini said the current trajectory of life in orbit followed the path of previous exploration of new territories. “In any government exploration in the history of mankind, you send out a few people that are government funded to go do a relatively risky thing, just to see what’s there,” he said.
If there’s anything of value, the pioneers follow and eventually the settlers. “In order to establish low-Earth orbit,” Mr. Suffredini said, “we need to get to the pioneering stage, which is what we’re really doing.”
What does Mr. Suffredini mean by “pioneers” and “settlers”? How do you think the experiences at the International Space Station will help the future of space exploration and colonization? What do you think is the legacy of the I.S.S.?
Going Further
Option 1: Share Your Thoughts.
What’s your reaction to the article? What was the most fascinating, intriguing or surprising thing you read? Does it make you more excited about the International Space Station or space travel and exploration in general?
It was the United States that led the international coalition of 16 nations to build the space station. Constructing this outpost in outer space took dozens of missions spanning well over a decade to complete, and considerable money. It is clearly one of the more complicated engineering projects humans have undertaken.
It’s not perfect and it’s not designed to last forever, but what the International Space Station offers humans and nations is remarkable: an important opportunity to collaborate on shared scientific goals, mostly free from politics and almost entirely free from the influences of our planet …
But all of this will come to a screeching halt (though you won’t hear the “screech” in the vacuum of space) if the Trump administration ends funding for the International Space Station program beyond 2024, a step it is considering. The reasons are unclear, though President Trump has said that he wants to prioritize human travel to the moon.
Whatever the priorities, this sort of trade-off is shortsighted. Cutting funding for the station, now between $3 billion and $4 billion a year, would be a step backward for the space agency and certainly not in the best interest of the country.
Should the United States government continue to fund the International Space Station? Or is it better to have private companies build and maintain this and new ones? What is the benefit of the International Space Station to humanity and our future?
Would you want to visit or spend time on the International Space Station? What do you think you would enjoy most? What do you think would be the hardest part of living there?
Make some predictions: Do you think ordinary people (those who are not astronauts) will be living on space stations like the International Space Station in the next 20 years? Do you think you will ever live in outer space in your lifetime?
Option 2: Write a Letter Home — From Aboard the International Space Station!
Imagine you live on the International Space Station: Write a letter home telling friends and loved ones about your life aboard an outpost 250 miles above the earth.
Describe your daily life and routines, such as sleeping, eating and exercising as you float weightlessly in a microgravity environment, the challenges you face, as well the discoveries, joys and beauty you are seeing and experiencing.
