- 28 Nov 2017
Give Melanie Mitchell and our team a hand! Help support Complexity Explorer’s mission of creating the ultimate home of complexity learning for all.
From November 28th through December 31st, we ask that you give back to Complexity Explorer.
With your contributions this year so far of ~$15,000 in donations, we have been able to tackle new initiatives head on, all while maintaining the great free content you already know and love. We also increased the number of scholarships we were able to offer students of paid courses, like Introduction to Agent-based Modeling.
Our goal for 2017 is to raise $30,000 in gifts from our community. We are half way there! Thank you so much to all of you who chose to donate while taking one of our free courses or tutorials, thank you to everyone who bought one of our old and new t-shirts, thank you to everyone who paid the tuition for Agent-based Modeling this year.
To boost your holiday gifts to Complexity Explorer, this year Melanie Mitchell, the founder of Complexity Explorer and acclaimed MOOC instructor, science writer and Professor is issuing a kick-off donation match of $2,000. She has committed to donating $2,000 to Complexity Explorer as soon as we raise $2,000 in community donations. If we can make that happen, our donation drive will be off to a flying start!
In addition, every donation from November 28th through December 31st gives you a chance to win some of our brand new swag at our new store complexityexplorer.threadless.com.
Donate $5 to $25 - enter to win a zip pouch, notebook or mug of your choice
Donate $26 to $100 - enter to win any one item of your choice
Donate over $101 - enter to win any two items of your choice
2018 Funding Plan
It takes about $200,000 USD to run Complexity Explorer at our current level. We are incredibly grateful to the John Templeton Foundation. Without their funding of Complexity Explorer we would never have been able to reach out to you all and explode beyond SFI's physical boundaries as we have. All good things come to an end, and we are ready to leave the JTF's nest! With the departure of our start-up grant from the John Templeton Foundation, we are getting creative with ways of sustaining and growing our content. A diversity of funding sources helps us weather any storm, and your gifts to us through donations, merchandise sales and tuition is a key element of that diversity.
2018 Funding Sources for Complexity Explorer
Our home, the Santa Fe Institute, takes care of the staff working on the platform. Our partnership with Arizona State University is helping us build a multitude of new courses for the SFI-ASU Master's in Complexity which we will adapt and bring to you as MOOCs. Challenge partners sponsor and help craft your Complexity Challenges. And you do the most important thing of all. You give us the freedom to explore new types of content, keep improving our website and keep the vast majority of our content free. We want to continue giving you free tutorials, a responsive learning space, and more interesting resources like Green Chile Science, Complexicon Bits and the Virtual Laboratory.
Wait, what? What are the Complexicon Bits? Glad you asked. Read on for a description of this exciting new content format.
Complexicon Bits
Introducing bite sized, crystal clear, beautifully produced complexity concept snippets for you to consume and share - the Complexicon Bits are here to bridge the gap between our Glossary and Tutorials and Courses. In early 2018 we'll be debuting the first of these 3 minute videos, designed to focus on particular concepts and terms fundamental to different areas of complexity science, animated and edited to enhance our expert scientist cast drawn from the Santa Fe Institute's vast network of star researchers. Dr. Paul Hooper will lead the way with our first ever Bit explaining the Gini Coefficient, coming to you soon. In 2018 and beyond, with help from your donations, we hope to create a comprehensive library of Bits to support your learning journey, and for you to use to entice your friends to venture down the complexity rabbit hole.
Is there a particular term or concept you'd like us to develop into a Complexicon Bit? Drop us a line and let us know!
Chaos & Nonlinear Dynamics Closing Soon
Our last courses of 2017 close on December 4th and 19th. Congratulations to all those that completed our MOOCs in 2017! Post those certificates with pride on your personal sites, LinkedIn, or your fridges! While you're basking in your success, let the rest of the world know how much you loved learning about nonlinearity, emergence, agents, scaling and more - leave a review on Class Central. We're a small but mighty fish in the big pond of online learning resources, and every review you leave helps bring more interested people to Complexity Explorer. We have a humble goal. We want everyone in the world to gain a basic understanding of complex systems. Your reviews and your sharing our resources help us with that task, so thank you!
In Development: Machine Learning for the Curious, Fundamentals of NetLogo
We're not so good at keeping secrets, so even though these two new tutorials aren't ready to launch yet we just 
had to tell you a little bit about them. In Machine Learning for the Curious, SFI postdoctoral research fellows Brendan Tracey and Artemy Kolchinsky will give you an eye-opening glimpse into the world of machine learning. Filming is done and the videos are being edited. We'll give you much more information on this tutorial in our next update! Fundamentals of NetLogo is Bill Rand's completely open, standalone answer to requests he's received from some students of his fantastic Agent-based Modeling course: a hands-on NetLogo tutorial to get you started with a powerful programming tool. Look for more details on that in the coming months! Your donations make it possible for us to keep creating and offering these free tutorials. Thank you!
Apply now for the Complexity Challenges and be ready for 2018
If you've been following our updates, then you've heard about our brand new initiative to bring a complexity research experience online for you. The Complexity Challenges are meant to be an exhilirating dive into the science of complex systems with real world problems open to any approach to solve them. They're also a ton of fun.
Watch this video to track the progression of the pilot Challenge from inspiration through to results, and take the plunge and get ready to take on a Challenge yourself. We've opened up the application process now, so you can get access and be ready when the first open Challenge launches in 2018. Scroll to the bottom of the Challenges page and you should see a button to launch the Application process.
Each Challenge will have a limit on the number of students that can enroll, so if you want to be able to nab one of those spots you should apply now to have access. That way, you'll be ready! We're in talks with a couple of potential partners to see who will be the lucky one crafting the next question. Stay tuned! You won't want to miss it...
