Profile

Ricardo Teixeira
Student
- 86 reviews
- 77 completed
I kind of enjoyed taking this course, but I must confess I thought about
quitting several times. I expected the course to be more about ethics and less
about long explanations of conditions and their testing. Very often less time
was devoted to the ethical issues raised by precision medicine than to the
medicine itself. There was also an approach to defining the "ethical issues"
that I personally found odd. For example, it was argued that testing for
conditions has induced physical problems in some people as one issue of too
much testing (even when paid for by health services consumers and not
taxpayers); but there was no critical analysis of this assertion. How often
does that happen? In 1% of all tests? 0.1%? 0.00001%? And shouldn't the
analysis of the acceptability of that risk be left to patients? In this course
there's a lot of talk about "risk" but not enough about how relevant those
risks are.
My personal feeling after taking the course was that, because of the bias
towards finding potential risks everywhere, it presented a very grim picture.
The last lecture itself is an exercise in futurology arguing that big data is
useless - oh, I'm sorry, "raising the issue that there is the risk that
efforts towards using big data are inefficient". If you put it like that it's
just a risk, right?
Yet, like all courses in social science, you need to always hold your defenses
up. If you always maintain your alert levels high, you will learn a lot - and
this course has a lot on its side. If you hold on to your skeptical instincts,
you will end up enjoying it (I know I did, in a way). I do not regret sticking
to it when I felt like quitting, because I feel like now I'm much more
informed in this subject, whether I agreed or disagreed with the ideas put
forth.
The workload is quite heavy - seven quizzes and three (!!!) writing
assignments. The worst part is that the evaluation system is totally
irrational: you can assign a 0, a 5 or a 10 to your peers. Yes, only those
three options and nothing in between. I had to give out 10's to almost
everybody even though there were significant differences in quality between
the essays. And you don't even get the chance to provide feedback to the other
student.
Overall, I recommend you check it if you have the time. If your interest is
ethics, you won't learn anything about it here. If your interest is how
precision medicine is seen by social scientists, then this is the course for
you.
I'll start by saying that I hated this course. It made my stomach turn. It
displays everything that is wrong about social sciences today. I should also
say that the materials are all put online in the beginning, so you're able to
do the course in one go. I found it challenging but I made a point to finish
the course so that I cannot be accused of being uninformed. I finished with
more than 95% on the quizzes, so I am not speaking out of spite.
I was really excited about this course. "Understanding Video Games", in my
view, would be actually about... video games. Their evolution, how they
started, why people play them, how they relate to current events and social
and artistic movements, etc. Nothing prepared me for what the course is
actually about. This course is a shameful display of post-modern relativism.
It is built around social theories that interpret and divide video games
characteristics, and proceeds to "analyze" (it can hardly be called an
analysis) them according to those frameworks. The history and evolution of
video games? They take 5 minutes to get it out of the way each lecture. The
reasons why people play? Nothing discernible mentioned. How they relate to the
rest of the world? Oh, there was quite a lot of that... unfortunately.
If you take this course, they will try to "teach" you that the back stories in
games are a way to "make arguments". So if in "Civ 3" you sometimes need to go
to war instead of always making peace - that's an argument about how the world
works. You will "learn" that games that are purely violent, or stereotypical
in general, without any context for that violence or stereotype, are just
nonsense. You will "learn" that many games are "misogynistic" - and, even more
striking, that "gender is a social construction" (sic). You will "learn" that
race is always an issue, if for nothing else for its absence - the hero is
always a white male heterosexual, after all! And "Star Trek" had you killing
Klingons just because they were an alien race, teaching racism to young
children! You will learn that the people who made "Medal of Honor" paid more
attention to making guns sound authentic than showing the actual horrors of
war - the bastards. And, of course, you'll hear about gamification on a
slightly scornful tone. If this all seems like utter nonsense to you, then you
are not alone. I find it shameful to pass this - which is pure ideology - for
knowledge. It is unverifiable theorizing. It is empirically unverifiable.
My favorite example was "Street Fighter" as a case of stereotypical racial
profiling. Dalshim is Indian, and as such he practices yoga and can bend his
limbs. Blanka, you'll be told, is Brazilian, and as such he is a very quick
Capoeira fighter. Those racists! How dare you, Capcom? Of course, they forgot
to say Dalshim's main feature is that his arms and legs extend. Is that the
stereotype of Indians? That their arms extend meters in front of their bodies?
And Blanka, his main feature is giving electrical shocks. That's totally
stereotypical, right? After playing "Street Fighter, when I was in Brazil I
was sooooo afraid to shake people's hands...
If you believe the post-modern constructivist credos, you'll love this course.
You will probably see the world as a paternalistic, sexist, racist place.
Which is sad. If you're a reasonable person, this will all sound astonishingly
bad. This course follows that same path, quoting nothing but post-modernist
"thinkers" (cough cough). And as such it does the same thing that post-
modernist social science does: it proposes basic ideas obscured by made-up
technical terms; when you distill those ideas, they are either truisms or
absolutely false. Not that those folks will admit to this - after all, if you
ask a "video game theorist" about this same review, they will say I
"misunderstood" the contents. Of course I did. It's the slippery way those
people argue. Their claims are all obscured by their style of dialogue
precisely so that it is impossible to pin them to the ground and actually
assess the truth or falsity of their claims. Every single way you interpret it
is, necessarily, a misinterpretation. And this is a symptom of rotten
intellectualism in itself.
Saying that "gender is a social construct" is purely false. It's ideology
rather than knowledge. Seeing racism in having to kill Klingons is beyond
unreasonable. The saddest thing is that a whole course about video games
hardly ever says explicitly the main reason why people play games. Because
games are f'ing FUN! Sure, games use stereotypes. Sure, princesses are there
to be saved. Sure, the body count and sadism in "Manhunt" is high. And that's
why we play those games. They allow us space to shed our skin and indulge in
pleasures we would not want to in the real world. We get to be someone else.
We are in a world of no consequence where we can be as amoral or immoral as we
wish. To suggest that those games, the racist, sexist, violent-for-no-reason,
stereotypical ones, are plain, boring, dangerous, bad or uninteresting, is
simply to miss the point. It is the opposite of understanding video games.
It's trying to bend games to the ideology of the interpreter.
During the entire lectures you never see even a still picture from any game
mentioned. I question why the lecture videos have no images of the video games
themselves. I doubt it's a copyright issue, because the games are being used
for commentary - at most, the university would need to ask permission. Is it
because maybe people would find them fun and want to play the "undesirable"
ones? Or is it simply because anyone who saw the actual games would understand
that what's being said (again) is either trivially true or completely false
(or, at the very least, meaningless)?
I always recommend people check out the courses for themselves. You should
definitely do the same. But don't take a passive stance. These "theories" in
the social sciences have long held back their respective fields. They are
relativistic, obscurantist, and just wrong. Applying them to something so
free, boundless and fun as video games is sacrilege. Enough is enough.
This is an absolutely amazing course. Granted, you can't go wrong with a topic
like forensic science. Given the popularity of CSI-type shows, I think almost
everyone would be interested in a course like this. But it is a major
challenge - you need to cover so much ground that it's hard to keep focused,
to design lectures with acceptable depth of contents without making it run for
months. The professor must be congratulated for achieving such delicate
balance of being short and to the point but nevertheless covering all the
fundamentals.
As for evaluation, there are some easy quizzes, but the real highlight are the
peer assessments. There's two of them, and you have to analyse a crime scene
using the tools you learn. Talk about a CSI-type of game! I'm usually critical
of peer-rated assignments, but these two were actually really fun. And then
(what else can we expect?) the discussion forum became full of trolls and
crybabies. The staff was very kind and prepared a detailed rubric for grading
and a solution for the assignment, but that is not sufficient for some people.
It's human nature - this sort of assignment brings out people's wildest,
craziest conspiracy theories, and you cannot show them they're wrong because
they'll see evidence for their paranoia everywhere - in their heads of course
the professor is an idiot and the case study is wrong and the "official"
solution makes no sense. This is a good example of what MOOC discussion fora
are like in every course, so I can't hold it against this one. As always, my
main recommendation is that you stay the hell away from discussion fora, or
else just read them for a laugh. I laughed out loud with some of the things
some people invented.
The reason why I don't give the course 5 stars is because of the layout. The
staff probably tried to innovate by moving things around. It's still the
Coursera main page, but the side bar is awkward, the assignments have a
tailored frontpage, and it all gets very confusing. For example, because of
the layout change you cannot see which assignments you've completed and which
ones you still have to complete. The desire to be original is praiseworthy,
but I would recommend that in future offerings they just revert back to the
traditional style (or at least offer that option). Experienced Courserians
will know that this is not a minor issue, it is an important time waster.
All in all, one of the absolutely fundamental MOOCs you definitely have to
check out!
This is a nice introduction to macroeconomics. If you don't have any notions
whatsoever in this area, you'll gain immensely from following the course,
since nowadays it's almost basic literacy with all the talk of austerity and
deficits in the media. But if you know some macroeconomics, the whole 6 weeks
will seem pitifully basic. The quizzes are amazingly simple. The peer-reviewed
exercise that is part of the evaluation for the course also seems like an
incredibly straightforward case study (analysis and proposal of economic
solutions for a fictitious country), although it's very lengthy - but then the
rubric for evaluation is so incredibly detailed that you would need either
nice reviewers or a lot more time (and higher word limits) to mention
everything that is asked of your answers. Overall this course suffers from the
same problem of most MOOCs - it tries to assume no prior knowledge in the
field, and so it becomes pretty stale for someone even with just some basic
background knowledge in the area. This is not to say that it's a bad course.
It is competently put together and the lecturer is a really good teacher - so
if your a novice in macroeconomics you should definitely try it out.
Where can we start with this course? What a journey! Seventeen (!!) weeks of
story-telling, covering the past, present and future of Humankind. There are
so many lectures and chapters that I cannot really single out particular
aspects. The strongest and most flattering claim I can make about this course
is that, despite its length, it provides a completely clear and consistent
view of Humanity. It's quite an achievement, to take on such an ambitious
enterprise as to explain everything, and spectacularly succeed. Of course, one
viewpoint may be consistent and convincing but that does not make it true. I
personally disagreed, in some cases strongly, with the positions and theories
mentioned by the lecturer. His view of farming as the "enslavement of
animals", for example, is dangerously close to a form of post-modern animism
very popular in some "green" circles, but it's hardly defensible. But the
truth value of each particular fact or theory in such a long course doesn't
matter at all. As we're told in the final lecture, his objective is not that
we start spreading his views as gospel; his objective is to make us think
about phenomena and events as a whole, since we're so used to
compartmentalizing and having only fragmented views. His success, he states,
is measured by his ability to make us think about these issues, and to make
sure that we will not be the same again after taking the course. He succeeded
magnificently.
I have mixed feeling about this course. I find the subject - informal logic -
fascinating. The pace of the course, however, is very slow. There is a LOT of
repetition - mostly on one of the professor's part - and hours of video to
watch each week. Plus, one of the professors developed smart exercises and
quizzes - in the sense that the answers are fairly clear-cut and not really
open for lots of discussion (this is, after all, a Philosophy class), but the
other professor created exercises where he's clearly trying to trick us more
than testing our understanding. It's frustrating as hell. I would recommend
that future version of this course are shortened. If you keep the contents but
remove the repetition you can shave off at least 2-3 weeks of material -
that's how slow the course is.
This course is very hard. I have had many Physics classes, and even I am
having some difficulty following the course. It's definitely interesting, but
there's a lot of content put online every week, so we just skim through the
equations and never really carefully discuss the concepts used. If you're
planning on taking this course, please mind the "Pre-requisits" part of the
description! This is definitely not aimed at casual students. Plus, this is
the only course I've taken that at Coursera that was a bit disorganized. The
professor skipped some weeks and then overcompensated. Sure, he mentioned he
was sick - but was he taping week to week segments? What pissed me off the
most was a discussion forum conversation where a student complained that the
course was not entertaining enough. Granted, it's a dubious comment, but the
professor replied "I'm sorry, here's your money back". He would do that a lot
- imply that we can't complain or criticize because the course was free. That
is absurd. If he did not want to do a good course, he shouldn't. I'm sure
nobody forced him. In conclusion, if you like this subject and you already
know something about it, go for it. If not, take other alternative courses.
Everything you ever wanted to know about the Internet - and then some. This
course is very interesting because it provides the technical background on
concepts that every modern Internet user has heard before in one place or
another. It's interesting and engaging, because it operates at two different
levels: a qualitative, historical depiction of networks, and a technical,
detailed methodological description of their functions. Watch out - there are
many hours of video to watch, and sometimes the material feels overwhelming.
But the professor is very good and you breeze through it with minimum effort.
The exercises are hard, though, unless you have previous experience.
I must be a masochist - after such a terrible Part 1, Part 2 managed to be event worse. I still took Part 2 because - hopeless optimist me - I thought it would actually (finally) the course would be about what the title says. I was so mistaken. I'm sorry for being so harsh, but this is simply the worst experience I've had in a MOOC. It's a three week waste of time where you, once more, won't learn a thing about philosophy or business. You'll hear some random cliches and sometimes plainly anti-scientific and anti-rigorous thought. The lectures are commonplace and the exercises ludicrous. I simply cannot recommend this to anyone.
There isn't a lot to say about this course. It is a nice introduction to Game
Theory, interesting mostly if you have no experience in the topic. I took it
just to freshen up some basic concepts - which I did - but I did not learn a
whole lot. Highly recommended if you're a novice, not at all if you're an
expert. Also, the lecturer is quite good but the evaluation is quite basic.
After being told several times I'd make a pretty good
lawyer/lawmaker/whatever, I decided to try out this course. I always thought
law is a useless bore. I also had no interest in European bureaucracy. But
this course was only about business law, which made it more appealing. Now,
after watching the very last lectures in this course, there is only one thing
I can say: jeez, law is so painstakingly boring. I don't want my extreme
dislike for the topic bias my view. The course was well assembled and
extremely informative. I did learn a lot, and I would recommend it to any
informed EU citizen. However, I also felt like they tried to jam in
everything, involved a ton of different lecturers, and disregarded the
communications side. Some lecturers clearly do not get the pace and tone of a
MOOC, and that made some lectures almost impossible to follow. This is already
not a sexy topic, and many of the lectures were the most un-sexy pieces of
video I ever saw. Also, the quiz evaluation system won't teach a lot. Many
questions were simple "in which piece of legislation do you find X". It may be
interesting if you're a law aficionado, but to me they were tedious. Overall,
an unclear and somewhat confusing mash of different topics that should have
been spiced up in order to be palatable. As an introduction, I think it fits
the purpose and I would definitely highly recommend it to citizens of
countries belonging to the EU. The EU has such an impact in your life, that
you might as well at least know what you're dealing with.
Nice little course about a somewhat politically incorrect truth - how hunting
can actually be good for nature conservation. I like the instructors and the
way the information is structured, as well as the debates and compassionate
picture of sustainable, conscious hunters as conservationists. My only
complaint is that the course is too short! Plus, the quizzes are ridiculously
simple and you can take each one as many times as you want. That's something
to improve, but overall it was a good experience.
Wow, people actually trash this course because it's "too hard"! Most MOOCs are
generally stupidly easy, so to me that is a plus. I guess some people just
want certificates and don't really consider the quality of the learning
materials to rate courses. Don't get me wrong. This course is extremely hard,
mostly because there isn't much of a link between videos and exercises -
videos are mostly theoretical, exercises are mostly numerical applications of
the theory. But that only makes it fun. I never spent more than 2 hours per
week and I completed the exam in less than one hour (without recurring to any
external study elements), and yet I managed to get a passing grade. So it is a
lie that you need an overwhelming amount of time investment to finish the
course. And in any case difficult does not mean bad. The lectures are
extraordinary - clear yet complex, challenging but rewarding. All professors
are great. You will learn more in these 4 weeks than in the entirety of 99% of
"easy" MOOCs even if you fail to get the certificate. If you're interested in
the topics covered here (social choice, mechanism deign, auctions) or in game
theory in general, please do not get scared of dramatic warnings of
"difficulty". Be sure that those who like easiness are mostly about getting a
certificate. If you simply want to learn more in this area, go for it, you
will not regret it. An amazing learning experience!
This is a very interesting, albeit very theoretical, introduction to
archaeology. I enjoyed the topics mentioned, ranging from the early days of
this science to modern-day digital reconstructions. The quizzes are very
simple. The biggest negative is the lecturing style - reading is not
acceptable in any classroom, and even less so in a virtual one.
This is one of the best courses I've ever taken. It introduces you to the
basics about philosophy of science, and then takes you through a journey into
some topics. Two broad areas are covered - cosmology and cognition (and you
can even get a certificate if you only care for one of them!). The lectures
are varied and engaging. They are introductory but go into some detail. I
learned a lot, and I had prior exposure to this topic.
If you're interested in this topic, I couldn't recommend this course more.
There's nothing negative to say, maybe apart from the fact that the evaluation
was a little too simple. But in any case, this is as near as you'll get to a
perfect 5-star course.
The title of this course is extremely misleading. It has nothing whatsoever to
do with philosophy and even less to do with management. It uses some ideas
from folk philosophy to lecture a self-help course on so-called "creativity".
That is, of course, if by "creativity" you naively mean coming up with stuff
out of the blue. The tone of the course is totally self-help. "Do this and
you'll be creative, but hey, there's no recipe, you know what works for you,
and here's how you can find it". Contradictory and useless.
For example, the lecturer goes as far as teaching the left brain/right brain
opposition, which is completely, 100% discredited. There is no hemisphere in
the brain for creativity. Almost every idea introduced is either wrong (the
lecturer clearly does not know what induction and deduction mean) or some
dated theory that no longer makes much sense. The level of confusion is
extreme. The staff should read the literature on creativity. Writers, poets,
painters, all say the same. Being creative is hard work. It's not following
jingles and mindless "unleash your creativity" exercises. It requires rigor,
discipline and sometimes even lack of liberty (some writers train their
creativity by forcing themselves to write without using certain words or
letters). Believe it or not, the exercises were things like categorizing lists
of countries. The final exam was a peer assessment to analyse a sentence a
manager could say and go through it word by word to show how he was wrong
because he did not want to change strategy when looking at the competitors
numbers. Well, what if he was right? I guess he couldn't be, because
creativity is good in itself, and change is unavoidable - but ask any
successful manager if applying this makes any sense. Even worse, in this exam
there were tips for each word that had nothing whatsoever to do with what the
word expressed in the sentence. These were the worst exercises I ever did.
Plus, they were poorly worded, ambiguous, severely lacking concreteness (which
I'm sure the lecturer would say is by design - which is even worse!). The lack
of rigor is mind numbing.
I stayed with the course because I kept waiting for it to get better. After
the third childish exercise, I might as well get the certificate. I wanted to
know in which specific ways it related to management. But that never came. The
course could be called "philosophy for taxi drivers" and nothing in the
contents would change. I cannot recommend it at all. I should commend the
staff for teaching in English instead of insisting on nationalist views about
teaching in their own native tongue, but that's about all I have to say that's
positive about the experience.
Great course on the basics behind the analysis of the sociological dimensions
of advertising. The course is extremely interesting in case you're interested
in this area. It clears up - or at minimum complexifies - issues taken as
dogma regarding the advertisements world. It is simplistic to believe in evil
manipulative advertisers that bombard us with subliminal messages constantly,
who are sexist and bigoted and create needs that force us to buy things we
don't need with money we don't have. That's a nice little litany, but the
truth is far more nuanced. This course presents you with many layers of
interpretation in a very colorful way.
The evaluation is trivially simple, and the course seems a bit short - there
was definitely an opportunity to extend and go more in-depth. But in any case,
much recommended!
This is a subject I'm particularly engaged with and I took the course to learn
something new. I was interested in the "revolutionary" in the title - and boy,
I was NOT disappointed. The ideas presented are definitely revolutionary, in
every sense of the word. Unfortunately, they are also very fringe-y, but they
were not presented as such. What if we picked our representatives using a
lottery? What if we got rid of the Constitution? What if, instead of locking
up criminals, we established "negotiations" involving victims and families to
decide how they can contribute to society? It was interesting and stimulating
to hear these thoughts and discussions, but overall most of the proposals are
either impossible to implement or even scary (so we should have victims of
rape face rapists to see how they can make it up to them?). The professor did
have replies to some of these points (too long to go over here), but it's
impossible to shake the feeling that if you take all objections into account
you end up with a relatively consensual, bland idea a that is not exactly
revolutionary.
I also did not enjoy the overload of relativistic, post-modernist views that
are actively promoted. The exposition is biased towards some views. Some
apologetic views of socialist and neo-marxist views were cringe worthy to say
the least ("well, it didn't work in the past, but it sure can work now!"). At
the same time, some very important names in the area of political philosophy
(John Locke!) were overlooked or skimmed over during the first lectures only -
which, again, is understandable given the "revolutionary" nature of the
course, but hard to swallow in any political philosophy course.
The evaluation for the course was ridiculously simple. Some trivial quizzes
and then posts in discussion fora that were not evaluated in any way. Given
the significant amount of work you needed to put in, this is not
understandable. For example, the big capstone project of the course was a
"blueprints project" - defining your ideal state (1000-3000 words). But all
you needed to do was place it in a forum post - full marks if you did so, no
matter how uninteresting the contents were; I don't understand why not make it
a peer assessment. Overall, I'd be surprised anyone who completed the course
got less than 100%.
In conclusion, it's a nice course if you want to hear different ideas that
don't get tossed around frequently. I definitely recommend it, as long as you
don't drink the Kool-Aid and go into it with a critical mindset. That should
be asked of students of any MOOC or any other course, but in this one it seems
particularly important to me.
I started out by auditing the course, since it's not one of my all-time
favorite topics, but ended up staying until the end and completing all
quizzes. What a wonderfully designed course! Unlike other courses on US
Constitutional history, which usually go monotonously through the articles and
the amendments one by one, this course is lively and relevant. It does include
an analysis of the Constitution, but the topics are presented in terms of
their impact on current events. The lectures are short and sweet - a bit too
short, if I may say so. The quizzes are very easy. That's what prevents it
from being a 5-star course.
Still, the professor is extraordinary, the visuals of the lectures are
flawless (and helpful), and the material should be the concern of any informed
citizen in the US or abroad. If you only take 1 course on US Constitutional
history, then I recommend this one.
This was a nice little course. Over 5 weeks I doubt the lecture time was much
over one hour, but there's a lot of information jam-packed into those short
lectures. It basically teaches you to deal with measurement problems in
statistical models aimed at measurements in social sciences. I am experienced
in statistics and I studied and applied before the models mentioned (IV,
differences in differences), so it was relatively easy for me to follow - but
I wonder how others with more limited experience in statistics fared. I took
the course to remember some concepts I had since forgotten, and in that
respect I can totally recommend this course.
The course has a nice balance between theory and practice. You are quizzed on
the concepts and also on interpretation of actual regression data. That sets
it apart from other similar courses in statistics that are purely theoretical.
I only wished it would have been longer. Overall, a great experience!
The basic idea of this course is that visual perception has been shaped by
natural selection and as such our experiences today with human vision must be
understood as dealing with the strengths and limitations of the mechanism
found by evolution for seeing. This is a very interesting - and totally
correct - view. It is a perspective that may seem trivial at first, but it's
often forgotten by people with "computational" and strict objectivist views
about vision. It was an enlightening experience for that reason. The message
was repeated many times and applied to many areas (color, light, etc.).
If you're interested in this topic it is definitely a nice complement to other
courses where other views are held. I would, though, be weary of mantras such
as "color is not a property of the object" just because we experience color
differently depending, for example, on contextual cues. There are objective
physical properties of objects that relate to color, and light, and all
aspects related to vision - if you define them that way. This course
understands the psycho-physical component of vision only and so it naturally
tends to see vision as subjective. It's interesting, just put it into
perspective.
I enjoyed this course. It provides a nice overview of the institutions, ideas
and actors that indeed shape the World, as well as the different ways we have
to assess and measure how the World is actually configured. It is a relatively
light course, and that is also my biggest criticism. Short lectures each week
without much depth. I know it's an introduction, but more detail would
certainly be desirable. There is a lot of time spent on, for example, the real
impact of foreign aid, but then the lecture on NGOs is only 10 minutes long.
Of course, the course is so far-reaching that if we used this standard it
would take 20 weeks and many hours per week to be fully satisfied.
You also get two tracks - one basic and one advanced - depending on how much
work you wish to put into the course. That's a nice way to attribute
distinction marks to students. The quizzes, though, are extremely simple.
Overall a nice experience, much recommended.
I have to agree with everyone else. This course is a series of lecture slides
(less than half an hour per week...) with nothing but jargon and practically
no examples or training, followed by problems, some of which as absolutely
trivial because if you select the correct answer you'll get a check mark, and
others are unsolvable by beginners. There is no syllabus ("go check the index
of a book", we were told in the forum by a staff member), no information on
grading and logistics, nothing. Considering that this course has been offered
so many times, and considering that Stanford courses are usually good examples
of great MOOCs, I have no idea why this course works so badly every time it
opens. Everyone commenting here says the same, and yet there are no changes to
the materials and evaluation.
I don't think anyone should take this course. The University of Melbourne
offers their great two-part course on logic that is one of the best MOOCs
ever! If you're interested in the topic, check those out.
Really good introductory course. I took the basic route (you can take an
advanced route if you're interested in a certificate with distinction) and
still got a lot out of it. It is a structured and well informed approach to a
delicate topic. The course isn't hard (quizzes are relatively simple) and the
workload is kind of soft, but again - it's an introduction.
I recommend it, since this is a topic that influences all our lives and is in
the news non-stop. It will clear up some confusion and myths and give you
actual insight into a troubling phenomenon.
Nice little course about health care for the aging. It's really a very short
introduction to the topic, with very easy quizzes and not a lot of material.
If you're interested in this area, you should check it out - it won't take too
much of your time. I did feel that it was very superficial and at times seemed
a bit paternalistic. Still, a nice experience.
This is a five-star course on the topic of networks - social, but also
economic and ecological. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. As someone
with no exposure on the topic, I appreciate the soft learning curve. The
course build momentum as it grows in complexity, which is a perfect teaching
strategy. It informs, but it also inspires. You get to understand the open
threads quite well.
The quizzes are conceptually challenging - you need to know what you're doing.
But if you pay attention and follow the classes, it is relatively easy to get
the questions right.
By the way, the materials are all put online in the beginning, so you're able
to do the course in one go. That is excellent.
Overall, I could not recommend this course more, as long as this is a topic
you find appealing. I've tried other courses in the same area, and ended up
quitting - so this one is surely worth a closer look.
Very nice introductory course. It answers most questions I had - as well as
those of us who were interested in the topic (maybe as kids) but did not get
any formal training. If you've ever been interested in dinosaurs - and who
hasn't? - then you should definitely check this course out. It's fun,
informative, and light. There are no major flaws I can discern. Great job from
the people at the University of Alberta!
By the way, the materials are all put online in the beginning, so you're able
to do the course in one go. That is excellent.
Very nice course. If you're interested in the great debates of our times, this
is an essential piece of knowledge to hold. The course is about great
economists, but necessarily it's about the ideas of those economists, the
debates they participated in, and their influence and impact. It's a lot of
material, with an understandable emphasis on Adam Smith.
There are some notable omissions. I don't mean it due to intellectual bias, so
I can provide two opposed examples: a couple of lectures on Keynes and
Marshal, and a couple on the Chicago school, would have been great. Of course,
the list can only get bigger, and at some point you need to draw the line.
Overall, very much recommended.
Similarly to the people who commented before me, I think this course can still
improve a lot in the future. The pace is indeed slow and the lectures are
relatively short - when you need to teach psychology, economics and
neuroscience all at once, I think you are justified in presenting more than 1
hour of material per week. The quizzes are also embarrassingly simple. Some
questions did make me stop and think, not because they were hard but due to
problems with the English.
Nevertheless, this is an amazing course about a topic you won't find anywhere
else in MOOC providers. Neuroeconomics has NOTHING to do with Behavioral
Economics or Social Psychology, as people mistakenly state. While conceptually
they could be similar, the practice of each is radically different. Anyone who
ever took a course in each cannot in all seriousness deny that Neuroeconomics
is a serious descriptive (scientific) discipline, not psychological mambo-
jambo used to justify the engineering of societies according to what some
people believe to be the best, or as they call it "nudge" people. This course
is a great introduction to this fascinating world. If you're even remotely
interested in this topic, this is the course you should take.
This second part of the course did not deliver on its promise. The instructor
said, during part 1, that we shouldn't be worried if things didn't make sense,
because typically students only get "it" after the second part. That's hardly
so. This second part was more confusing in some respects than part 1. The
first week is a repetition of part 1, Then you move straight to new topics,
always filled with technical jargon that at times becomes impossible to follow
and other times is dull considering the repetition. If I had taken this class
in school I would have needed to study a lot from textbooks to get a decent
grade, because of the unstructured and "all over the place" nature of the
classes.
However, don't get me wrong! The course is far from bad. I sympathize
wholeheartedly with the instructor's approach to finance and I think his ideas
are a breath of fresh air. He is truly an original in his field and it is a
privilege to learn from him. Despite all its shortcomings, you will learn more
about finance and banking in this course than any other. So in a sense I
recommend it - I just can't see what all the fuss is about (looking at the
extremely high rates this course has received).
I was very skeptical when I enrolled in this course. I thought it might end up
being a bleeding-heart environmentalist course, accusing people of being
murderers if they ate meat or enslaving animals if they owned pets. I was very
glad to learn that my intuition couldn't be more wrong. This is a balanced,
interesting, and above all else scientific course about animal welfare that
shed light on our relations with the animals under our keep - pets, farm
animals, or even zoo animals. The most important take-away in my view is that
caring for animal welfare means providing animals with the space and
conditions they need to display their normal behavior - apart from some basic
essentials like food, shelter and humane treatment. There is no eco-fascism
and you won't find environmentalist pseudo-moralist views here. Make no
mistake about it, the lectures are scientific in nature. Yet they are engaging
and will be extremely interesting for anyone interested in these matters. If
the course was a bit longer, it would definitely be worth 5 starts. 5 weeks is
a bit short considering the breadth of materials in the lectures. Still, it's
highly recommended!
This is a nice course, particularly if you liked the first part (the non-
advanced one). The course is a bit on the light side, but there's something to
keep anyone interested. The professor is a showman that dominates the art of
teaching a MOOC perfectly. He changes the scenario often, taking you to
appropriate places for the lectures. He distills complex subjects into very
short segments, and has a knack for the intuitive. The course is really easy
(evaluation-wise) but that's besides the point. I'm sure unless you're an
expert in the area you'll learn a lot. If you took the first Competitive
Strategy course you'll love this one. If you didn't, you should. It's one of
the best put-together courses on Coursera. If it was a bit longer and had more
in-depth sections, it would be perfect.
This was a really good course on Finance. No equations or math - just lectures
that always start by reading and interpreting the Financial Times. This is
real-World finance, the type that you could probably use to talk intelligently
with a Wall Street financier. Despite being an academic course, don't expect
an academic-styled course. This is the actual stuff that matters, it's what
the people moving money around care about. You won't find a course more
relevant than this one. If you're like me, you'll miss some equations and
models - they may be unrealistic but they are a good pedagogical tool, as a
way of keeping you grounded and following the narrative of the course. But I
understand that it is not the objective at all to teach theoretical mambo-
jambo that does not work in practice. And that's why the course is an amazing
experience.
The lowest point for me was the general sense of loss of direction. The
professor himself admitted that most of his students only start understanding
what he's saying in Part 2, but that's a bit frustrating. Don't get me wrong,
I think that's an exaggeration - you will definitely learn a lot; just don't
ask me what were the 4th or 5th lectures about, because I honestly wouldn't be
able to tell you. I didn't sense a coherent, large-scale narrative. Also, the
evaluation exercises were very simple. I like quizzes as a way to test
understanding, but in this case there were only 5 (6 questions each) + exam
(10 questions). There should be more.
All in all, an excellent course. I'm definitely sticking around and I'm now
starting Part 2 of this great course!
If you're interested in history, this is a great course for you. I was kind of
apprehensive in the beginning, since it deals with religion. In reality, I was
very pleasantly surprised with the tone of the course. The lectures are
neutral and balanced. This is about History, not Theology. It presents an
overview of the way the jewish Bible was produced, the reasons behind it and
the society of the time, as well as what we can learn and take away from it.
There are very few negatives. Maybe the course could be a bit longer (6 weeks
is nothing). Maybe the quizzes could be a bit more challenging - a peer-
reviewed assessment could help. There is mandatory forum participation worth
5% of the grade, which I hate - in courses such as this you really need to
stay away from the forum (which is true always, but courses involving
religious topics make particularly irritating and worthless forum
discussions). Finally, I personally felt a bit lost in the segments sometimes;
sometimes I felt the narrative in the lecture wasn't very clear.
However, the course is so good that these negatives are pretty small if you
look at the big picture. I couldn't recommend this course more if this is a
topic that appeals to you.
A very nice course, particularly if you've never taken a class in
neuroscience. It is a light, well-humored introduction to the subject of how
the brain deals with space. The lecturer is a tremendous professor - simple
but quite effective. The only reason why it's not yet a 5-star course is
because it would be nice if it contained more advanced materials and/or if it
was longer (6 weeks, less than 1 hour per week, is really not that much).
Still, if you're interested in the topic, and even more so if it's your first
time learning about neuro-related-stuff, you'll have a great time.
I said in my review of part 1 that if some simple issues could be fixed, then
this would be a 5-star course. And now it is. What an amazing experience to go
through these tough materials with these lecturers. If you've taken part 1,
you'll know the drill. If you haven't, go do it. I don't believe anyone can
complete part 2 of this course without either being accustomed to
propositional logic or completing part 1 of the course. Â In part 2 you'll have
even more materials in the form of new application areas, better exercises
that are challenging but doable, and if you're like me you'll be sorry there's
no part 3. Absolutely top course, I cannot recommend it more.
I hesitated before writing this. I feel really bad for having to say what I'm
about to say, because the lecturer seems like a genuinely nice person, and I
always feel obliged to be thankful for someone who puts in the time to offer a
course for free, and does it respectfully and with honesty and good intentions
- as is the case. That being said, I must say it was definitely not the right
course for me. It is pretty much an introductory course, which is fine, but
since I've taken so many similar ones before to me it was repetitive. Further,
it upset me that it displays an underlying relativism. We are constantly
reminded that "there are no right answers" and that all that matters is our
"own personal ethic". The first quiz was almost voyeuristic, in that it asked
personal questions about our views. Sure, ethics may be a subjective field
with many grey areas, but there are clear rights and wrongs. It is possible to
teach those rights and wrongs - as other courses show. That's what I signed on
to learn - not to be told that whatever my intuition is, it's as correct as
anything else. As a consequence, I think some topics are handled
simplistically. For example: I was appalled to hear that "Darwinism" is an
"ethical theory" that consists of the strongest taking everything. Natural
selection is a biological theory for how species vary across time and how
their genetic features morph, it is not an ethical theory. The closest
possible match would be social Darwinism, which is by now a discarded
sociological theory - still not an ethical theory. I always think if you're
interested in the topic of the course it's worth checking it out. But I am
sorry I cannot recommend it at all. It's a shame - I was really looking
forward to it. If future offers of the course are more rigorous, structured
and objective, I may sign on again.
Interesting presentation of the topic. This is a competent and well-put course
that everyone interested in Bioethics (is there anyone who isn't?) will
certainly enjoy. Very much worth it. There's a lot of lecturers, each teaching
a certain module or section, so it gets a bit hectic, and it feels like you're
just watching several disconnected talks. They try to integrate the different
parts with an initial lecture each week, but I did not find it sufficient. I
wonder if so many professors were needed in a short 6-week course. In any
case, the worst part is that although some presentations were very fair and
balanced, others were not. After taking Michael Sandel's "Justice" course - a
wonderful class that is to me the prime example of how you can lecture
controversial topics beautifully, be engaging and thought-provoking and give
nothing away - it was hard for me to contain myself listening to these
lectures. I found myself strongly disagreeing with the lecturers and being
forced to give the answer they ask for in the quizzes although it is wrong.
Often extremely disputable assertions were made as if they were fact. As
always with every MOOC, you cannot take your issue to the discussion boards -
that's where good debate goes to die. By the way, I also hated that they
"forced" us to post in discussions. You could just go to the forum, write "bla
bla bla", declare you had participated, and you got points. (By the way, the
TAs said "the course is supposed to be difficult" but most questions are
ridiculously simple - plus the bonus points for adding to the noise in the
discussion forum because MOOC organizers for some reason still believe these
fora are interesting.) Overall, I recommend this if you're looking for a
relevant, up to date MOOC on practical ethics. It doesn't compare to the
"Justice" course on EdX (I'm still looking for a MOOC that does compare), but
I definitely recommend this one as well. Just be sure, as always, to have your
guard up and remember to think critically about the contents.
I attempted to take this course and dropped out after two weeks. It is an
interesting course, but if, like me, you've taken other introductory courses
in Neuroscience, then there isn't much appeal. It is simple and quite basic,
and at least during the first sessions we did not see that bridge to "everyday
life" promised in the title. If you've never taken a Neuroscience course
before then this may be great. if you have, it's probably redundant.
What can I say that hasn't been said yet about this wonderful course? It's an
amazing experience that takes you though a compelling, interesting journey
over more than 250 years of History. I don't understand how anyone can be
consider him/herself an informed citizen without having these notions - and I
realize how much I've been missing in my knowledge and interpretations of
current and past events. Professor Zelikow is a wonderful teacher, besides an
accomplished professional in his area, and it's delightful to learn from him.
His narrative is consistent, coherent, well supported, but it has elements of
originality that will surely interest even those who previously completed
studies in global History. His style is great - in fact, I knew I'd be
sticking around since the first "welcome, make yourselves comfortable". If
you're investing in MOOCs, this is an absolute essential. I couldn't recommend
it more.
I have to commend the lecturer for putting this course live. If you want to
teach such a controversial subject, you're bound to run into hot topics. The
lecturer is really quite good and engaging, and he does a very competent job
at maintaining your attention throughout. You will definitely learn something
new about the nature of the relationship between religious institutions. As a
course, it is very light. The exercises are quite easy, virtually impossible
to get wrong (two attempts at questions with only two possible answers).
However, this course left me very uncomfortable at moments (and others too,
judging by reactions in discussion boards). It presents a very light take on
the relationship between the christian church and jewish populations. It
highlights the centuries of relatively peaceful coexistence, punctuated by
brutal episodes that it mostly ascribes to issues of state and power and not
necessarily religious intolerance. That is definitely true - the rise of
modern states, and their appropriation of religious excuses, caused more
bloodshed than religious institutions by themselves. But very often you're
left with a sour taste in your mouth, because the tone of the lectures is very
close to whitewashing of atrocities committed by religion in the name of
religion. By highlighting mostly the good and doing an apology of the bad, the
overall historical picture gets very biased. Imagine the following analogy:
Charles Manson spent most minutes of his life without committing murders. In
fact, he was only in the act of committing murders during, at most, a few
minutes of his entire lifetime. If you write a biography of Manson framed in
this way, you're bound to say that for the most part he was a pretty peaceful
guy. I cannot shake the feeling that that's what the course does with the
history of the Church in what relates to other creeds. In any case,
controversy is good - so if you're interested in this topics you should take
the course. Roman catholics will obviously be very interested in it, since it
gives them a lot of ammo to respond to some atheists' arguments about religion
being a force for evil in the World.
I'm fairly sure that lots of people will come here and say very positive
things about this course. Personally I did not like it all that much. I have
nothing against Nobel-laureate professor Schiller. He is the absolute best at
what he does, and it is truly an honor to "attend" his class. Don't get me
wrong - I did relatively enjoy the course. The lectures were taped at a real
Yale classroom (in fact the materials are all online at the Open Yale
website). Normally I prefer when lectures are taped with students present -
but in this case it made for a really frustrating experience that was really
hard to follow. I guess Professor Schiller's teaching style is just not for
me. There was a lot of rambling, walking around, hesitating, and no clear
structure in the classes. If you take Michael Sandel's "Justice" course,
you'll know what I'm complaining about, because he proves that live lectures
do not need to be chaotic. They can feel organic and yet have a clear
structure that is positive for learning. In the "Financial Markets" course I
had to go back often to the lectures in order to finish the quizzes, and I had
no idea in what part of the lecture the answer was. Confusing - to say the
least. The discussion forum, as usual, is just horrible. Many topics are
highly politicized, so that could be expected. But add to that an overwhelming
amount of whining about peer-assessment scores (which always happens, but for
some reason was particularly bad in this course), and you have an unreadable
forum. Of course, the staff cannot be blamed for this. Apart from all this
(and you really have to make an effort to look past this), the course is as
good as could be expected. It is a competent and comprehensive introduction to
the topic. There are guest lectures by very relevant players in the financial
sector that add a lot to the course - but for some reason they are always cut
short (some are a mere cut of 15 minutes of what had been, I believe, a whole
hour class). Overall, I think you should go for this course if for nothing
else because literacy nowadays implies knowing something about financial
markets. And who better to teach you than a Nobel prize winner? I just wonder
if people would be so positive about the course if it wasn't taught by a Nobel
winner...
Very hard and demanding, but also very rewarding, course. It is a strong
introduction to Logic and four of its main applications. The lecturers are
very engaging and thorough. They put together course notes that follow the
lectures very closely and are a great reference when you're working on
assignments. The workload on this course is really, really heavy, especially
if you want to complete all four application areas (you don't have to, if all
you care about is a certificate). I'm not complaining, since after all I hate
when we're just handed certificates by simply answering questions straight out
of the lectures, with no real learning-by-doing. However, some quizzes take a
very long time to complete (such as those involving proof trees), and the
questions change every time you re-take the quiz, meaning that if you want to
train (using some great practice quizzes that the instructors also made
available) and use all your shots in the graded quiz, you'll spend hours every
week getting it done. Besides, you have peer-assessments, and the final exam
itself is also peer-graded (and way harder than I'm used to in MOOCs).
Overall, I think the difficulty level and the workload can be a burden for
some. Personally I liked it a lot, so I grade this course high for its
inherent quality and the learning experience it granted me. It is definitely
one of my favorites ever. But is it perfect? Well, almost. Indeed during this
first session there were some technical problems, but not nearly as serious as
people make them up to be - and the staff dealt with them very well, and no
one had to re-take any quizzes. Of course you have to stay out of discussion
forums - but that's true of every course, since in over 40 MOOCs I took I
never saw one forum that was even remotely informative or productive, with its
know-it-alls and trolls roaming free. The forum in this course is just as bad
as in any other course, so we cannot hold that against it. My biggest
recommendation for the future is a review of the grading system. You can get a
certificate with distinction in this course without even taking the final
exam. I'm sure these kinks will be tweaked in future offerings, and then this
will really be a 5-star course. Highly recommended!
Wow, what a ride! First, what's good about this course. This is a nice,
informal introduction to Plato (the title is slightly misleading). The first 6
weeks were dedicated to Plato's dialogues, while the last 2 were dedicated to
an analysis of two moral psychologists, where the lecturer basically
"defended" Plato's thought as still valid even in light of these modern
developments. The best thing about this course is: professor Holbo! What an
amazing communicator. He is informal and the funniest professor on Coursera,
with mad skills when it comes to drawing cartoons - which he uses profusely,
to illustrate every lecture and every point he makes. He was extremely engaged
in the discussion forum, starting loads of new interesting threads and
promoting productive discussions. And he actually read what we said and
responded often. Now, the worst thing about this course is: professor Holbo!
Don't get me wrong - I loved the guy and his lectures. But his informal style
(he would say countless times "but I digress") is kind of all over the place
and sometimes it's confusing to follow. Often I would finish whole lectures
with the feeling that I understood every bit of his explanation, and yet when
contemplating the whole thing I had no idea what he meant to say. Professor
Holbo surely does not talk in soundbites - but at least I would recommend him
to make an effort to clearly and objective lay down some take-home messages
with every video. I would imagine beginners may be frustrated with this style.
But this is a minor issue considering the quality of the course. You have
quizzes that are actually smart (they teach you to interpret ancient text), a
funny essay to write (if you were an advice columnist, what single rule would
you give your readers to follow?), and hours of wisdom to grasp. Amazing
course!
Interesting introductory course to the art of obtaining and analyzing fMRI
data. Don't expect to learn a lot about Neuroscience (in general) or
Statistics (in general). This is a very focused course. It is a relatively
light course, with very easy assignments. The lecturer is very engaging and a
great communicator. I would rank it higher than the 4-star mark, but I think
the course simplified matters too much. I would have liked to have a much more
in-depth course with hands-on statistical exercises. People who are just
mildly interested in this topics would take generic neuroscience courses, not
something with such a narrow scope. I hope future offerings take the subject
further and explore the subject in detail.
I am baffled by the high grade my peers give this course. I know Dan Ariely is
a very persuasive and engaging speaker, and he and his staff clearly put a lot
of work into this course. I'm sure he's a great professor and a very talented
researcher. But that is not enough for a five-star rating. I believe there is
something quite fishy with the whole field of behavioral economics as it
stands today. It is interesting, sure, but it has to grow out of its infantile
conception of what the word "rational" means in economics. It relies too much
on lab experiments with people (usually well educated individuals from rich
countries with time to lose), and then simply postulates without much evidence
that surely those effects also happen in real life, and that they must be
significant enough to make neoclassical economics wrong. But people are not
like physical objects that are subject to the same laws in and out of the lab.
Behavioral economics built a straw man-like idea of rationality and so,
naturally, sees irrationality everywhere. Are people economically irrational,
for example, because of hyperbolic discounting? Well, not necessarily in
economic terms - as long as economic theory can deal with it. Is it
inconsistency and "bad" for the person? I don't see how that is any business
of researchers, whose job is to understand and not to prescribe social norms.
Of course, I may be suspicious of behavioral economics and still believe the
course to be good. In fact, I tried to take this course precisely to assess if
my intuitions about it are correct - or to be proved wrong. If I'm wrong, the
great Dan Ariely is the man to show me so. No luck, though. Much like most
papers on behavioral economics, this course gives you two hours per week of
anecdotal evidence on top of more anecdotal evidence, followed by a brief
comment at the end that "so it makes sense that this happens everywhere".
There is no critical assessment, no mention of limitations in this type of
studies, no hint of critical thinking. I would appreciate an organized,
integrated explanation of economics of which anecdotes are mere examples and
not the bread and butter of the class. I would appreciate factual evidence
from real life about the extraordinary claims made here - especially because
behavioral economists typically want to influence governments to "nudge" our
behavior, so they better have bulletproof evidence for their assertions.
Speculation and nice little stories are not informative, are not facts, are
not science. And, most of all in a course like this, they are extremely
tiring. I tried taking this course twice. By the third week of "we asked a
group of people" my patience runs out and I just quit. Behavioral economics is
still in its infancy. It may provide great insights for Microeconomics. But
microeconomics always received input from psychology, so this is nothing new.
I'll keep monitoring the field, but taking MOOCs on the subject? It's
certainly not for me.
Interesting course about one of the main (and most controversial) figures in
US History. Jefferson was a colorful character and his ideas certainly deserve
careful study nowadays. The lecturer, Professor Onuf, is an extraordinary
communicator. He presents you with all sides and interpretations of
Jeffersonian thought, and he certainly does not whitewash his most
controversial ideas (even those that were outright racist). He teaches the
good and the bad. And all of this takes place at the university that Jefferson
himself founded - awesome! It is a short and "light" course, but if you're
interested to know how modern democracy began being shaped by the American
Revolution, this is one piece of the puzzle you should not miss.
Do you complain that MOOCs are nothing more than very easy introductions? Do
you feel like taking up a challenge? Are you fascinated by the intricacies of
group decision? Have you ever wondered if simple plurality voting, used in
most elections nowadays, really is the best way of electing candidates? Then
this is the course for you! This is a wonderful course about group decision
theory. You will hear about group decisions, what are the advantages and
drawbacks of several mechanisms, some interesting paradoxes in choice, and
also some crucial criteria when devising a method to allocate resources. This
will challenge you to think about what is more important to you - would you
prefer a division of goods in society that is envy-free or equitable, for
example? The course is indeed introductory, but the lectures have a
significant amount of detail and mathematical formalism. This is not all talk
- you will really need to understand the concepts in depth and manipulate them
in concrete calculations to pull through. The quizzes are hard (though the
exam was relatively easier), but you have a passing grade of 80%. But the
lectures are so enjoyable and the exercises so fun and instructive that it's
worth carrying out all the work just for the sake of it. The instructor makes
a great job at expressing how cool this area of research is. The only reason
why I don't give it a full 5 stars is because the course gets confusing at
times. There is so much information on so many different aspects of group
choice that sometimes I felt lost, without knowing where I was in the lecture
or in the syllabus. Of course this can be solved in future offerings simply by
improving the introductory lectures each week. I'm sure the next time around
this will be a 5-star course. Highly recommended!
If you ever wondered about the intricate details of US immigration policy, or
in case you want to learn a little more History using immigration as a proxy
subject, then this is a nice short course that will certainly teach you
something new. In just five weeks, it gives you an overview on current
migratory fluxes into the US, the evolution of policies and laws, current
requirements and even likely future changes. To do this, you will discuss the
US Constitutional law, racism and even the political structure of the country.
As the professor repeats over and over, this course will not give you enough
information in case you're trying to get into the US. But it certainly goes a
long way for an introductory course. There are quizzes, an exam and a (very
simple) written assignment, The lectures are really good, at just the correct
pace. The only drawback is an unavoidable one, which is the scope of the
course itself. If you don't really care about something as specific as US
immigration, you should absolutely not take this course. But I guess you could
say this about the scope of any other course. So overall it was a great
experience.
This is about the first time the course was offered. Hopefully down the line
this review will become obsolete. I quit this course for two reasons. First,
and less important, there were no evaluations or certificates. That defeats
the purpose of a MOOC. Without any extra element, I don't even get why call it
a course - the professors in charge could have just put the videos on Youtube
and call it a day. True, there was at the end a "peer-assessment": but it
consisted of an essay you would write and other people would give you feedback
- not a grade. I honestly don't see the purpose and I pleaded with the staff
to re-think: but up until I dropped the course I saw no reply. I don't even
know if the course staff was monitoring the discussion forum (judging by the
number of trolls around there, I doubt it). Second, and more important, I quit
due to the contents (note: I may be unfair in my assessment because I did not
see all the videos). This course seems to be aimed at people, mostly
religious, who have never given serious thought to the issue of the after-life
beyond what they were taught. It tries to broaden views that people by
introducing ideas from philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, among others.
But for someone to find this new or insightful, one would need to be really
entrenched behind deep denial. I did not feel like I was getting enough from
the course to carry on. Still, if you were given a traditional upbringing with
conventional theological ideas about 'souls', you should definitely check it
out. It's elegant and non-confrontational, and the professors are extremely
nice. If you're already out of that epistemic hole, I'm not sure you'll find
it sufficiently engaging.
What an amazing course! Like other courses on hot topics (the 'Justice' one on
EdX being a prime example), this course tackles the hard topic of human
morality with good taste, balance and elegance. Other terrible courses (Like
the 'Critical Thinking in Global Challenges' one) could learn a lot from this
course about how to approach issues with a deep sense of respect for
disagreement and opposing positions. The lecturer is an extraordinary
communicator that totally got what a MOOC should be. He put together a very
thorough syllabus (for an introductory course) that will provide beginners
with an extensive overlook on the topic, and simultaneously give the more
advanced learner a useful systematization of research done in this area. There
is no way anyone can get out of this course feeling like they have lost their
time. I absolutely recommend it to everyone - after all, who would not be
interested in a competent course on such an important and interesting topic as
morality? You should know that the evaluation consists of quizzes, which are
very easy if you pay attention to the videos. All the answers are there. They
require you to think - but that is a good thing. You should also be aware that
the approach followed is that of psychology,not philosophy (although there is
also some dabbling in philosophical theories - something for everyone!).
Overall, the only reason why I don't give it 5 stars is because the course is
much too short. 6 weeks flew by without even noticing. A couple of extra weeks
would allow the course to branch into other dimensions that would make it even
more awesome. Also, a peer-assessed essay would have been a nice touch given
the nature of the course. In any case, a solid course that everyone should
check out.
Very interesting little course. It aggregates knowledge from many different
fields - maths, statistics, physics, computer science, philosophy, etc. -
under the common umbrella of randomness. This is a great idea - but on the
flip side the subject is too broad to go into any meaningful detail in just
eight weeks. Don't expect to delve too much into particular topics. The course
is mostly for people who want to have an integrated, broad-stroke view of the
concept of 'randomness'. But it is fun, nicely put together, original and very
engaging. Lectures are short and there are no assignments apart from a midterm
and a final exam. These are relatively easy if you paid attention to the
videos. I did not like the evaluation system, since you do not get instant
feedback - you only get the scores and right answers after the hard deadline.
All in all, a nice experience if you like evaluating and reflecting over pure
ideas, and see to what extent they are applied in many different domains. If
future options add a couple more weeks to go into more detail, it would be
fantastic.
I would advise anyone to stay away from this course. If you want to learn the
principals of critical thinking, take the "Think Again" course - that one is a
great, thorough learning experience. This course is unbelievably short (10-20
minutes of video per week), with ridiculously simple exercises in the
beginning and incredibly... uncritical exercises in the end. You can mount a
case against every single answer required in most quizzes. One of the things
that the "Think Again" course teaches you is that when you evaluate arguments
you should put them in the most flattering form possible. If you want to
criticise a position, criticize the strongest possible formulation of that
position. In this course we are basically taught (by example) to do the
opposite - ridicule opposite positions and summarily dismiss them. You should
also be able to identify the problems with your own positions so that you hold
them out of reason and not prejudice. Again, this course teaches the opposite,
by only providing texts for students to criticize that defend the position the
lecturers disagree with (with some honorable exceptions). Particularly
terrible in this sense were some one-sided applications to "global
challenges". The one on climate change can only be considered acceptable by
uncritical individuals who want to hear their preconceptions validated at any
cost - which may be fine, but not in a classroom. The lecturer uses terms like
"deniers", "stupid" and "dishonest" to qualify either individuals or positions
held by individuals who disagree with anthropogenic climate change theories.
This sort of application is in fact in contradiction with the very same
principles of critical thought supposedly addressed in this course. It is a
true mess. Maybe the course will change during future offerings, and if so you
may want to check it out. If it does not, forget about it. It's a shame and it
makes the great University of Edinburgh look bad - other courses from this
institution are pretty good.
Nicely crafted course with a great lecturer - funny, engaging, accurate and
knowledgeable. It is a light, introductory course, but you will hear arguments
not typically comprised in other introductory courses. It certainly is not
superficial. Plus, it is a mix of lectures recorded purely for the online
format and others recorded live at an MIT class - which adds a whole new level
of complexity and originality to the material. Overall I enjoyed the course.
My experience was reduced by the limitations of the EdX platform - which is
horrible and light-years away from the slick working environment of Coursera.
But that is not 24.00x's fault. The only problem I can directly ascribe to the
course is the lack of clarity regarding grading. You must get 2/3 of all quiz
questions right, but documentation also talks about it being mandatory that
you participate in the discussion forum. I personally disagree with this
mandate, because discussion forums are, in my opinion, overrated - full of
sterile talk and egos, but not very informative and far from essential for
learning. Further, the quiz questions are either trick questions or
ridiculously simple. I would prefer a more significant challenge that befits
the quality of the course and its depth. In any case, if you're looking for a
not-so-trivial introduction to Philosophy, this is the course for you!
The University of Edinburgh is at the forefront of MOOC offerings, with some
amazing courses currently at Coursera. I cannot say that this one is bad -
it's actually a wonderful introduction to Philosophy, so it is exactly what it
advertises. The problem is that if you already have a bit of background, you
will not learn all that much - with one notable exception, since the final
week is about time travel, which is a fascinating topic (with an amazing
professor), and you don't normally hear about it during an introductory course
in Philosophy. The lectures are very interesting, each by a different
lecturer, and all lecturers are great (although a little short).
Unfortunately, this fact also fragments the course into bits and pieces, so
there should be an introductory and concluding lecture putting all weeks
together in a larger frame. In short, if you want to take your first collage-
level course on Philosophy, you should definitely take this one. It will give
you an overview of most topics in the field. If you have taken other
Philosophy courses, you probably won't need this one.
Absolutely stunning course about one of the most enigmatic and interesting
philosopher of the Modern period (and also one of the most tragically ignored
in Philosophy programs). Kierkegaard's ideas, as this course teaches us, are
incredibly relevant today as we find ourselves in a period of crisis. His
thought can provide interesting insights for our 21st century lives. Dr. Jon
Stewart proves that all people named Jon Stewart are cool (this is for all you
"Daily Show" fans out there). He is an amazing lecturer who is capable of
digesting complex ideas, but maintaining nuance and their inherent complexity
intact. He put together a very well thought-out course, all the way to the
challenging quizzes (they are not straightforward at all, but still doable)
and a long, 2000-word final peer-reviewed assignment that contributes greatly
to our learning. The organization of the topics is wonderful, starting with
Kierkegaard's early days and ending with his death and his importance in the
present. But most fun of all were two particularities of this course that I
never found anywhere else, but greatly contributes to the feeling you get from
this course: 1\. Every week there are short interviews with Kierkegaard
experts from the whole World. This provides a complete picture to students,
since it's not just an opinion by the lecturer, but rather a real overview of
the entire field of research. 2\. The videos were taped all around
Kierkegaard's Copenhagen - the streets he walked, the places where he lived,
the gardens where he thought, the University where he studied. The stunning
scenarios on the background add so much to the course and help your
understanding tremendously. Aesthetically, the lectures are the BEST I've ever
found. It's unbelievable Prof. Stewart and staff went to so much trouble and
were so competent and considerate as to offer this course for free to us. If
there's any justice in the World, I just hope future versions give him a very
large audience of engaged students, which is probably the best "thank you" we
can say. This is a 5-star course, and it will be a pleasure to promote it to
everyone.
I hate the "entitled generation" who believes they must get anything they want
just the way they want it, and have it free and immediately. It's a blessing
to be able to attend these courses, no matter the problems, and we should be
grateful to.professors and staff. But that does not exonerate course
organizers from their responsibility of offering something decent - at least
cover the basics like make the audio audible. This is the worst course I've
taken so far in terms of organization and must be completely re-done if it is
ever offered again. The whole experience was a mess. There were sound issues
(which were "resolved" and actually sound quality just got worse), the
subtitles didn't work either (they were our last resort, and even those were
not synchronized), the quizzes were terrible with a terrible grading system
(it shows an X when you haven't selected an option that shouldn't be selected,
meaning you got it right), there was an amazing lack of communication,
especially after a while, and so on and so on. This is all basic stuff. The
sound issue is particularly serious because it was IMPOSSIBLE to understand
the lectures. Everyone complained after week 1 - I want to believe they shot
everything before they noticed the sound issue, and then just didn't want to
go back and shoot it again. This seems highly unethical, to be honest. Why
didn't they just tape it again? The segments weren't that long, and if they
just re-read the transcript from the previous takes it would be literally less
than one hour of work per week! The only conclusion is that the staff didn't
care. No wonder they kicked it off in week 1 by downgrading their own course -
saying it will never compare to on-campus education. If you already start from
that premise, the rest of the disaster is no surprise. It was a shame - very
interesting topic by a professor who I'm sure is very knowledgeable, and has a
very good career in the area. Too bad most of the time I was unable to hear a
single word he said. It's also a shame that after a while there were no
meaningful staff replies to any of our complaints. It just looked like
everyone gave up on this course while it was happening. Now you tell me -
without wanting to sound entitled, is this even ethical? Sometimes course
staff seem to forget that we are also using our time to attend and appreciate
their work, and learn from it. If a lecturer ignores us in mid-session, that
is just disrespectful. I stuck with the course until the last week because
I've been waiting for things to get better. Now I feel insulted, I feel like
an idiot for doing so. I feel like I've been wasting my time. Don't make the
same mistake I did.
This course rubbed me the wrong way, and I quit after 3 weeks. What I'm about
to say is a subjective, personal opinion. I do not mean to insult the work
that the course staff had to put together this course. The lecturer is very
passionate and a great teacher. However, I cannot accept the ideology
underlying the presentation of the materials. Behavioral Economics, in my
modest opinion (and that of most experts I've read), deals with failures of
the principle of Economic rationality. It probes human behavior to try to
amend Economic Theory with more realistic models. This idea is sometimes
mentioned in the course, and the lectures do seem to go in that way to a
certain extent (which is why I stayed for 3 weeks instead of quitting after
the first). The position is, however, utterly rejected by the lecturer, who
claims to prefer to focus on... how Behavioral Economics can help us change
other people's behavior! He doesn't just go out and say "we want to change the
way you act" (for your own good, of course!) - the academics who believe in
this sort of inadmissible intromissions in people's lives have a technical
term: to "nudge" behavior. The professor is careful to state that his
objective is only to "nudge" behavior if people want to be "nudged". It is,
however, amazing how people cannot "go nudge themselves" and we need a whole
discipline to "nudge us over". Pretty soon the "discussion" classes (where the
professor invites several experts to give their opinions) became full of
examples where we need to "nudge" people on the path of enlightenment:
exercise more, don't smoke, etc. And so I got out of there before they nudged
me. Of course, this is behavioral psychology or social psychology, not
Economics. And what a very dangerous, twisted form of psychology it is.
Wanting people to do what we think is right for them is a disastrous policy
with lots of historical evidence against it. When we believe we are doing it
only when people actually want us to (of course, who would smoke because they
want to smoke - surely people only smoke because they cannot help it!), and
when we believe science justifies us in doing so - this ideology becomes
extremely dangerous. I will continue to search for "real" courses on
Behavioral Economics - the type that simply wants to study human behavior and
its economic consequences, to create better economic models and improve our
knowledge of human tendencies. But I will not ever come back to a course that
seems to want to nudge everyone into social order. If you're like me, stay the
nudge away from this course.
I didn't have time to watch all the lectures or do the final exam (there are
no quizzes), but as much as I could tell this is a great course. There aren't
that many courses on geology - I don't know why, it's as interesting as
anything else. If you like the topic, I'm sure you will find here an engaging
lecturer and top quality classes.
One of the people who commented here said: "During the lectures, I had strong
feeling that professor Plous wants to make me non-smoking vegan budhistic
pacifist, and to change my sexual orientation into a lesbian transsexual."
Precisely why I dropped out. One of the assignments was to be a good Samaritan
for a day, and if you were the best choir boy you would get to meet the Dalai
Lama. Oh goody! What does that have to do with Social Psychology? Nothing. But
it befits the instructor's philosophy. This is not science. It's pure ideology
transvestite. I didn't watch many lectures as my patience threshold for
demagogy is very low, but it's safe to recommend that you stay away from it -
unless you like being mind-numbed by this pervasive post-modern mentality that
distorts what should be a neutral enterprise, turning it into a justification
for life choices.
Wonderful small course on Greek History. It covers the period from Homer to
Alexander - so it is by no means comprehensive. Most philosophical schools are
only briefly mentioned, and there's practically no discussion of Plato and
Aristotle - as many of you could expect. But seven weeks aren't enough to
accommodate everything. Professor Andy is a delightful storyteller and carries
so much knowledge and meaning in his stories, and as such classes are very
engaging. I particularly liked the references to alternative theories and the
non-biased description of events. It is a very light course, regarding
assignments, but totally worth it. You'll learn a great deal. Recommended!
Not everyone will agree, but I loved this course. If you take it will
understand just how math and philosophy share a common reasoning. You will see
just how absurd it is to distinguish between social and natural sciences,
because science is all the same: it means knowledge. This course will give you
the tools for better reasoning. You should know that it's difficult to stomach
it - the lectures are challenging and tough to follow. The evaluation, on the
other hand, is very simple; there are no weekly quizzes but you do take an
easy final exam. If you like philosophy or math, or if you simply want to
understand how logic is so important as the ground level for thought in any
discipline, this is the course for you.
Good introduction to a fascinating subject. The course is very well built
because it does not present you with "out-of-the-oven", complete and validated
knowledge. It tells you the story of how research has progressed in the field.
It's structure is "this study made this breakthrough discovery; then that
study added another discovery, etc". To me, this seemed highly engaging. There
isn't a dull moment all the way. I do think that you need some background in
biology and research to grasp all the concepts. I struggled with many topics
in the course, although the professor makes an effort to explain slowly and
build from simple to complex. I would recommend that future offerings add 1-2
weeks of very basic biological concepts before the course goes full speed into
the apoptotic pathways.
This is the second part of a two-part course, so I'll just write in here what
I said about the first part. Fantastic course overviewing the history of
contemporary music. Listening to professor John Covach tell his stories so
passionately is an incredible experience. I highly recommend it if you're a
fan of rock/pop music. You will learn a bit more about your favorite bands,
but more importantly you will get a holistic summary of how music evolved in
the US and how it translates very closely our modern history. The course
itself is relatively light and the assessments are easy. But that doesn't take
anything away from it. I'm convinced part of the reason I found the quizzes so
easy to answer was because the professor is so good.
This is a fantastic introductory course on the amazing world of Game Theory
and strategies in competitive settings. It is fantastic because it "looks &
feels" great - the material is masterly prepared, it's fresh and fun, the
lecturer is an amazing communicator, the videos never have a dull moment, the
contents are solid economic science, and you get out of it feeling like you
now know a lot about company interactions. Unfortunately, it's also
introductory because if you're like me and you've had advanced training in
Game Theory or related, this course will be too basic. I did have fun in the
course - but I did not really learn anything radically new. Not surprisingly,
the quizzes are indeed also a piece of cake. In sum, take the course if you
never had previous exposure to the subject - I guarantee you'll learn. If you
do know about this stuff, well... it can still be fun! I had a great time
remembering old concepts, and so can you.
This was the first time I totally dropped out of a course. The subject is very
interesting and the professor very knowledgeable, but I feel it requires
previous background in the subject to be able to keep up the pace. Now, the
quizzes aren't all that hard - so if you're objective is to grab the
certificate and run, go for it. But if you really want to follow the material
and substantively learn something, I think it's too hard unless you have any
experience in the matter. I did not want to carry on in the course just for
the certificate, so I left. That being said, I'm sure others would disagree
with me and swear they've been able to follow. So if this course entices your
curiosity you should check it out for yourself. And plus I tried the first
offering of the course, so maybe future sessions will be different and include
more preliminary information that gives a more thorough picture of the
essential basis concepts needed.
This is a great introductory course on computational methods for models of
evolution, mixing great insights in the fields of Biology and Statistics. It's
"computational", but there's no programming. The professor really had a lot of
work to prepare the exercises so that you don't really need to write code
yourself, but still learn how to use available packages to solve real research
questions. So don't be afraid to take the course even if you don't know how to
code! The exercises are assisted and you won't have much problem solving them,
as long as you get the concepts. I highly recommend future sessions of this
course to everyone, regardless of background. Some courses teach you about the
concept of evolution, but this one actually gives you hands-on experience with
true methods for research in the topic.
Fantastic course overviewing the history of contemporary music. Listening to
professor John Covach tell his stories so passionately is an incredible
experience. I highly recommend it if you're a fan of rock/pop music. You will
learn a bit more about your favorite bands, but more importantly you will get
a holistic summary of how music evolved in the US and how it translates very
closely our modern history. The course itself is relatively light and the
assessments are easy. But that doesn't take anything away from it. I'm
convinced part of the reason I found the quizzes so easy to answer was because
the professor is so good.
Really interesting course and topic. It's light (few assessments and short)
and small - I would have been able to finish it just using my knowledge on the
topic (and I'm not even close to an anthropologist!). I recommend it as an
introduction.
Nice course if you don't know much about research in psychology, or if you
want to break the spell on some of the myths that pop culture and the media
raised in our heads. But it's a very light course, you won't be going in too
deep into any particular subject. After I finished I got the same impression
as when I finish a 10-minute workout session - good, but tomorrow I won't feel
any pain in my muscles. There's quizzes, peer assessments and an exam - so
plenty of work. But the videos are short and you only get about 30 minutes of
material to watch every week. Plus, you get the OLI online textbook, which is
a really good backup (and free!).
This is just a mini-course (an hour and a half of video), but it's
surprisingly very informative. Since it refers to a very timely event, the
Eurozone crisis, I would definitely recommend it to everyone - considering the
amount of nonsense we hear in the media and from opinion-makers every day. I
wish it was longer and more in-depth, but anyway it's relevant and very well
lectured.
It's an interesting introduction to the subject of ADHD. If you're a beginner,
you will learn all that you may want to find out about this condition. If you
have someone near you with ADHD, it is particularly worthwhile. My only beef
with this course is that it's very superficial. Sure, that may be the
objective - but for someone like me who was looking to go in detail into the
neuroanatomy of ADHD, it wasn't enough. A symptom of that is the fact that
lectures are too short (30-minute lectures) and the quizzes too easy. So,
overall, great as an introduction, not so much if you're further ahead in your
studies.
It's an interesting introduction to Neuroscience. The professor is really
passionate about the subject and that's contagious. You should take this
course as a motivation to learn more and not expecting to find an in-depth
analysis of any particular aspect of the topic. The assignments are easy and
you get 1000 attempts (although they only count 20%), but you only get 3 shots
at the exam, without knowing which answers are wrong after each try. So, good
evaluation system that doesn't just give away the certificate.
An amazing course by an amazing professor with amazing students on-camera.
They managed to discuss all the issues you dream of hearing about in a
classroom about moral justice: abortion, same-sex marriage, etc. - and all
while being polite, not recurring to insult, and being spot-on with their
arguments. The lecturer manages to remain neutral enough, and I bet he won't
hurt your feelings if you happen to disagree with what's being said. If
anything, he will make you a better thinker. And, as he says, he will
"unsettle you". While the class isn't hard, it is challenging to keep up with
all the nuances and all the small variations and arguments. However, the
"self-test" exercises are really helpful. They also allowed students to wait
for all the material and do the whole one-semester course in bulk, which was
really cool. I got so hooked I finished all the material in 2 weeks! Highly
recommended! A minor detail: The video footage is "old" (there's mention of
George W. being President), but it's still relevant and up to date.
If you're into Philosophy, this is a great course. Don't expect big flashy PPT
presentations - Professor Mitch just talks against several backgrounds for an
hour and a half each week. But that's also part of the enchantment. It doesn't
feel like a MOOC. He seems to take you to his house or to his classroom and
engulf you in a friendly conversation about self-knowledge. It's a pretty
special course in that way. You don't need any specific background, but even
if you have it you won't feel disappointed. You are guaranteed to learn
something, since the course topics range from Socrates to Buddhism (!). I
can't see a single drawback in this course. I personally hate the discussion
forum in any philosophy course because a violently loud minority of students
uses them to spew out unsubstantiated and poorly argued politics and ideology,
instead of using them for a true discussion of the class topics. However, in
this course the professor and the TAs did a good job managing the forum.
A really good course. No programming! There is a lot of math but they
introduced the concept of glue lectures to highlight the aspects from the
class that will help you complete the quizzes - so it's not that hard to do
it. Just make sure you know your calculus and you'll be fine. The instructor
totally gets online learning and is one of the best around. He's engaging and
informative. If you have an interest in this topic, or if you took the Machine
Learning course and want to learn a radically different approach with Control
Theory, this is the course for you.
I expected this course to be more flexible and more interactive. We did have a
writing assignment to express our own ideas - but that was it. Some of the
weekly lectures were technically useful, like how to make a financial plan or
a business proposal, but those are only important after you have... "developed
innovative ideas for new companies". The fact of the matter is that you cannot
teach innovation. You can only promote it and create a space for people to
work on their own ideas. I sure hope in future offerings the course is
revamped to create such a space.
What a delightful little course! It's very short and it's easy, but the
subject is fascinating and the instructor is just an amazing communicator. If
you have an interest in this topic, I definitely recommend it!
I only completed part A of the course - so please keep that in mind. Dr. Coke
Barr is a very nice man and a good professor, and he'll take you on an
intuitive journey through the amazing world of bioelectricity. You can take
only part A - where you'll be evaluated for your understanding of the concepts
- or you can take also part B - which involves math and calculations. After
week 4, the exercises in part B got hard and demanded more time to complete
than I could spare. Granted, the professor helps you every week by publishing
hints on how to solve them, but those are sometimes ineffective because you
can get the units wrong and then you spend days going in circles just because
you forgot a zero. So I quit that part, but I still thought it was a great
course, totally worth taking.
A delightful course that will get you learning Python in no time - and
incredibly fun too! Instead of developing complex statistical algorithms, the
professors make you write (and evaluate) games! They went to the trouble of
creating CodeSkulptor, which is pretty much just a web page, so there's no
need to install Python. The course is incredibly engaging - but unfortunately
no certificate was awarded.
One of my favorite MOOCs ever. I have a great interest and affinity to
Neuroscience - so I'm openly biased. But Professor Lester put together a very
engaging course on drugs of addiction and drugs for treatment. It was a nice
mix of Biochemistry, Bioelectricity, Pharmacology and even some Psychology.
Since the course was short (5 weeks), there was a lot of material to cover
which made it a bit hard to follow. Some background on (at least) Biochemistry
is definitely required to keep up with the pace.
Writing scientific papers is a skill that every scientist must learn. It
doesn't come naturally, as most people believe - the language and structure of
papers are very peculiar, and there are certain expectations that reviewers
and editors have that we'll sooner or later clash with. This course is a
magnificent piece of work. It explains very clearly all the basics (and even
some advanced tricks) needed to write quality papers. More than that, it gives
the essentials for quality writing in English. It includes lots of training
(writing and reviewing other people's writing), so it's very engaging. The
best thing I can say about it is that after taking it I looked back at some
papers I had written as a young PhD that were rejected by several journals -
and now I know exactly why. They look like school reports and not like
scientific papers.
Since I've had advanced classes in statistics and econometrics, I took this
course mainly for the "Bio-" than for the "-statistics" part. I wanted to know
more about the application of statistics to life sciences. Due to this
particular interest, I was a bit disappointed. The course is relatively short
but full of great entry-level information. If you never took a statistics
course or if it's been a while and you want to remember the fundamentals, then
you should take this course. But if, like me, you are looking for advanced
statistical methods and their application in fields such as medicine or
biology, you will not find that here.
This is good as an intuitive, introductory course (hence the name), but if
you're someone like me who has a background in Economics and you just want to
know more about Finance, you'll be kind of disappointed. The Professor is
highly enthusiastic and friendly - you really feel engaged by his style.
However, this year's class was very light and informal - while the tests and
exams were much more profound in terms of playing with concepts and math. The
videos are very long because there's some circling around the topic and
particularities of each topic are never objectively stated. In sum, if you
like qualitative classes on the topic that kind of give you a sense of the
issues, and you like to learn through analogy and narrative, this course is
for you. If, like me, you think learning using narratives is tremendously
dangerous, and you find no replacement for formalism, math, and rigorous
concepts (as much as Finance allows), look for other options.
This was a very fun course to attend. It's relatively "light" but still
tremendously informative and very practical. It deals mostly with the
insertion of game elements into business communication strategies to engage
consumers. This is an emerging trend, and Professor Werbach gave us a very
introduction to the subject, considering how difficult it is to depict the
state of the art of a very novel field.
This was the best MOOC I took to date. Professor Ng has amazing teaching
skills, particularly because he teaches such a hard class. The length of the
lessons is just right, and the material he prepares for programming
assignments is great because if guides you through the exercise. Overall, a
tremendous experience whether you have previous programming experience or not.