8 replies to this topic

[Trof]

This is more like a "Hi and welcome everyone!" but I wanted to make it more constructive, so.. hi and welcome everyone and for a start tell us about your courses.

I just started Drugs and the Brain this week (couple other neuroscience stuff planned for next year). It's my first course, so I'm mostly learning how to work with the site on-the-fly. So far it looks pretty well designed, lectures, discussions... I'm not having problems with the molecular biology parts of course, but I actually pretty well understood resting potential my way, until the lecturer got to the mathematical equations of it

[prabhubct]

Hello Trof,
    I am taking following courses,
Vaccine Trials: Methods and Best practices,
An Introduction to interactive programming in Python,
Think again how to reason and argue,
A history of world since 1300


I had to manage time from my research so I am not very active in answering quizzes and class exercise.

BTW Great interest group! From your shoutBox OCD comment I can say that you are really enjoying course you are taking.

[Trof]

I'd like to know more about neurobiology and principles of actions of psychofarmacs. If only for the fact I have taken several of them.

[prabhubct]

Your's is very specific interest area. For me I like pharmacology, in past I liked Psychology very much (There is very nice book named Human Behavior, forget author's name). Remembering drugs names is tricky. We often get fascinated by mechanism of action. At start we really used to mug up nerves names and try remembering their function then. Drugs is surely a quiet interesting area to explore. Studying pharmacology with physiology, Biochemistry and anatomy is in fact very good idea, you get to know whole picture.

[nightingale]

am taking "drugs & the brain" too ...
pretty interesting ...
it is my first course,, and the material is well designed

have to study!

[Trof]

So, entering my last week of Drugs and the Brain, so far only two points down from maximum on overall on tests
It's really interesting and I really love the way it's put, that it not only talks about neurobiology principles, but also shows several important concepts used in science, like correlation and causation, how the hypotesis are created, the fact there is usually more theories on how things work and none of them is actually 100% sure, also some overview on how experiments are conducted and so on. I really love it. For people not from scientific professions it's a nice insight into the scientific work, and for us others it's an important reminder.

And also some of the views on Caltech campus with comments like "from this balcony Einstein was enjoying his view",  "these are Linus Pauling's original labs" or "this is where Richard Feynman used to work". It's amazing

[Trof]

So, my second course Medical Neuroscience started over a month ago, but unfortunately I spent that month in hospital without good internet access. I pretty much regret that, since this course seems to be pretty thorough, with group assigments and other interactive stuff, and planned for and extensive period of 8 weeks. Now I can only watch the videos, without attempting Statement of Accomplishment because some of the weekly quizes are already overdue.
The course stuff said they plan to repeat the course in the future, so maybe then.

[Tabaluga]

Hi, I never heard about Coursera before I saw this group... so actually I think it's a good idea and would like to take up a course too, but how time-consuming are they, in your experience ? I've seen they mostly last several weeks, but I mean how intense ?
Just wondering whether it might fit into my already very full timetable with regular university courses and thesis research....

[Trof]

That depends. Every course has a different difficulty and baseline-knowledge level. The first course I was taking had around 10 10-minute videolectures each week or so. The one that's active now is defined as college-level and requiring at least 10 hours a week including 6 hours of videos. Also it contains student assesments that has to be competed on forums with other students to gain additional credits. Whole course is said to be an equivalent of a first-year college course, and if you pay some money, you can even get an official certificate if you pass all the quizes.

So this one is pretty tough, but noone says you need to really do all that stuff if you don't have time. There is a way how to download videos to watch them later, if they are not available after finishing of the course. So if you want to pass the course it's time consuming, if you want just to watch the videos, you don't need to pass any quizes.

But of course there are other courses, which ale less demanding. This should be specified on the info page of each course before it starts.