Yale's Most Popular Course, on Happiness, is FREE online and YOU can take it!
What is the Science of Well-Being? Find out on Coursera!!!
Laurie Santos, the Yale Professor who designed the course “The Science of Well-Being,” available on Coursera!
You may have heard of Yale’s most popular course ever, the course for college students on how to live happy and experience a more fulfilling life! The course, created and taught by professor Laurie Santos, filled up immediately and received a lot of buzz in the media. Well, now, the online learning site, Coursera, has the class, with all its readings, lectures, assignments and videos, available FOR FREE!!!
Students have the option of purchasing the course, if they want an official certificate of completion, but if you just want to learn for the sake of learning (actually something that Laurie Santos actually cites as an activity that can make us happy…), you can sign up for free! Coursera will give you a deadline by which to complete the class but you can extend it! (I did). There are quizzes (you even sign an honor code to commit to submitting your own work!) and different benchmarks and activities to guide your learning over the ten weeks of the course.
This is the screen that shows your choices to pay for the course with a certificate or take it for free!
So, what will you learn in the course? I am actually on Week 5 of the course and I am enjoying it very much! The course starts with lectures and readings that debunk our ideas of what actually makes us happy. Since the course is for Yale students, I would say that Santos puts quite an emphasis on the idea of grades and how good grades (along with lots of money, landing a “great job,” being married and having awesome stuff) are really NOT the things that make us happy. Since she is a psychologist, these ideas are not simply based on a hunch but are grounded in research, which Santos cites and for which she provides the readings for you, the student!
This is what the course lectures look like!
Santos not only discusses the things that DO make us happier - practicing gratitude, meditation, engaging in rewarding experiences, being kind to others, having a job that keeps us in the “flow” state, savoring our experiences, social connection and exercise - but she also gives assignments called rewirements that give students the opportunity to actually PRACTICE these happy habits and reflect on their results. Santos’ goal is for students to actually rewire their brains, rewire their routines, rewire their ways of thinking, so that they can integrate routines that will better their lives. She provides hand outs, which are basically trackers for you to track how many times a week you have done your rewirement.
This is what the rewirement handout looks like - a place to track your progress on practicing your happy habit that week.
Since Santos is not actually in your home and you do not have to give in these handouts, doing “the work” is really up to you! (Sort of like therapy!). The opportunities are there and through the lectures (with actual students in the videos, actual Q&A sessions you can watch with the students and real forums that YOU can participate in to talk to other online students and ask questions), readings and supplemental links she provides, you can definitely gain knowledge to learn why are brains trick us into thinking that things like making a lot of money or buying awesome things or getting the grades we want will actually make us happy and learn what behaviors can make you more happy. However, just like all the good things in life, it takes actual and consistent work to create the beautiful happy lives that we want. However, perhaps the resources from Santos will provide the path and let students take back control of their own happiness.