I am sadly dissapointed about the fact that Circus Captivity is listed among types of accepted types of practises. I can understand that in some few cases, captivity in zoos with research purposes may be somehow accepted but I don´t agree at all with captivity with recreational purposes.

Thank you!

Considering the amount of information I think too much material was attempted to be covered. Some of the lectures seemed to be rushed through. I am comparing this with another course I took, Dog Emotion and Cognition where the lecturer took a greater amount of time to cover the material. Perhaps it might be better to do separate courses on the welfare of different animals under different circumstances.

There was a comment by a guest speaker at the beginning of the course talking about the need for greater animal production to feed the increasing human population. However, this is not what many scientists are saying must happen. The only way the ever increasing human population can be fed is with a plant based diet that gets more nutrition from the land and has less impact on the environment. I know this has nothing to do with the course but the authors of the course allowed him to speak so I am insuring that other voices are heard and that increasing farm animals is not the answer to world hunger.

As I am a vegan vegetarian watching the section on Farm Animals was a bit traumatic but I felt necessary to get a better perspective on factory farming. I can never justify factory farming but nevertheless it is the present reality. However, measuring cortisol levels is not a true measure of what any animal endures during its short lifetime in factory farming. It is a measure of reaction to stress for a given period of time and not the lifetime of the animals.

I chose not to view the optional section on slaughter as the word defines itself. With human killing there are ways less painful and quicker but ultimately death is the result.

I don't say the above with any naivete. My family raised chickens, ducks, and rabbits, all of which were slaughtered and ended on the dinner table. I am also not new to animal behavior having done previous coursework and studied the behavior of mountain gorillas with Dian Fossey at Karisoke Research Center in 1974.

I need to submit one more thing and it is a link to a YouTube a lecture by Phillip Wollum at the World Vegan Summit. Animal welfare will only occur when the violence humans perpetrate ends.

https://youtu.be/AfBhanzng0w

I am a Veterinary student of HSTU in Bangladesh(Asia). It was an awesome journey to all with my new teachers! I am glad to get them. That was my first course in Coursera, As I have not enough money to purchase this course, I really thank the authority to make this valuable course for free. It really helps to the persons who are financially poor enough to buy this. I have learned a lot that can't be described in a few sentences. Hope I'll able to apply it in my practical life as well as in any needs. Best wishes to all of my respective teachers. I wish if I were work with you in the future!

A Really great course which is interesting, informative and well executed. The video lectures were top notch and the visuals always suited the narration. Great work by the team behind this course.

The material was not as engaging as I would have liked. It would have been better if there were graphs in slide form that I could easily drag and drop to save alongside my notes in Word. The quizzes didn't always tell you why your answer was wrong/which answer was correct. There was one speaker, who thankfully only appeared in one video with a heavy Scottish (I believe) accent that I was completely unable to understand. I did learn a few things about how animals are housed and treated in the farming industry, something which I'm fairly knowledgeable about already, such as the exact measurements of the confines across the globe and which countries produce the most product, but I otherwise already knew all of the information. Some videos, especially at the beginning of the course were extremely repetitive, and therefore I lost interest and became frustrated very early on with this course, which has impacted my overall rating and view of the course. If I had felt engaged during these videos, it wouldn't have mattered that I didn't learn a lot of new information, because it still would have held my interest. I'm glad I stuck with it and finished the course.

Me encantó el curso y su enfoque bien actualizado. Sin embargo el uso de plataformas interactivas extras para el curso no me funcionaron en ninguna de las semanas del mismo. Pero a pesar de eso, y sabiendo de los temas a tratar en el curso, estoy muy satisfecha en cuanto a la enseñanza de esta área de la ciencia animal que viene aumentando su importancia a lo largo de todo el mundo en los últimos años. En mi rubro este certificado será de mucha utilidad y ojala sea una forma de vincular mi carrera en estudios futuros en una excelente institución como lo es la respetable Universidad de Edimburgo. Muchas Gracias

This course is amazing !! You will learn the "foundations" of animal welfare and behavior which is very important to know (for everybody, not just the ones who want to work with animals!! It's a matter of humanity...)

Teachers are very enthusiasts, very motivating and available for you when you need it, it's great.

It is a "high quality training "!

In addition, you can go to forums where you can speak with very interesting people and all the topics are fascinating and very very helpful.

I really want to thank all the teachers for their time and their devotion. This formation is great.

I would like to thank too for the forums, all the students of this formation and the teachers have turn forums into real additional courses that can provide you very helpful and interesting information.

I recommend!

Best,

Victoria

This course was very informative and interesting! I enjoyed the lectures as well as the instructors and also loved that it focused on many different kinds animal welfare issues. Definitely recommend!

Thank all for the great opportunity to learn about Animal Behaviour and welfare. This course helped me to understand many unknown facts about animal welfare and how to work for welfare of animals.

Too many animal mistreatment clips were shown, also some gross misstatements of biological-scientific truths and widely held facts. Humans cannot change the genome of any living creature, DOGS are WOLVES and always will be. We have domesticated and bred for certain personality traits and characteristics. Done with your course.

After taking this course I couldn’t eat animals anymore! I am proudly vegetarian looking forward to become vegan when i will be in a country where i can find vegan products easily! But i am trying to avoid animals’ products consumption as much as i can now.

It took time to earn however and it wasn't hard you could try you could fail a test once and try the second time however be warned if you fail you'll have to wa for 8 hours to do the test again here

This course is very important to me to understand the actual animal welfare problems and how to face them. I have learned a lot about dogs and cats. Being a cat breeder it is very encouraging to me.

Its a nicely designed course. It sheds light on many animal care practices and welfare. Very well instructions and quiz sessions are arranged. Many important learnings and takeaways from the course.

I learned a lot about animal behaviour and welfare. I am sure it will be a great part in my veterinary career

Really helped a lot to expand my knowledge and I can fix some of the mistakes I made to be a better pet owner

great course thanks

I missed information about behaviour in wild and domestic animals and also, some of the papers that you recomend are not for free, so some of us can't acces to that information.

COURSE SHOULD PROVIDE MORE INFORMATION ABOUT WALFARE RELATED TOPICS

Great portion of knowledge together with tutor's experience was provided in that course. I did learn things which I wasn't even aware regarding animal welfare. It is quite thought-provoking course.

extremely informative and helpful, very straightforward to understand

Desde el punto de vista de lo que el animal requiere!!!...

Great Course, I enjoy it.

Excellent course!

I definitely have some Pro’s and Con’s with this course. First the con’s, I signed up to the course on the 25th of March, after the course stated that I could do this at my own pace I was eager to start, however after paying for the course to ensure I got the certificate at the end I was met with course deadlines, this meant that if quizzes weren’t submitted on time then I would not get a grade and therefore not achieve a certificate, (I may be wrong but this is what I got from what I read and understood, and what Coursera support implied via email). This is how the course outlined for me: Module 2 & 3 quizzes had to be completed on 30th of March, Module 4 quiz on April 4th, and Module 5 & 6 to be completed on April 6th. This meant that at the times I had to submit two modules by a certain date, I would rush studying and feel exhausted after doing both quizzes, which really stressed me out. This course is definitely NOT a do in your own time, not unless you don’t care about getting grades or certificates. When I had issues, I turned to the forum to ask for help from mentors and teachers, I have finished the course now and my question has still be unanswered, which is very frustrating, as the course is still active I would expect mentors and teachers to respond at least up to 24hours after something is asked in the forum. Quizzes are challenging (which is a pro for me) but you can refer to notes, which felt as though I was cheating, so I would put all my notes aside when doing the quiz. If you have to reattempt a quiz, all the questions are the same and so are all the answers, and even though quizzes can’t be attempted again until 8 hours, you could easily write down all the questions you got wrong and then when you retake you can ace all the questions that way, which makes it feel like you are being spoon fed the information rather than being quizzed on what you actually remember from paying attention. Another thing is NONE of the interactive lessons work in the additional reading, as far as I’m aware after doing digging from previous forum posts, they know it doesn’t work but just haven’t really seemed to do anything about it? There are still PDF’s to download, but it was disappointing I couldn’t answer questions and interact with additional material and could only read about it. One last Con I want to add is trying to find the coursera help email, maybe I was silly, but that email took me days to find, so if you ever need help here is the email address: support@coursera.org Pro’s, I would say that this course is very informative, I learnt lot of new things and came away with a better understanding of welfare terminology and more knowledge under my belt. If none of the above negatives deter you and you like the thrill of being under pressure with your deadlines and work, then this will be perfect for some people. I still have a lot of material I had to skip when my quiz deadlines got close, but luckily I can go back and re watch and read things in my own time now, as I do feel like my mind was so crammed with everything I had to learn in the short span of time, not even when I was at University did I get such short spanning deadline dates for multiple modules.