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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Introduction to the Biology of Cancer by Johns Hopkins University

4.8
stars
7,270 ratings

About the Course

Over 500,000 people in the United States and over 8 million people worldwide are dying every year from cancer. As people live longer, the incidence of cancer is rising worldwide and the disease is expected to strike over 20 million people annually by 2030. This open course is designed for people who would like to develop an understanding of cancer and how it is prevented, diagnosed, and treated. The course introduces the molecular biology of cancer (oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes) as well as the biologic hallmarks of cancer. The course also describes the risk factors for the major cancers worldwide, including lung cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, liver cancer, and stomach cancer. We explain how cancer is staged, the major ways cancer is found by imaging, and how the major cancers are treated. In addition to the core materials, this course includes two Honors lessons devoted to cancers of the liver and prostate. Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to: - Identify the major types of cancer worldwide. (Lecture 1) - Describe how genes contribute to the risk and growth of cancer. (Lecture 2) - List and describe the ten cellular hallmarks of cancer. (Lecture 3) - Define metastasis, and identify the major steps in the metastatic process. (Lecture 4) - Describe the role of imaging in the screening, diagnosis, staging, and treatments of cancer. (Lecture 5) - Explain how cancer is treated. (Lecture 6) We hope that this course gives you a basic understanding of cancer biology and treatment. The course is not designed for patients seeking treatment guidance – but it can help you understand how cancer develops and provides a framework for understanding cancer diagnosis and treatment....

Top reviews

AH

Mar 17, 2017

I am an Undergraduate student and i didnt even read oncology subject, but this course not just start the beginer level , butt gradually it goes in depth and the flow of lectuures and topics is smooth

AS

Oct 15, 2021

A didática do curso é excelente, os docentes conseguem, em poucos minutos, explicar diversos assuntos de forma simples. Além disso, o conteúdo é super completo e corresponde a todas as expectativas.

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26 - 50 of 1,378 Reviews for Introduction to the Biology of Cancer

By Estrella F J

Feb 14, 2019

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By (Tee) T L

May 5, 2020

I would like to thank Dr.Pienta and his colleagues for providing such a resourceful and intriguing lesson on cancer research. Personally, I found the lectures on Metastasis: The Real Killer by Dr.Valkenburg to be of particular interest and I will certainly continue my academy journey with hopes of finding new prognosis and treatments to fight cancer in the near future. Thank you!

By Mahmoud A

Sep 5, 2019

It's a very good course with very specific goals and I really enjoyed it and really learned from it.I hope you can keep providing similar courses.But I think the evaluation method needs improvement to be more student-engaging.Thank you so much for letting me have this opportunity to study this topic with this tutorship.

By kosar j

Feb 8, 2021

Thank you to the organizers of this course and also for the special kindness you have given me. Also, the contents of this course were very informative and I hope that one day no one in the world will die of cancer and I will be a useful person in spreading medical science. It added a lot to my knowledge, thank you

By Yeasmin A

Jan 26, 2019

A complete and outstanding course with all elementary topics of cancer. I would like to say thanks to the course co-ordinator of the course for such an excellent package of knowledge about cancer and also thanks to coursera.

By Kartik I

May 9, 2020

Brilliant! I loved it! Learnt a lot, helps me in my field of Artificial Intelligence by understanding what cancer really means. Helps me empathize with the challenges at hand better. Thank you.

By Oguntuwase S O

Nov 11, 2018

I was greatly impacted and hope to deepen my understanding of liver cancer trusting that I too will able to contribute in future.

By Carla M

Nov 6, 2018

course was amazing and put into terms that made it easier to understand. Some quizzes were a little difficult.

By Jenna E

Dec 21, 2018

Very informative. Good for basic understanding of cancer for someone already in the field of biology.

By Dustin S

Jan 3, 2019

hits the surface of cancer for anyone who is at least interested in learning how some cancers work.

By Sayed M S

Sep 3, 2019

Effective course by a group of specialists changed my view about that field, thanks

By Teertha U I

Nov 7, 2018

Best course to learn about cancer.

By Ivan T

Jul 13, 2017

The content is uneven. Lecturers are generally good, but they speak to the limited collection of static slides and often just read slide contents. Given that slide graphics is repetetive (there are probably 10 images overall that are reused over and over), a lot is left to the imagination. Overall amount of content is quite low for 6 week course. E.g. one of the weeks only has 15minutes of video and a 10-question quiz.

Quizzes and in-video questions seem like they were prepared by different people altogether. There are spelling mistakes, there are terms used during quizzes which have not been used during the videos, some of the questions are just poorly worded or bad from grammar point of view. Generally they are useful nevertheless.

If you don't set your expectations too high (this is no Andrew Ng's course by no means) and come with the desire to learn basics about biology of cancer, you will learn just that and upon completion will certainly know more than any non-medical person around you.

By Patricia C

Jan 31, 2018

Good info but very boring professionals.

By Henriette P

May 1, 2016

You cannot do the quizes unless you pay.

By Mohamed S M I

Aug 25, 2017

Well let me thank all the staff for this great, simple, informative course , also also thank you JH school of medicine for the second time for providing such a great course , thanks also to Coursera for accepting the financial aid .

Thanks to " Dr. Pianta's team " you made me very interested in such a branch of medical branches , It is now become a dream to join your team Dr. Pianta , fighting hand in hand together againist such a monster not only threat my Homeland Egypt or Us but also affect a huge number and harvest not a small number all over the world .

You really don't know how you encouraged me to attend lectures and events nearby in the Cancer Institute Of Minia in my city to apply and communicate all knowledge provided here in JH courses with Cancer cases here and their protocols of treatment .

I have a " Recommendation " for you : Now I'm enjoying a wonderful course called " Stories of Infection " also is here on coursera Provided by Dr. Maya Adam from Stanford SCH. Of Med . , briefly the way Dr. Maya Introduces the information in that course is very inspirational " the disease from personal history to the final recovery passing through C/P, investigations and proper types of therapies in the form of wonderful story " .So I'm really looking forward to enjoy such a course provided by your team Dr. Pianta discussing Cases of Cancers and its management .

Finally , always keep up the Excellent work as we used to see from you ^_^

By Niki H

Aug 19, 2021

OK I want to give it 4.5 but I'll round up. I'm a casino cocktail waitress with a LOT of curiosity and A TINY BIT of medical background (my dad was a corpsman and I'm just interested in how the human body works.) I LOVED everything I learned. I was so eager and excited every time I opened up my course and started learning. I felt stupid at the beginning but I reminded myself that I was gonna feel SO SMART when I finally understood this.

If you're doubting yourself, JUST KEEP GOING. If you feel dumb, it's okay bc let's be real, we're all dumb about cancer biology until we learn. You probably don't know any of this stuff, BUT YOU WILL. That being said: there were a few spots where the transcripts were wrong and it really threw me off. I learn by reading, not at all by hearing . I NEED those transcripts. For example "ligand" was written as "lag end" or something and it messed me up for a bit. There were a few times when I had to stop and go back and figure out what he meant but overall, I ended up GETTING it. Cancer touches all of our lives in one way or another and this course gives the average Joe the tools and information to understand what's going on. Hopefully we can build on that and eradicate it some day.

By Sara M A

Jan 16, 2017

I like this course it was so enjoyable helpful to me since I wanted to learn more about cancer biology and I got the perfect opportunity to sign into this course! thanks to all coursera team and Jhons Hopkins university school for giving their time and effort to make this course.

I liked the way of teaching by the doctors. at first, i thought it would be so difficult because I didn't have the right professional background about cancer biology and I wanted to start my own journey into fighting this disease but i didn't know where to start. suddenly, I found that this course and I've signed!

i have some suggestions about this course:

please put serious moderators not an ex-coursera students with some privilege

please put some sizes options for the translation

By Dan M

Jan 31, 2018

I appreciate that this course covers such a wide variety of topics, but I would love to see more than just prostate cancer examined in further depth in an independent course. I think the first instructor in this course does the best job of breaking down complex concepts into more comprehensive topics. I would recommend this course to anyone who wants to expand their knowledge in how to classify cancers into carinomas, sarcomas, leukemias, and lymphomas (the four general classes caner falls into) and then how to stage them appropriately, staging of the more common types of cancer that occur, or people looking for more information about how cells interact with chemotherapies, immunotherapies, and radiotherapies.

By Kris D R

Sep 10, 2021

Even though I have worked in a hospital/healthcare setting for over 15 years, this course offered me an insight into cancer and its biology (duh I hear you think). But it's more than that: genetics are introduced ever so briefly, as are all topics you probably always used in polite conversation but now need to integrate and apply. So there's a clear win! You'll also have to face some clinical situations (let's say short case studies) so it's indispensable to take your time to jot some things down, for it's pretty dense. I finished it in two days (and a half due to maintenance of the Coursera website) but I took notes. So in all, a nice appetizer!

By Sharon B

Jan 13, 2017

I got out of it what I expected as a person who does not work in any medical field. But I did not like the fact that we did not see a person giving the lectures and only the diagrams were visible. Every Coursera course I have taken thus far has always had the instructor visible as he or she lectured. It gave me the feeling of being in an actual classroom setting which I like. There was some information which was well beyond my level of knowledge . I am a college graduate but my degree is in social science. Then there were quiz questions which were on the more advanced information . I passed on my third try though.

By Dhruvkumar P P

May 5, 2022

Understanding the basic concepts in any given field is the root and foundation to understanding the complexity that is associated with it. This course has made it easy to understand the basic concepts that underly the cancer disease. The language in the course has been very simple to understanding the disease etiology, incidences, screening, diagnosis, prevention and treatment of cancer. I would recommend this course to everyone, including the general public as it allows people to understand the disease that is very common in society and will help people contribute towards advances in the field.

By Aedrian A

Jan 25, 2021

This course is an excellent introduction to and/or review of fundamental concepts involving cancer biology and hallmarks. For casual learners, the material will provide a thorough implicit explanation on why a generic and all-encompassing "cure for cancer" is nothing more than a clickbait headline (at least as far as the current trend are concerned). For researchers and/or clinical practitioners, the material will reinforce their theoretical understanding of cancers. One part of this course that piqued my interest is the ecological paradigm as an explanation for the metastatic process.

By AMANDA J

Jul 25, 2020

I, from the bottom of my heart, be very grateful to all the lecturers and the supporting staff, for their sincere efforts.

All of the lectures were very clear, descriptive and for me, it seemed like a short note. Each lecture started with an introduction from Dr. Pienta and started with the basics and then proceeded towards more information. there were pictures, data and other additional information where necessary. every lecturer did their portion to the best. I learned a lot from this course and would help me immensely in my studies. Thank you very much for your endeavours

By Suthasina C

Jun 19, 2019

Even though I have some difficulty studying this course especially around jargons and language (English is not my primary language and my professional background does not close to medical/ healthcare fields.), I found this course offer at appropriate length, both for course length and time required per week. It is manageable for those who is working, so do not hesitate to join.

I suggest the course to notify that the content is not that easy to understand for the one who does not have medical/ healthcare background just like me. Thank you for the course !