Learner Reviews & Feedback for Ancient Philosophy: Plato & His Predecessors by University of Pennsylvania

It's ok; worth your time if you are trying to get into philosophy and want part of the proper foundation. Overall I enjoyed it and it was good as a hand-hold through the pre-Socratics and some of the most essential Platonic writings.

Pros: the videos are pretty easy to understand, and the material chosen/covered is good to know.

Cons: the video quiz questions are really...dull...and there are too many. A downside of the ease of the videos/lectures is that they don't really go that in depth, and they're nowhere near the quality I've seen in other Coursera courses (like the Kierkegaard course from UCopenhagen).

The content of the course is quite striking since this knowledge is not found everywhere, free and especially taught by a connoisseur. However, the videos are quite tedious since, in my opinion, the voice and tone of the teacher comes a time when it does not transmit energy and therefore is tedious, especially because they could help her with images, examples, animations etc. that could be more interesting and even more striking.

I liked the content, but the valuation system is flawed, first is very very very easy; second the peer system is bad.

I would like to have a more challenging quizes and actually exams, and a more demanding essay.

I really liked the teacher, but despite the fact you cover a lot of subjects, you can go more deep, although was not mere superficial knowledge.

The course material is OK; the lectures are fun and interesting, but to pass the course you need to submit an assignment that is subjected to peer review and you will need to get approval by all of your peers. However the act of subscribing to a MOOC alone does not make people suited to review other peoples work...

The professor is animated and clearly loves her subject. I don't think we need to stop so frequently to ask a quiz question though. It's best to keep going on one subject without interruption.

Content is interesting but the teaching style could be more engaging

Heavy going! Informative though - and an engaging teacher.

Initially, I was excited about this course, but I lost interest due to two things. First, while the beginning segments about how we know the Presocratics was great, the presentation of the early Milesians was shallow and did not deepen my understanding of their world and thought. Then, the section on Parmenides made me lose faith in the teacher - she presented his main ideas in such a way as to obscure his vision, which is of what we now call a multiverse, a world in which all things exist potentially. The best part of the course was that it made me seek out other writers about Parmenides.

can give a better explanation in simple term rather more reading content. But overall a good beginner course

Poor course. Bad teacher bad environment boring and uneducational videos. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about and she says things that simply aren’t true.

Am I not getting any certificate for completing this course or what?

It is not useful.