RM
I have absolutely loved this course. Challenging but accessible. Every week has been engaging. I enjoyed the variety of research papers, video lectures and interviews.

In this course, we dive into the topic of child development. You will learn that child development is complex and is influenced by a surprisingly rich number of factors at many different levels of organization. You will see that development can be studied in various domains and at various levels of understanding, from different angles and disciplines. Importantly, you will come to understand that processes within and between the various domains and levels of organization continuously interact to shape development. This implies that understanding development requires taking an interdisciplinary approach. In order to help you organize your thinking about this complexity you will learn more about the developmental systems approach and theories related to that. We will look, amongst other things, at the brain and motor development, cognitive, language and social-emotional development and all the factors that have an influence on development. To illustrate how an interdisciplinary approach helps to understand child development you will see how researchers from various disciplines and backgrounds study child development at Utrecht University. These scientists will give a look in their field of knowledge and their collaboration with colleagues, to illustrate how the theory you will learn translates to practice. In sum, we invite you to follow us on a journey to understand child development from synapse to society!

RM
I have absolutely loved this course. Challenging but accessible. Every week has been engaging. I enjoyed the variety of research papers, video lectures and interviews.
MM
I enjoyed this course. Despite my difficulties that really did not get resolved, I really am glad I took this course.
YS
Fantastic opportunity to summerize information on the Development of a child, the basic and an introduction on the topic.
JM
Helped gain a well educated understanding of childhood development and all aspects that form part of it.
RS
THE undestanding child development :from synapse to society is very help its too good also Thank you for your wonderful course
HZ
This course was amazing for me. this give good understading about chid development which is so useful for my scientific activity and proffessional life. thanks.
NN
I wanted to understand about Child Development for my project, I found this very useful. Thank you.
VN
This was an amazing time for me learning about child development . Really an eye opener to aquire more knowledge about children , their behavior and just how they see the world .
TA
Present world is competitive. People don not have time to think about children. This is mostly time demanded to me. I am thankful to be a part of it...
AP
It's actually a good course to understand development itis very helpful but I don't get my cirtificate after completing this course
CM
Excellent foundation class to understanding our growth from from a single fertilized cell into a fully formed and social human.
DS
I'm very grateful for the opportunity given to me for completing this course. I have indeed learnt alot and will use my knowledge and understanding to betger under children. Thank you once again
Showing: 20 of 169
The content of the course is very good, however, I highly recommend you not to buy a Certificate. The assignments of this course are graded by peers. That's what happen to me in the end: I did all the assignments on time, but in the end of the course there were no people to check it. As it is recommended in FAQ, I've written in the forum for 3(!) times asking people to grade it. There were about 5(!) moderators, but no one paid attention. Even though I did all the required work, I didn't get the Certificate, that I really need. Your final result basicly depend on other people's mood (not even teachers, just the students). So don't waste you money, just listen to the content.
It was mostly like a encyclopedia! The professor does't teach, It's like he is reading a summery of a textbook very fast.
I completed the course, but it barely scratched the surface and instead focused on introducing topics and showing examples of research that the university is conducting rather than going more in depth. It felt like an advertisement for the university rather than a course with the goal of educating.
I was looking to boost up my childcare profile. I learned a great deal of new areas relating to how child development is studied. I would recommend this course to anyone looking to learn more about child development processes.
I have absolutely loved this course. Challenging but accessible. Every week has been engaging. I enjoyed the variety of research papers, video lectures and interviews.
I had great difficulties following this course, as it lacks of images. It is too much spoken words and it would really have helped if the lessons had more images to explain and show the content. Also I had difficulties following and understanding Dr. Huijber through the course, because of his way of speaking (really dutch-version of english) very annoying :(
Challenging but very interesting, well informed, entertaining, and covering for real development "from synapse to society". I thought the title would be too ambitious, or that the aspects of development covered would be too superficially approached considering this ambition. But I was wrong. This is a really good introduction to child development, especially for those who seek to understand it from various disciplinary perspectives, or, to sum it up by using the teacher's own words: understanding how development is influenced "by various factors, at various levels of organization, both within and outside the individual child".
excellent explanation of the subject. But....... not at all easy... if you want to choose this one, you should be ready to spend more time than prescribed... surely...
HAD FUN LEARNING
This was an amazing time for me learning about child development . Really an eye opener to aquire more knowledge about children , their behavior and just how they see the world .
The course led me through the stages of child development and enabled an appreciation of how complex it is. I learned that environment and genetics are intertwined and that it is imperative that we collaborate with experts in other disciplines if we want a deeper understanding of the journey from synapse to society. Thank you Utrecht University for showing us the way.
Thank you Utrecht University and Coursera ! Its my good luck to study with Dr. Huijding, i would appreciate if he will make another course on child psychology too. This course helped me to see a big picture of child development. Child development cannot be understood in isolation, it is influenced by various factors. I learned so many new facts, terms and theories related to this topic . And now I feel confident that i know right approach to understand child development.
“Development from synapse to society” -reflecting its name very well- fulfilled my expectations. The fact that it combines subjects like the human brain development, media literacy, sociocultural theory, language development and the relationship between emotions and culture provided me with answers to many questions in my mind. This course makes it clear that development cannot be understood without combining researches in several fields of knowledge.
The professor gives a lot of detailed information quickly in the lectures and also lets us see interviews with researchers to assist in the learning. We read good papers too throughout the week which are interesting. The difficulty of the course is just right and the knowledge we gain from the course is fantastic. You feel like you are actually learning the information rather than just gaining facts for a quiz.
This course is simply amazing! I enjoyed receiving such complete, interesting, and significant information. All parts of the course are interconnected. Video interviews allow you to plunge into the development of the child completely. These videos are very informative and the work of the University of Utrecht is wonderful.
The journey of understanding child development though challenging and engaging I enjoyed learning the theories facts,interviews,videos ,research work which were linked with each other.This course was very much informative.
Present world is competitive. People don not have time to think about children. This is mostly time demanded to me. I am thankful to be a part of it...
It was very interesting and I really enjoyed this course. Thank you very much.
It's a really helpful course to lead you understand develomental psychology.
Systematic content, amazing videos! Very helpful research articles. The assignments are well planned. Very well designed course content. A thank you to all the professors. A great learning experience! Highly recommended.
I think it is an excellent course to understand a little more the development of our children. As a teacher I think it is a foundation to understand and support our students in their training process.