And now I want to turn to your part in medical neuroscience. I need to tell you, this course is the largest course in the coursera catalog, and very likely one of the largest if not the largest open online course available anywhere on the internet. To be successful on this course, you should plan to commit about 16 to 20 hours a week. Now, it's not say you can't be successful with a lower level of commitment, you can and many people have over the last several years but, this is my good faith [INAUDIBLE] For what you should expect in order to maximize the benefit of this course. Now this is a on-demand course, so you in principle could proceed at your own pace and that might be different from my recommendation and I understand that. I want you to be aware of that, as a matter of But I do want you to know what my expectation is of a typical learner to be successful in this content. As you progress through this content, you can expect there to be weekly quizzes. These quizzes come at the end of our lessons and I think you'll find that they are a very helpful way For you to keep pace with the content of the course. The way I've created these quizzes is that there are multiple variations of questions within each quiz. So you can actually take the same quiz multiple times. And as you do you may see different questions, different variations of the same question. So there's actually great pedagogical value. In repeating the experience of taking a quiz or an exam. And I hope that you would do so as a way to reinforce your learning. We will have a series of discussion forums at multiple points of contact in the course. And I strongly encourage your participation. One of the most wonderful aspects of medical neuroscience has been the community that has come around this course from all corners of the world and it has been tremendously gratifying for me as a professor and an educator to participate in this global learning community. The best way to do so is to be active in our discussion forums. And again, be looking for the various prompts that you will encounter as you work through these lessons that will drive your activity on the discussion forum. And I think you'll really enjoy getting to know our mentors and getting to know one another. As we meet and greet one another and learn together. Towards that end, there will be a variety of mechanisms for social engagement. We'll have real time hang-outs from time to time and I will let you know when those will happen. This will be an opportunity for us to get online together. In front of a video camera and have a chat, face to face. You'll have opportunity to ask me questions in these hangouts and we'll have a discussion. So you'll be getting information as the course progresses so that you'll know how to get involved with those periodic hangouts. We also have a Twitter account that I hope many of you will choose to follow. Our Twitter handle is @medineuronuke, and that might be a fun way for you to participate in the abbreviate format of social media. We also have a Facebook group, which was completely developed by students That were part of the very first edition of medical neuroscience. I don't have much of a presence at all on that Facebook group. It has been student run and student managed. And I am delighted that that group has existed over these years. And I would encourage you to check it out. Consider whether you want to be part of that group. And then lastly, you can expect there to be a serious comprehensive final exam. So as I mentioned, the course is organized into 12 weeks. We do have a 13th week, and that 13th week is devoted to this final exam. So I hope that you'll plan accordingly so that you can apply yourself. And really see this as a capstone event in your completion of this course. The comprehensive final exam will be based around a set of clinical cases, and it will challenge you to integrate your learning across the six units of this course. And I think you'll find it to be a very satisfying experience. And you'll be amazed at how much you know by the time you come to that comprehensive final exam. Before I leave you in this orientation to our course, Medical Neuroscience, I want to just speak to you for a few minutes, and reflect upon what I think are some evidence based neuroscience founded principles about learning. Now for those of you are interested, and I'm sure many of you have already done so, I would strongly recommend And a wonderful course there, a course called Learning How to Learn by Professor Barbara Oakley, Professor Terrence Sejnowski. That course will surely open your mind to your own learning preference and allow you, I think, to maximize your investment in a course like Medical Neuroscience. So I won't necessarily go through their principles of how to learn. Rather, I'll just reflect a bit on my own experience as a learner and as an educator. So, what I would suggest you do for productive learning in this course is to follow the path that I've laid out for you. I've tried to construct a logical, coherent sequence of learning activities, and while you are certainly free to deviate from that path, I would recommend that you follow the order and the sequence of the course as I've laid it out. And that includes the discussion prompts that you will encounter as you work through our lessons. I think those prompts can really serve to reinforce your knowledge and to your extend your learning. Now I don't mean to catalyze your learning when I encourage you to follow the path. Surely there will be times when you will want to stray off the path and explore. And I would encourage you to do that. Visiting the website, learn medical neuroscience is a wonderful way, for you to get off the path that I've laid out for you here on this website, and pursue those topics that are of particular interest to yourself. I would only encourage you then, to return to the path And bring your new knowledge and your new enthusiasm for your learning back to the broader community. Secondly, I will encourage you to visualize your knowledge. We'll do this in multiple ways as the course progresses. I am a firm believer in making visual Your mental model. And to do so is the largest possible. The picture that I'm showing you here is actually a sketch that some of my Campus based students made in our very first lesson. On the structure of organization of the human brain. So this was a collaborative drawing made by a team of students on a large Writing surface, and I would encourage you to do the same. Now, you don't need a white board and a set of markers to visualize your knowledge. You may choose to go to the local market and pick up some produce, or some craft supplies, and make sure all representations of a structure Of the brain and its neuro pathways. The point is, is that you are making visual and even tangible, your knowledge, and you're making it subject to secondary interrogation by yourself, and potentially by others. I think that's a wonderful way to reinforce your learning and to hold yourself accountable For the precision of your knowledge. So I hope you'll take advantage of those opportunities that I'll give you to visualize your knowledge. Thirdly, I will encourage you to learn spatially. So this is a picture of my son, who is deeply embedded in a, fabulous art installation. That was present at Washington DC at Hirshhorn National Gallery a few years ago. The artist invites viewers to enter this space that is defined by all these blue wires that are hanging down from the ceiling, and then to move through that space. And I love this metaphor Of making spatial your knowledge. Essentially creating a cognitive map, and we'll talk some about that when we get into unit six of the course. But the principle is to create a cognitive space that allows you to move through it. Now you can do this virtually, you can do this in your imagination. You can even do this in the real world, and I will encourage some of you to see this as a challenge, and to make spatial your knowledge, so that you can move or interact with it. I'll give you an example. We will study the pathways by which The signal from our finger tip reaches the postcentral gyrus in the opposite hemisphere of the cerebral cortex. Well there is a pathway. There are neurons that are connected in sequence, and there is a crossing of the body's midline that allows my left index finger To send signals to the right hemisphere of my brain. I once challenged students to act out this pathway. To use a large space in a classroom to fill that space with themselves, their teammates, their classmates And to create a theatrical representation of the flow of information from the fingertip to the paracentral gyrus. That was a wonderful way to fill that space with their knowledge and to interact with mobility and in the real world. To represent something that's much more abstract, the organization of functional pathway in the central nervous system. So visualize your knowledge, but learn spatially. And lastly I would encourage you to learn socially, that saying a group of students that acted out touch pathway from fingertip to cortex And the wonderful benefit of learning in community and doing so socially. Now there may be some of you out there that like to learn, as we say, the old-fashioned way with sensory deprivation, immobilization, and social isolation. Well that may be your learning preference and I won't criticise you for adopting that preference But I would say that that's not how the brain evolved to process information and to learn. We are social creatures, and at some point in your studies of medical neuroscience, I would encourage you to enter that social space. This is why I think our discussion forums are such an important part of the medical Neuroscience experience. And why I hope we will extend our learning into social media spaces as well. Those are just four tips from me about how to learn. I think there's something particularly useful about applying those strategies when we come to understand the organization and function Of this most complex of organs in the human body. It just invites one to learn visually, spatially, in community, learn socially. And to do so, I would encourage you to follow the path that I've laid out for you. And if you do so I think you have every opportunity to be successful in medical neuroscience and to fulfill your own ambitions. Whether that's to successfully complete this course and earn a verified certificate. Or just to improve your knowledge and understanding for those domains of this field that are of greatest interest to you. So I look forward to the journey ahead. I look forward to working with all of you as we collaborate in this global community of learners and I can't wait to get started. I hope you feel the same way so I invite you to progress on in our studies in week one. Of medical neuroscience. [MUSIC]
