Learner Reviews & Feedback for Paleontology: Early Vertebrate Evolution by University of Alberta

The course was concise because you learn the major charecteristics of the groups of fishes and how they evolved into another group.

Excellent course and good depth for beginners with some general biology background. Hope they continue it for entire evolution of vertebrates. Fantastic. A

A great course with useful and complete information. The only negative point is that there were not enough assignments for practicing and remembering.

Well organized and excellent presenter.

Very interesting and compelling course, and I liked the questions every few minutes during the lectures as that helps me to retain information.

My only complaint is that the lecturer's manner of speaking is very rhythmic and repetitive and that makes it kind of hard to lose track of his words.

Very interesting and entertaining!

Although not as strong as the other palaeontology courses by the University of Alberta, the current courses takes much the same approach and uses the same teaching techniques as these other courses. As such, it easily and effectively gets the millions of years of early vertebrate evolution across clearly and concisely. The video lectures are both interactive and fun, and the course notes are both informative and well adjusted to the video lectures. If there is anything to be remarked upon, then it's the slight lack of depth as pertains to the material covered. This, however, is hardly surprising considering the highly complex material (drawing from fields as osteology, paleoecology, evolutionary and developmental biology, palaeontology and more), the speed at which it is discussed, and the level of accessibility that is provided. Overall, a very good course, and one I very much enjoyed following!

The presenter is world class, and I really enjoyed the interactive maps. The quizzes should be a bit more challenging though - perhaps learn how to identify a few fossils,

While I don't believe in evolution, I'm very surprised that the university would subscribe to the notion that all land vertebrates came from some creature in the ocean. Overall, the presentation of the information given could have been a bit more cleaner and steam-lined, rather than attempting to give an abundance of information that pushed the notion that every living thing on this earth came from some aquatic form. The presenter could have been a bit older, possibly someone who had a bit more experience in the field, rather than a twerp who looked like he just came out of puberty. And he talked with this hands too much. Overall, however, just to get some online classes under my belt, in a subject that I'm very interested in, i'd recommend this class as part of an introduction to paleontology itself.

I found the material and the lessons very useful and clear,. I have deduced one star, because I found it a bit difficult to assimilate so much information in such short time.

I have learned so much from this course, thanks to Coursera and University of Alberta. This course is highly recommended for students with a passion for Evolution and Phylogeny. The handouts are also very useful.

Definitely an appetiser for the subject although the names and terminology are a challenge.

très bien expliqué

I believe the course should have been six weeks long instead of four. I enjoyed the course, however should have contained more detail and the quizzes should have had more questions, at least ten.

The professor could have been a bit more serious, he acted as if he was a kindergarden teacher. Seriously: do you really need to imitate with your hand how a fish swims? I don't think so.

Also, the pronounciation of the latin words was horrible - then again, all native English speakers have problems with it, so don't take this remark personally.

Very fast short course, which does not go into much detail. Once again, the quiz questions are far too few to make a comprehensive test of knowledge. Save your $ for an actual full-on rated University credit course, with 30 hrs of lecture and 60 hours of homework/study/lab work.

i like this. this is good. good can be fun. fun has rewards...yay, i win

Difficult subject to get your head around but ultimately worth the effort. The teaching, as always with the University of Alberta's MOOCs, is second to none.

Amazing information, but the instructor is a little distracting.

Pretty in tense but the quizzes are pretty straightforward and the course goes pretty quickly. The diagrams helped. My first stab at real paleontology and it was a good intro.

The information presented was very good, though the heavy use of scientific names for various grades, clades, physical features, and assorted trait classifications was kind of overwhelming for such a short and introductory course. Perhaps the lectures could be broken up into shorter videos to have a narrower field of coverage for each one, so only a few new terms are presented at a time. The phylogenetic tree viewer still had many "locked" cards the last time I was sent to it, and no new organisms listed since module 1 or 2 even though many had already been discussed. The closed captioning and the sound seemed to be off in many places, though perhaps this was due to a poor wifi connection on my part.The biggest problem I had was with the presenter himself. Not only is he dressed like Indiana Jones for some odd reason; but his jerky, bouncy movements, exaggerated facial expressions, flailing hands and theatrical voice inflection made him VERY hard to watch and concentrate on the material presented. I actually had to pause quite a few times just to give myself a break from watching him twitching all over the place.

This is a very informative course, but the information is extremely complicated. I had to go over the notes several times.

Interesting, but assessments are too easy.

Three stars seems too much, two stars too few.

First and foremost, I couldn't stand the lecturer. The course description says "Taught by: Alison Murray, Ph.D, Associate Professor" but she never so much as appears on camera. Instead the material is delivered by some graduate student dressed up in what I would have assumed was a cartoonist's stereotype of paleontological field gear, and he has the most annoying, grating presentation style I've ever seen. I ended up covering his half of the screen with another window just to not have to watch him. Still had to listen to him though, delivering a script which I infer was written by Murray and other faculty. (I signed up for Ancient Marine Reptiles allegedly taught by Michael Caldwell and Halle P. Street — and in reality it was the same grad student. Same outfit. I said "oh no" and didn't continue. Couldn't take four more weeks of that guy.) Come on, how about courses taught by actual faculty members? Like The Science of the Solar System, taught by the engaging and accomplished Prof. Mike Brown, discoverer of Eris?

The material is largely "here's a Latin name of a family, here's a Latin name of a member of that family, here are some of its physiological characteristics (more unfamiliar vocabulary) — lather, rinse, repeat." Forget about passing the quizzes if you can't remember which Latin species name goes with which characteristics. I felt there was too much emphasis on individual species and not enough on overall concepts. I didn't feel I came away with a real understanding of what happened and why it happened in early vertebrate evolution... some of that was there, but it wasn't clear enough, obscured as it was by emphasis on vocabulary and rote description.

A jurassic park image, with material you can read by yourself?