Learner Reviews & Feedback for Race and Cultural Diversity in American Life and History by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Fantastic and insightful! Easy course load and interesting topic.

This is an excellent course. Dr. Anderson is a great professor.

Excelente curso. Dinamico y muy completo.

Great course and homework assignments

Excellent course. Great insights.

Great Course, great instructor.

A VERY INTERESTING COURSE

Excellent presentation!

Very insightful course!

Very interesting topic

I loved this course!

Really interesting!!

Excelente curso!!!

excellant

AMAZING!

good

I think it is wonderful to have this kind of course work available for free, and I am grateful to the professor and University of Illinois for doing this work. Thank you for the education, opportunity to think through these things and be exposed to better race history information that should have been taught earlier in schools. There REALLY needs to be a way to report graders who are purposefully downgrading other students. Since these classes are opened up to a very large audience with no prerequisites, it invites some people who don't necessarily have the right discernment and/or grade harshly for political reasons. For example, I was graded a '0' for references and citations on my final paper when there were citations throughout the paper (more than the minimum requirement) and more than 10 references (also more than the minimum requirement. 3 people grade our papers so, since the other 2 are fair, we mostly end up passing. However, it really isn't okay that are grades are far lower than is really deserved because of people with some kind of vengeance on the topic.

I absolutely loved all the material given from the Professor. I learned so much and I learned a lot from my fellow peers. This class was eye opening and I highly recommend it! Learning about race and it’s effects on society, has given me a much better understanding of what others different than me have experienced. The only thing I’d change or wish could be better is more time for the final project to be completed. I am a stay at home mom and I had a hard time finding time to finish certain assignments. A few were easy to complete but for the Final project, I would have wished I had more time to produce a better project than the one I gave. Despite this, I earned a very good grade in the class.

The Race and Cultural Diversity in American Life and History course was excellent! Although, I didn't expect to spend as much time as I did on the assignments, it was worth it. Through the lectures presented by Professor Anderson, supplemental reading and resources, and research done to complete the assignment, I have learned more about my cultural identity, become more aware of the ideology of race and how it has shaped the lives Americans from every ethnic background. The only suggestion I would like to make is that some of the transcribed lectures be proof read. There are many typos.

Sonya Rosario

While it is true that some of the administration can be clunky, and the peer reviews, both given and received can be inconsistent, the course content was excellent. Truly covering both race and cultural diversity, including ethnicity and religion, the presentations and supporting readings were engaging and thought-provoking. Beginning the course, I was skeptical of getting lively interaction typical of a classroom setting, especially for such an emotional topic, but one upside of the peer reviews was the exposure to others' thought processes and growth over the duration of the course.

I loved the content of the course. I found it opened up a number of avenues for continued exploration and learning. The first assignment was great! I loved the reflective nature of it and it helped me to start to explore my own culture and perspectives. I have two suggestions for the course in the future: (1) make the assignments more reflective rather than the research based format and (2) the duration listed for the individual reading was not accurate. One time it said it would take 10 minutes but one of the included videos was 17 minutes.

The course content was phenomenal. I learned quite a bit; several of my misconceptions were smashed to pieces. I highly recommend reading and watching the supplemental materials. The RACE documentary was particularly meaningful to me. A couple of the assignments were unclear as to the exact expectations. The instructions would list one thing, and the rubric would grade on something else, or grade on something unexpected. I think a bit more clarity on assignment expectations would benefit this course greatly. It's still 100% worth taking!

The course taught me a lot of new information that I found to be very valuable. I can surely share what I have learned here in future conversations. My only critique would be that the course is not interactive enough. It was only based on peer reviewed assignments and had no in-lecture polls, quizzes etc. Also, the backgrounds/visuals were not very pleasing to the eye. I understand this is a course on a serious topic but those details count as well.

An excellent informative and well-explanatory course that every person living (not only) in America should take! Addressing issues that have always and still continue being -even subliminally- in the limelight and supporting, explaining them with historical and scientific facts can open the eyes of our contemporary society and make us learn and appreciate the beauty of our cultural richness and diversity that shapes the modern American identity

The lectures and related content were organized and well-presented. The assignments could have stated more clearly exactly what the expectations were, as there were aspects for peer grading that I did not realize were an expectation. I was able to see what would contribute to the grade by advancing to the peer review page, but that feels like a work-around.