Learner Reviews & Feedback for Soul Beliefs: Causes and Consequences - Unit 1: Historical Foundations by Rutgers the State University of New Jersey

Done it

Awes

Covered a broad range of religious beliefs about the afterlife. Solid overview of Darwin and evolution as well as good videos e.g. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris. The videos of actual classroom delivery with students provided a realism to the online experience. Both profs. were excellent teachers with the necessary skills to handle sensitive topics.

The course could be improved by more clearly written assignments. The content of these assignments was appropriate but the word structure was too vague and in some cases disjointed.

Excellent course. Well done Rutgers.

I loved the beginning of the course and the information about Darwin. I may agree with Dawson, but I find him too darn smug. I once watched a documentary about intelligent design, Another scientist told him how lucky he was to have such fame, wealth, and good health, He asked him if he died and found a God,what would he think? Dawson's answer was and I'm not exactly quoting but he

A new course with new material. The course is in the beginning stages of evolution, just like the human psyche. Perhaps someone will refine it in time but it is a very good course, especially considering nothing quite like this has been presented before.

Could be more crisp. As it is undergraduate course in the university, a bit of extended (out of core point) lectures are given.

I enjoyed and learnt many new things and ideas!!

Big Thanks!!

I sincerely appreciate the enormous effort and encouragement of Prof. Daniel M. Ogilvie and Prof. Leonard W. Hamilton. A sincere hug and my gratitude.

He's talky...but it's an entertaining flow :) and you actually learn a lot. You can tell both of them enjoy teaching this MOOC.

I enjoyed the course. It gave a good historical look at the foundations of religion. I'm looking forward to Unit 2.

Really liked the funny, old professor who gives most of the lectures. Good info.

Very enjoyable and relatable. Good mix of reading, lecture, and conversation.

Amazing course touching areas where I also often debated with myself.

Very Informative and logical. Loved Prof. Daniel Ogilvie lectures

A very interesting course.

This is a course for those who have not spent any time delving into comparative religion and testing their own traditional (family taught) belief systems with thoughts of act versus "trut."

El recorrido teórico de los autores es muy elemental. Se esperaba mayor profundidad.

not bad but not excellent

I enrolled in this course hoping to find a balanced perspective about historical foundations for religions and other philosophies. It did include a good amount of interesting material around different systems, but there were a couple of key things that made me lose interest in the course at around week 6 out of 11.

First, I felt that the instructor talks about how he wants people to learn to think for themselves, yet I also felt that he himself preaches. Much of the evidence in his lectures is delivered as an anecdote, which might appeal to some (e.g. I could see that happening to me) and probably made the course more entertaining, but didn't do it for me. I felt that the Wade reading, in contrast, was balanced, cited other sources, and pulled in a variety of perspectives, but when I listened to the lectures, I felt that Professor Ogilvie had a tendency to state points and expect people to believe them.

Second, on a related note -- this course was not shaped for the online medium. I understand that it's cheaper and easier for universities to just use recordings of live lectures, but that meant that the lectures contained quite a bit of anecdotal rambling (e.g. going off on a tangent on how you should never take charge of somebody else's soul). Another, smaller beef I have with the presentation of the course is that when he had students who were raised under different religions come up and speak their beliefs, it took a long time to demonstrate a fairly simple idea -- despite people ascribing to the same "label," the same religion, they can have in fact been taught very different things. In a live university class, having students speak can work because the evidence is being presented by "one of you" ("you" being the students), and has the added benefit of building community in the class. But in an online class, I didn't feel that kinship at all.

I'll make a disclaimer that much of this review is about how I personally felt about the course, and about how it wasn't right for me. Some of what I didn't like, others may like. But overall, despite being initially interested in the topic and why people believe what they do, I didn't feel that the material was delivered in a way that captured my continued interest.

Not really what I excepted but others might be interested, good information.

I finished this class a month ago and still haven't gotten a final grade.

A complete waste of time especially for those of us with a lot more personal research experience and wise years behind us. If zero had been a choice, that's what I would have given this course. Don't even bother to take the course if you're interested in getting true knowledge especially about the soul.

The false comparison between religion and soul beliefs cloud the validity of the course. Maybe the intent was to only show the worst case "Soul Beliefs" then shoot them down. However, at least to me, the instructor seemed to extrapolate "some beliefs" to "all beliefs".

Too slow and not what I thought it would be. I had looked at this before and thought that I would give it another chance.

It's format needs a good narrator not based on stupid commercials.

trash, its not letting go forward to the next assignment.