CROSSROADS EMERGING LEADERS PROGRAM

Introduction to Digital Humanities

Develop skills in digital research and
visualization techniques across subjects and
fields within the humanities.

About this course

As primary sources of information are more frequently digitized and available online than ever before, how can we use those
sources to ask new questions? How did Chinese families organize themselves and their landscapes in China’s past? How did
African slaves from different cultures form communities in the Americas? What influences informed the creation and evolution of
Broadway musicals? How can I understand or interpret 1,000 books all at once? How can I create a visualization that my students
can interact with? The answers to these questions can be explored using a wide variety of digital tools, methods, and sources.

As museums, libraries, archives and other institutions have digitized collections and artifacts, new tools and standards have been
developed that turn those materials into machine-readable data. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and the Text Encoding
Initiative (TEI), for example, have enabled humanities researchers to process vast amounts of textual data. However, these
advances are not limited just to text. Sound, images, and video have all been subject to these new forms of research.

This course will show you how to manage the many aspects of digital humanities research and scholarship. Whether you are a
student or scholar, librarian or archivist, museum curator or public historian — or just plain curious — this course will help you
bring your area of study or interest to new life using digital tools.

What you'll learn

• What the term “digital humanities” means in different disciplines.
• How common digital tools work and examples of projects using them.
• How various file types can be used to create, gather, and organize data.
• How to use command-line functions to analyze text.
• How to use free tools to create visual text analysis.

Lesson 1: Digital Humanities and Data

• Explain the term "digital humanities," and how it is understood across humanities disciplines.
• Describe the research journey as a partnership between researcher and library collections and staff.
• List examples of the limits of classification.
• Describe the implicit and explicit hierarchies that are created when gathering and analyzing data.
• Distinguish between what counts as data and what does not.
• Identify different data formats and how they fit into a research workflow.

Lesson 2: Digital Humanities Projects and Tools

• List tools of data analysis that can be applied to text in any language, space, networks, images, and statistical analysis.
• Evaluate existing digital platforms based on features that can be used for data analysis within different fields such as
literature, history, art, and music.

Lesson 3: Acquiring, Cleaning, and Creating Data

• Identify the differences between unstructured, semi-structured, and structured data.
• Distinguish between different file types, their definitions, and applications.
• Apply intellectual property rights to the downloading and sharing of data.
• Practice different ways of downloading or creating data.

Lesson 4: The Command Line

• Understand how command line functions work.
• Apply command line functions to text files.
• Create smaller text files from larger files using command line prompts.

Lesson 5: Working with Tools - Voyant

• Create data from multiple text files using Voyant.
• Compare data results across text files using visualization in Voyant.
 CROSSROADS EMERGING LEADERS PROGRAM

Strengthening Community Health Worker

Programs
Learn to deliver high-quality primary health care at
scale through national community health worker
programs..

About this course

Despite medical and technological advances, half of the world’s population lacks access to essential
health services, and over 8.9 million preventable deaths occur every year. There is an acute global
shortage of health workers, a gap that will grow to 18 million by 2030. Studies show that training high-
performing community health workers can help close these gaps and save more than 3 million lives
annually.

In the past few decades, many community health worker programs across the world have demonstrated
their ability to save lives — including in the hardest-to-reach areas. Yet despite this progress, lessons on
how to successfully scale these programs as part of national primary health systems are not widely
shared.

This course introduces learners to the core concepts of community health worker programs, and explores
what is needed to build and strengthen large-scale programs in order to improve access to high-quality
health services. The curriculum highlights the key components of designing community health systems,
addresses common management challenges, and showcases lessons learned from a range of
contributors — from community-level practitioners to government leaders and other global health experts.
Through case studies of exemplar countries (including Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Liberia), participants
will learn from leaders across the globe how to advocate for, build, and optimize community health worker
programs.

This course was created by health systems leaders for health systems leaders. Whether you work in a
Ministry of Health, lead or support a community health worker program, mobilize resources and advocate
for increased investment in community health, or you are simply interested in knowing what it takes to
deliver quality care through community health worker programs, learners will have the opportunity to
advance their knowledge and skills to implement critical change. This course can be taken individually,
but learners are also encouraged to convene their colleagues from within or across organizations to
share insights and further enhance the learning experience.

What you'll learn

• Core concepts in community health as part of primary health systems
• Key components in the design and optimization of community health worker programs as
exemplified through country case studies
• How to advocate for community health worker programs with key stakeholders
• The evidence demonstrating the impact and returns of community health workers
• How to build coalitions to support government-led programs
• How to break down silos and reduce duplicative efforts in the wider community health ecosystem
• The common issues that arise in implementing community health worker programs at scale
 CROSSROADS EMERGING LEADERS PROGRAM

Launching Breakthrough
Technologies
Explore how entrepreneurs build successful
businesses by moving technology from lab to
market.

About this course

Universities, government labs, and private companies invest billions of dollars in the research and
development of breakthrough technologies that have the potential to transform industries and lives
— but very few of these technologies ever leave the lab. Those that do often fail to find compelling
market applications. So what determines success? How does an invention become an enduring
innovation?

In this introductory course, developed in collaboration with the Laboratory for Innovation Science at
Harvard and the University of California San Diego, you’ll explore how entrepreneurs match
promising technology with customer needs to launch successful new businesses. Using real-world
examples, you’ll apply critical thinking to find the best way to translate and commercialize lab
technologies, and you’ll learn about the venture creation process from founders, funders, and
industry experts.

Join us to learn a systematic process for technology commercialization to bring cutting-edge

innovations out of the lab and into the world.

What you'll learn

• A systematic approach to the technology commercialization process
• How to match customer needs with promising technologies
• How to access technologies for commercialization and generate new use scenarios
• How to evaluate the readiness of a technology based on market and team readiness
• How to align business plans and operating models to markets and technology
• How to rate and rank ideas based on feedback from customers and experts
• How to position opportunities to secure funding
 CROSSROADS EMERGING LEADERS PROGRAM

Entrepreneurship in Emerging
Economies
Explore how entrepreneurship and innovation tackle
complex social problems in emerging economies.

About this course

This business and management course, taught by Harvard Business School
professor Tarun Khanna, takes an inter-disciplinary approach to understanding and
solving complex social problems. You will learn about prior attempts to address
these problems, identify points of opportunity for smart entrepreneurial efforts, and
propose and develop your own creative solutions.
The focus of this course is on individual agency—what can you do to address a
defined problem? While we will use the lens of health to explore entrepreneurial
opportunities, you will learn how both problems and solutions are inevitably of a
multi-disciplinary nature, and we will draw on a range of sectors and fields of study.

What you'll learn

• An awareness of the opportunities for entrepreneurship in fast-growing

emerging markets
• An understanding of a conceptual framework for evaluating such
opportunities
• An appreciation of the types of problems that lend themselves to
entrepreneurial solutions
 CROSSROADS EMERGING LEADERS PROGRAM

Fat Chance: Probability from the

Ground Up
Increase your quantitative reasoning skills
through a deeper understanding of
probability and statistics.

About this course

Created specifically for those who are new to the study of probability, or for those who are seeking an approachable review of
core concepts prior to enrolling in a college-level statistics course, Fat Chance prioritizes the development of a mathematical
mode of thought over rote memorization of terms and formulae. Through highly visual lessons and guided practice, this course
explores the quantitative reasoning behind probability and the cumulative nature of mathematics by tracing probability and
statistics back to a foundation in the principles of counting.

In Modules 1 and 2, you will be introduced to basic counting skills that you will build upon throughout the course. In Module 3, you
will apply those skills to simple problems in probability. In Modules 4 through 6, you will explore how those ideas and techniques
can be adapted to answer a greater range of probability problems. Lastly, in Module 7, you will be introduced to statistics through
the notion of expected value, variance, and the normal distribution. You will see how to use these ideas to approximate
probabilities in situations where it is difficult to calculate their exact values.

What you'll learn

An increased appreciation for, and reduced fear of, basic probability and statistics
How to solve combinatorial counting problems
How to solve problems using basic and advanced probability
An introductory understanding of the normal distribution and its many statistical applications
An ability to recognize common fallacies in probability, as well as some of the ways in which statistics are abused or simply
misunderstood