Distance STAR courses

This course aims to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions about witchcraft, magic and the dead, as well as introducing students to key anthropological concerns such as ritual, symbolism and religion.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

To answer many of the world’s most challenging questions e.g. those related to healthcare, social justice, poverty, climate change, and how we deal with global pandemics we need to understand evidence. This can come in various forms text, images, numbers. Evidence can be a driver for major decision making, help us to gain insight and form connections between issues, and reveal patterns and trends that would otherwise be hidden from us. How do we confidently assess evidence like this? Our decision-making is very often based on the numbers that shape the world we live in. In this course we will explore how to think quantitatively and qualitatively about the evidence behind the world’s ‘wicked problems’, and our ideals now and in the past. Subjects touched on will include public health crises, gender and ethnicity biases in the media, the representation of minority groups in the criminal justice system, and symmetry and patterns in art, literature, and other forms of human expression. The skills you will learn--of evaluating the evidence behind big issues and ideals of the day, and being able to communicate those issues to others--will be of value no matter what your course of study or future walk of life.

Semester: S1, S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

CHCH101 offers anyone interested in active citizenship, community engagement, and social innovation with the opportunity to combine academic content with volunteering and critical reflection. Through this innovative design and delivery, this course serves as a cornerstone experience for further study in these topics across a wide range of disciplines.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

A beginner's level course, focusing on the four basic language skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening, designed for students with little or no previous knowledge of the Chinese language.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

Following CHIN151 and still focusing on the four basic language skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening, this course teaches how to conduct simple conversations, and read and write simple texts in Chinese at an elementary level, with an adequate cultural understanding of China.

Students should complete CHIN151 or a placement test first.

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

This course, following CHIN152 and still focusing on the four basic language skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening, is a Chinese language course teaching how to conduct daily and social conversations, and to read and write texts in Chinese at an early intermediate level, with an adequate cultural understanding of China.

Students should complete CHIN152 or a placement test first.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

This course, following CHIN251 and still focusing on the four basic language skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening, is a Chinese language course, teaching how to communicate Chinese in social and semi-formal situations at an intermediate level, with an adequate cultural understanding of China.

Students should complete CHIN251 or a placement test first.

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

In this course we will survey events in antiquity from Homer through to the Roman Emperor Constantine. On the way we will explore the world of fifth century Athens, gaining an insight into the society that established democracy and move on to appreciate Alexander's campaigns and the formation of the Hellenistic kingdoms after his death. We will also turn to the west of the Mediterranean Sea and investigate the development of Rome from a small town to the capital of a large Empire, its constitutional transformations and the social impact of those changes on people's sense of place and identity.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

In this course students will consider how the Greeks and the Romans thought of themselves and others in their mythology and social power structures. Students will gain an understanding of ancient cosmic world-views, gender issues, colonisation and identity in Archaic and Classical Greece and Augustan Rome, and the relevance of such ideas now. Students will read, analyse and interpret ancient literary texts (selections from epic, tragedy, etc.) and material culture (art and architecture) that depict Greek and Roman myths as well as expressing ancient political and social views.

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

An introduction to Latin grammar and to reading Latin, following on from CLAS151.

Students should complete CLAS151 or equivalent preparation approved by the Head of School first.

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

This course introduces Greek, Latin grammar to students by way of English grammar. At the end of the course students will understand the most important basic grammatical concepts in Greek and Latin and will have a working vocabulary of about 75 words in each language. They will be prepared to continue more intensive study in Greek and/or Latin.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

COMS101 explores the relationship between society and media - including social media, print, broadcasting, and all kinds of online spaces. It asks how our understandings of the world and people around us are mediated, how media have shaped society, and how society is reflected and produced through media. We will explore topics like media audiences, technologies, ownership and work; the frames of representation, power, and identity; and analytical tools like semiotics, discourse, and narrative. COMS101 is a stage one course that does not require any prior media study, but it builds on everything you have ever watched, listened to, interacted with, and produced. It includes weekly written exercises to develop core university skills and learn effectively from the teaching staff and from each other.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

The course introduces students to public communication, from social media posts to journalism to strategic communication and more. It blends applied work with theoretical and critical thinking about forms of public communication. Students will learn writing and media planning skills, alongside classes discussing major public communication practices and classes studying the way those bring together different kinds of public. Emphasis will be placed on the representation of te ao Maori in different public communication practices and on how Maori and Pacific publics are convened. The course also provides opportunities for groupwork, where students learn from each other and can support each other’s learning.

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

What is the European Union? How important is it in Global Affairs? Why is the EU expanding? What lead to the BREXIT vote and what influence will it have? Through the use of traditional and online teaching methods, this course introduces students to the identity, structure and function of the EU, its key challenges and its role and impact on the world, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

German language course for beginners, i.e. students with no knowledge of German, based on the communicative approach.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

A German language course that follows on from GRMN 151, based on the communicative approach.

Students should have completed GRMN151 first or 20 credits German at NCEA Level 2 or by placement test.

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

This course will introduce students to the contemporary issue of violence in society and its impact on the community. A broad overview will be provided of five main areas of violence: child protection; family violence; youth violence; institutional and cultural violence; and, crime and deviance.

This course covers some sensitive topics.

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

The course introduces students to the diverse realities of ‘youth’ with a focus on multiple contexts. Students explore the concept of youth and the cultural, historical, political and economic contexts in which young people live and the decisions that they make. We critically consider the issues that place young people outside the margins of dominant society, and the responses, models and theoretical frameworks used in youth studies.

This course covers some sensitive topics.
Students who have completed SOWK104 should not enrol in this course.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

What do babies know about language when they're born? And how do our experiences as we get older affect both how we use language and what we think about other people's language behaviour? Why, for example, do people think some languages, or some dialects, are 'better' than others? And is there any truth behind such beliefs? In this course we consider a range of research from the field of linguistics that addresses these and other questions. The role of language experience will emerge as a recurrent theme: the experience that the infant has with a particular language; how our early experience with language affects how we speak and how we listen, and how our beliefs about language are created and maintained in connection to other experiences in our social lives.

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

What do babies know about language when they're born? And how do our experiences as we get older affect both how we use language and what we think about other people's language behaviour? Why, for example, do people think some languages, or some dialects, are 'better' than others? And is there any truth behind such beliefs? In this course we consider a range of research from the field of linguistics that addresses these and other questions. The role of language experience will emerge as a recurrent theme: the experience that the infant has with a particular language; how our early experience with language affects how we speak and how we listen, and how our beliefs about language are created and maintained in connection to other experiences in our social lives.

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

This course provides an introduction to Māori knowledges and metaphysics through a study of topics such as voyaging, art and aesthetics, warfare, conflict and peace. We also look at how approaches to Māori knowledges and their impacts are critiqued.

Students should have NCEA Level 2 Literacy, either English or Te Reo Māori and Te Reo Rangatira. 
Students younger than 16 years of age must have Head of School approval first to enrol in this course. Students with Te Reo Rangatira NCEA credits need to meet with the Head of School to assess appropriate level of entry.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

Through focus on the themes of Power, Property and Citizenship, this course examines the historical realities of the Treaty, enabling an understanding of the modern colonial nation state and its processes with respect to Indigenous peoples. The course examines Māori responses, engagement with, and resistance to the colonial project leading to a critical understanding of colonialism.

Students should have NCEA Level 2 Literacy, either English or Te Reo Māori and Te Reo Rangatira.
Students younger than 16 years of age must have Head of School approval first to enrol in this course. Students with Te Reo Rangatira NCEA credits need to meet with the Head of School to assess appropriate level of entry.

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

This course is a critical thinker's toolkit. It will teach you 20 principles you can use to tell science from pseudo-science, truth from falsehood, logic from rhetoric, sound reasoning from wishful thinking, effective medicine from quackery, and good evidence from lies, fraud and fakery. The critical thinking skills you learn in this course will be vital if you go on to do more philosophy. They are also readily applicable to other disciplines, and should help you steer clear of scam-artists, charlatans, confidence-tricksters and get-rich-quick-schemes in the world outside of academia. Topics covered include the fallibility of the senses, the fallibility of memory, the placebo effect, the tricks of the cold reader’s trade, confirmation bias, the Barnum effect, relativism, mind viruses, the basics of logic, formal and informal fallacies, and the scientific evaluation of competing hypotheses.

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

Computing technology has already revolutionized our lives and shows no signs of stopping. Algorithms are everywhere. AI powered by our data are increasingly determining our lives. The implementation of this technology has leapt ahead of our understanding of its ethical, societal, legal, and political significance. From self-driving cars to autonomous weapons, data-brokers to the metaverse, no aspects of our lives will be the same again. In this class, we shall learn about, and bring together in conversation, cutting edge work from both within and outside academic philosophy concerning the challenges posed by the ever-increasing use of computing technology and A.I. Questions raised in the course include: do tech companies violate our right to privacy when they harvest our data? Can automated algorithmic decision-making deliver us a future free of human bias? How could you tell whether a computer has a mind? And is the human brain in fact a computer?

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

How we should live our lives is the most important question of all. What makes our actions right or wrong? Is it our culture, our emotions, facts about the world, or God's commands? Are pleasure and happiness all that really matters? What should we do when justice and freedom conflict with happiness or with each other? Should we always obey the law? Is taxation legalised theft? This course introduces students to moral and political philosophy by examining ideas and arguments about how we should live our personal, social and political lives.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

This course introduces the basic tools and techniques used in political science, including research techniques, formulation of hypotheses, and methods of analysis. It also introduces students to a selection of key theories and frameworks. The course covers topics such as nationalism and ethnicity, democracy, authoritarianism, people's power, conflict, globalisation, and the future of global politics. This course will be of great benefit to Political Science majors of all levels and to students who desire a broad-based introduction to the field.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

This course provides a broad introduction to the core issues and theories related to the study of international relations. Students will be introduced to the discipline through a study of key historical events, prominent theories of international relations, and a variety of practical examples.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

What’s the right thing for a group of people to do? How does a society know it is well governed? How do you know you are doing the right thing for your country, or your fellow citizens, or how that will impact on your family and friends? Who matters more, your family or your fellow citizens? The best way to answer these questions has been debated for more than over 2000 years. This course is an introduction to the thinkers that have suggested answers to these questions and influenced everyone from Plato to Trump and you. In this course, you will study the evolution of the ideas that form the building blocks of the political and social sciences. The course traverses the political ideas that arose in the Greek and Roman civilisations, the Renaissance, the birth of America, the death of the English and French despotic monarchies, and the great traumas of socialism, Marxism and the political upheavals that followed the wars of the 20th century. We will trace the changes in the fundamental political concepts such as freedom, equality, rights, justice, government, the state, markets, and domination.

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

Psychology is a diverse and thriving science devoted to understanding behaviour and the human mind. In PSYC105 you will receive an introduction to the following areas: positive psychology; wellbeing; visual perception; research methods; learning and behaviour change; forensic psychology; neuropsychology; drugs and behaviour; memory and cognition; and health psychology.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

Psychology is a diverse and thriving science devoted to understanding behaviour and the human mind. In PSYC106 you will receive an introduction to five major domains: personality, abnormal, social, developmental, and organisational psychology. You will also learn about the different research methods used in each of these domains.

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

Approaches to understanding the nature of human thought and behaviour have permeated societies and cultures throughout history. Psychology as a scientific discipline, however, emerged just in the last 200 years or so. Over this relatively short time period, psychologists have gained substantial insight into what drives our mental lives and shapes our social interactions, and have made possible vast improvements in the quality of life of millions of people. This course delves into the ideas and methods that have allowed all of this to happen. We’ll take a holistic and critical look at the science of psychology itself: its questions, methods, evidence, and unique challenges; as well as its place within modern Aotearoa New Zealand society. You’ll learn how psychologists measure a world of unobservable mental traits, devise experiments that reveal the underlying organisation and mechanisms of the mind, and convert raw data into real world conclusions that have a meaningful impact on people’s lives. You’ll build the critical thinking skills to distinguish good psychological science from bad, genuine breakthroughs from glorified clickbait, and evidence-based interventions from scams and grifts. Upon these foundations you’ll be able to build with confidence the pathway of your choosing through the psychological sciences (and beyond).

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

Russian language course for absolute beginners, i.e. students with no knowledge of Russian, based on the communicative approach.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

A Russian language course that follows on from RUSS130, based on the coummunicative approach.

Students should complete RUSS130 first.

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

This is the first of two intermediate Russian language courses. It aims at extending vocabularly and grammatical structures to discuss and write about simple topics in Russian culture.

Students should complete RUSS131 first or a placement test first.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

This is the second of two intermediate Russian language courses. It extends the reading, writing and discussion skills acquired in RUSS230 and places greater emphasis on conversation skills.

Students should complete RUSS230 first or a placement test first.

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

An introduction to the provision of welfare in New Zealand, providing students with the opportunity to examine socio-cultural, economic and political factors that have influenced current welfare policies, practice and services. The course addresses basic organising concepts of welfare, using historical and contemporary case studies. Students will be introduced to tools and frameworks that will enable them to develop research skills and critical thinking. Using current case studies of service delivery presented by guest practitioners, contemporary research practices, social worlds/issues and welfare services/responses are analysed.

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

A course that introduces the history, and contemporary organisation, and functions of the social services industry in New Zealand society. Particular emphasis is placed on the development of students’ capacities to understand and critically analyse the impact of service delivery on diverse populations.

Students who have completed HSRV102 should not enrol in this course.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

The course introduces students to the diverse realities of ‘youth’ with a focus on multiple contexts. Students explore the concept of youth and the cultural, historical, political and economic contexts in which young people live and the decisions that they make. We critically consider the issues that place young people outside the margins of dominant society, and the responses, models and theoretical frameworks used in youth studies.

This course covers some senstive topics.
Students who have completed HSRV104 should not enrol in this course.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

Writing for Academic Success fosters the capacity for analytical thought about texts and language. The course also provides training in the writing of clear and effective prose, inculcates awareness of crucial structural and rhetorical features of expository writing, and encourages the application of that awareness to writing in a range of academic and professional contexts.

Students who have completed ENGL117 should not enrol in this course.

Semester: S1, S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

In this course, we address how people learn as well as the social, political, and global contexts in which learning takes place. Together, we walk through the art and science of learning, including contemporary debates and discussions in anthropology, history, philosophy, sociology, and psychology. Through questions, we view learning from diverse perspectives to understand learning in Aotearoa New Zealand and elsewhere around the world. Course assessments are designed in a way that links theories of learning to any academic discipline or subject area while also giving you the opportunity to apply your knowledge in a meaningful, purposeful, and unique way.

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

This course establishes a foundation in theory, concepts, processes and factual knowledge of infant, child, and adolescent development within the context of family, school, and community. Students will acquire an understanding of the developmental processes that take place within and across physical, cognitive, emotional, and social domains, and their associations with developmental outcomes.

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

This course provides an introduction to foundational theories, concepts and processes in the study of education. The course explores theories about power, justice and fairness in society, with a particular focus on how they relate to education. It also examines what part factors such as class, genders and sexualities, disability, and race may play in maintaining unequal forms of education. An important feature of the course will be analysing the role played by education in the development of colonial relations between Māori and Pakeha, and how that continues to shape contemporary New Zealand society.

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

What is the role of 'the self' in youth and community leadership? What are the personal dispositions required for youth and community leadership and how might these be nurtured within, for and by the self, and/or by others? In this course, students will explore self-leadership from contemporary psychological, philosophical, cultural, and/or any other theoretical perspective/s relevant to their situation and to contemporary Aotearoa. Kaupapa Māori approaches will be explored, as part of which students will be required to have experienced a stay on the noho marae (or alternative).

Semester: S1 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633

In this course, you will be introduced to and learn about the professional practice of youth work in Aotearoa. You will learn about the context within which youth work in Aotearoa operates, its history and current structures. The course will help you understand the principles of the sector and explicitly acknowledges the diversity and mana of young people. In this course, you will examine how young people build and sustain quality relationships and connect to the social, physical and digital world, demonstrating knowledge of hononga and whanaungatanga. We will investigate the legal and ethical requirements for the care of young people in Aotearoa in the context of holistic wellbeing, responsibility and reciprocity. You will be introduced to frameworks that are used in the youth work sector to facilitate manaakitanga, youth participation and whai wahitanga, recognising young people as valued contributors to society. This course has been designed in cooperation with Ara Taiohi and Korowai Tupu and strongly reflects the Mana Taiohi principles that underpin professional youth work practice in Aotearoa. We will implement the participatory approach, common in the sector, to co-construct our understanding of youth identities and youth work practice. This course will lay the foundation for your journey towards becoming a professional youth worker and will equip you to connect the knowledge and concepts you will encounter in other courses into your developing professional identity.

Semester: S2 | Points: 15 | 2025 STAR Course Fee: $633