World Regional Geography by Prof Jeremy Patrich

About this course

Understand why places look, work, and change the way they do. This free online World Regional Geography course helps you see the planet as a set of connected regions shaped by landforms, climate, history, culture, and economic choices. Instead of memorizing isolated facts, you will practice thinking like a geographer: asking better questions, spotting patterns, and explaining how physical and human forces interact across different parts of the world.

You will begin with a clear framework for reading the world geographically, then travel region by region to build perspective. As you explore Europe and Russia, you will connect political change and boundaries to resources, migration, and everyday life, including the Cold War legacy symbolized by the Berlin Wall. Moving through the Americas, you will link major physical features and settlement patterns to development, trade, and regional identities across North, Middle, and South America.

From there, the course turns to Africa with attention to contrasts between northern and sub-Saharan regions, highlighting how environment, colonial history, conflict, and economic networks can influence opportunity and stability. In Asia, you will examine South, East, and Southeast Asia through the lens of population, religion, production, and rapid urban transformation, supported by concrete historical examples such as the Terracotta Warriors and what their preservation reveals about material culture. You will finish in Oceania and Antarctica, considering Australia and the South Pacific in terms of modern economic trends, connectivity, and geographic isolation.

Short exercises throughout reinforce key ideas and strengthen critical thinking so you can apply concepts to maps, current events, or exam questions with greater confidence. By the end, you will have a more accurate mental map of the world, a stronger vocabulary for describing regions, and a practical way to analyze how geography influences people and how people reshape geography.