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

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

enjoyed the course very much, lots of good information in manageable pieces.

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

Very interesting course and concepts clearly explained, thanks !

Amazing information, but the instructor is a little distracting.

Well organized and excellent presenter.

Very interesting and entertaining!

très bien expliqué

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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?