- Venue: Online
- Date: Self-paced course -- register and take it anytime
- Time: Now Open!
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Price: Free to Audit; $149 for Verified Track
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Course Overview
Do you want to awaken or rediscover your sense of purpose in life? Are you facing a major life change or transition and looking for a North Star to guide you through?
This course offers research-based techniques to hone your sense of purpose, no matter what stage of life you’re in, from the formative years of adolescence through midlife and older adulthood. It can also be used by educators, coaches, parents, mental health professionals, or anyone else trying to guide someone on their path to purpose.
Created by the Greater Good Science Center (GGSC), in partnership with CoGenerate, the core goals of the course are to:
- inspire learners to connect with a sense of purpose that feels both personally meaningful and socially valuable;
- give learners practical strategies they can use to help themselves--or others--find or sharpen that purpose.
The course guides learners through a series of activities that inspire reflection, action, and self-discovery--all based on key lessons from the science of living a purposeful life and grounded in design thinking. Each module combines insights from this research with inspiring stories and practical strategies that can be applied to your life, career, and community. This learning journey will tap into your creativity, prompt introspection, and inspire you to connect with what really matters most.
The course features presentations by a mix of renowned scholars, educators, and practitioners who have done pioneering work to help people of all ages sharpen their sense of purpose in life. They include:
- Kendall Bronk, psychology professor at Claremont Graduate University and one of the world’s leading experts on the science of purpose;
- Victor Saad, founder of the Experience Institute;
- Chip Conley, business leader and author of the book Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age, and founder of the Modern Elder Academy;
- and Eunice Lin Nichols and Marc Freedman, co-CEOs of CoGenerate (formerly Encore.org).
Their wisdom, stories, and best practices will be woven into the structure of the course, guiding learners through this exploration of purpose. Presentations will put special emphasis on intergenerational purpose--a call for young and old to come together around shared goals and challenges.
Finding Purpose Across Your Life will show you that it's never too late to develop or reconnect with your sense of purpose--and help you turn aspiration into action.
How to Sign Up
The Finding Purpose Across Your Life online course is hosted on the edX platform. You'll need to create an edX account before registering for the course on edX.
Verified Track
Please note this course can be taken for free; simply choose "Audit This Course" to register at no charge. This instructor-led course lasts 6 weeks. After that time, course materials will no longer be available for Audit learners. However, to have unlimited access to all course materials as long as the course is hosted on edX.org, upgrade to the Verified Track on edX for $149. As a Verified learner, you will receive a certificate of completion when you finish.
If you plan to use your course for job applications, promotions, or school applications, you may prefer to have this verified certificate of completion. It’s also a great way to give yourself an incentive to complete the course and celebrate your success.