The course is very interesting and helpful to understand the big picture. But sometimes I lost the overview at which point of the review/ discussion we actually are. Anyway, I recommend the course.

Overall, a very interesting and deep look at a the structural issues which plague the Arab Spring. The readings, however, consistently required more then the allotted 1 hour set in the course.

Good experience and materials. It is neccesary to consider external factors in the same manner as internal ones.

Meaningful insights on the causes and consequences of the Arab spring from several points of view

Very interesting

nice course

This was my first course on Coursera. For context, I am final year undergraduate student studying International Relations, I am quite experienced in this area.

I had high expectations for the course, but sadly these were not met. The content itself was interesting, but presented in a very dry way. Dr. Afsah was clearly reading from a script the entire time, and the information became very hard to absorb because he was not really 'lecturing', but rather just 'presenting'. Very convoluted academic language was used, which also often did not make sense (English is obviously not his first language, but he is nevertheless very educated). The fact that, I, and educated university student who speaks native English, could not understand The quizzes are quite easy and there is no other form of assessment.

My biggest criticism is of the discussion forums. My native language is English, and none of the prompts made sense. There was no question, or even a point of contention. Instead, simply a statement with little context. I was not alone in not understanding this, as 90% of people did not respond at all (like me), or simply wrote one or two words (like 'good'). Discussion forums and prompts can be a great way to reinforce your learning, but they were useless here.

I understand that any course is a mix of the professor's views and facts. However, the balance needs to be right to ensure that students get the most knowledge and insight out of it, not just the professor's personal beliefs and points of view. In this course, I felt that the balance was not right, and skewed towards the professor trying to state and reinforce his point of view. This course was 60% hectoring of the existing set-up in the Arabic states, 30% about the Arab Spring and 10% on why it didn't succeed. The course would also have been more useful if it had tried to use frameworks to compare the Arab set-up with other regions and things that can be done to improve. Instead the course started with the implicit belief that the Arab set-up is the worst, the "Denmark" system the best and then a continuous talking down to call out that the Arab set-up has failed. Students know that the Arab set-up has failed and are coming to this class to intellectually analyse a framework based analysis which also, atleast in a classroom, show ways of reaching these better versions and ultimately "Denmark". This course didn't even attempt to do that.

Awful. Quizzes are broken down unnecessarily and barely any opportunity to critically engage. Not worth it