Though I have been to Palatine Hill twice, understand some basic Latin, have some knowledge of Roman history and interest in the subject I found this course pretty difficult and honestly in need of improvement for clarity. Some lectures have subtitles/transcript; some do not. The Professor is very knowledgeable of course and pleasant to listen to, but sometimes it is difficult to catch what he said due to accent or him speaking rather quietly in parts. The quiz questions sometimes were not covered in the lecture, he uses the English word in the lecture but Latin in the quiz, and most maddening the maps on the slides are not oriented the same way (i.e. North at the top), even within the same lecture. Many of the questions ask where something is on the hill (Northeast, South, etc.); and there is no way to remember what the cardinal directions were on the specific slide that shows it. Also the slides are extremely busy with loads of text and notes that you cannot read during the lecture. I would suggest opening the slide show in another tab or downloading it. At least you can complete the whole course free unlike many on Coursera. Good luck, I'm rather glad to be done with it to be honest.

This is a fascinating course. Dr. Carafa does a great job with the videos of the changing history of the Palatine, and with his explanation of the changes over the centuries. I enjoyed the course very much, as well as his presentation.

The Professor was outstanding--he was very engaging, very in depth explaining and was well versed....He really made the class much more outstanding.

Complete, concise and precise. Very easy to understand and the professor is clear and suited for the position of teaching this course.

Excellent course material. Very Interesting and easy to follow. Why we have to download AutoCAD if it was not used?

Could be more organized, but thrilled with top notch content. More please!

I would like to thank Prof. Paolo Carafa for giving me an insight in the archeology and history of the Palatine Hill in such great detail. I was always fascinated by ancient Rome and this course has inspired me to continue discovering Roman arts, architecture and culture. At the beginning of the course I had some difficulties with orientation and finding the locations of places on the Palatine. Also, the quiz questions sometimes were not covered in the lecture. Fortunately, I could use google search and the maps provided in the slides to further investigate. I really enjoyed this very interesting course and hope more courses like these one will follow.

Highly interesting! For me as a Latin teacher, this filled important gaps in my knowledge. I only don't give 5 stars, because I find the power point material not structured enough, I quickly loose orientation in it. Apart from that: excellent.

Great course, learned a lot. The course would greatly benefit from a complete transcription, though. Had to use Google to help with some translations and a couple questions aren't even covered within the videos or the powerpoint presentations.

Two areas of concern - The audio transcript is not present everywhere, and a lot of the building plans and maps are in Latin. Rest all good.

Questions don't always relate to what is discussed and translation differences are a big issue.

The information is very interesting and I learned a lot. However, the quizzes cover information that was just slightly was mentioned, and further, the professor doesn't give any real written information about the archaeology. He also jumbles the time periods a lot, which makes it hard to follow. I don't recommend this course until it's cleaned up a bit. Also, some of the quiz answers are wrong, which is just really annoying.

This course covers a lot of detailed information about the archaeology of the Palatine Hill. Unfortunately, there is no framework provided to help you put this information in perspective and determine what is important. There is a lot of repetition, and too much detail without developing an understanding of the major developments in the history of this area.

The poor nature of the presentation is demonstrated by the low average initial scores of several of the quizzes.

Talk about a messed up course. Don't even know where to begin. Transcripts for only a few lectures: 6.1, 6.2, 8.1, 8.2. Be sure to download the image files; this helps some. But...

The graphic images jump around from Palatine to other locations with no reference titles or dates. Could definitely benefit from a logical presentation for each image noting

a. Time frame

b. Aerial view of actual location on the Palatine (why NOT Google Earth View?). And an occasional photo from a logical point of view (e.g. from Temple of Vestal Virgins, looking west) to help with orientation.

c. Map View of Palatine with the same N-S orientation or pop-up showing the location on a smaller "map"

d. Area within Palatine to be discussed.

e. Sections within that area, showing temples, houses, etc. clearly labelled, etc.

f. And a consistent geographic orientation to give students a real frame of reference.

Lesson 1 1° Tutorial 2° Tutorial - Auto Desk Auto Cad 3° Tutorial- How to Use Map Points to Draw an Archaelogical Map, and I thought, cool, we will always come back to the same line map of the Palatine, then show a new layer with this week's structures, since the landscape won't change much (esp. since we don't talk about Trajan digging up a hill). But no, Autocad is never mentioned again.

It would be nice if each image/slide had a label, a number, date or era, and a clear title, since sometimes we are looking at line drawing then a room that may or may not be from that same drawing.

How about a bibliography and a glossary?

Some words are only found on tests, and while I wasn't willing to watch one lecture a second time, I'm pretty sure that the answer to one quiz is not even mentioned until the lecture that comes after the quiz! Some of the quizzes use words that aren't in the lectures and not even Google can find. Is it English, Latin, Italian, or mispronounced?

And there are several other smaller quibbles (e.g. categorically wrong answers on quizzes) that really make this course a disappointment.

I really wanted to enjoy this work. If I knew the name of the primary source of the slides shown, I'd get that book, and learn a great deal more than I did from this course.

I found this very confusingly presented. The lecturer goes into a great deal of detail on some things without actually explaining them properly, while the quizzes have little to do with any of the lectures. When I found that I got 100% in the Week 3 quiz from my prior knowledge rather than what I had learned in this course I stopped, to spend my time on something more engaging.

I’m disappointed, because the subject is fascinating and this could have been so good.

There are no transcripts of the videos, and the staff states that they have no intention of doing so.

The continuity of Roman ideology from the early Bronze Age through the end of the empire is well illustrated in this course by concentrating on the Palatine archeological record, where the foundation myths are brought to life by the successive description of buildings and monuments. Place confers legitimacy and continuity with the origins of Power. The demonstration of Roman obssesion with connecting present legitimacy to the past via location and naming of buildings is a useful insight into the foundational myths of the Paletine. The maps and schemas could be presented in a collection of pdf documents as they are far too detailed to grasp in the quick presentations in the course. More simplified maps (i.e. many fewer archeological details) with clear directional indications (N,S,E,W) would be helpful, as would presenting the maps in the same orientation each time. This would help immensely in the quiz sections. A bibliography from classical literature and more modern archeological sources would be helpful including Aicher's Rome Alive Vol I which gives the main literary sources for Roman archeological sites. Coarelli's Rome and Environs (UC Press, 2007) is a very useful text book to use as well.

Some of the test questions were very difficult as they weren't verbally mentioned or in the transcript. Rather, you'd have to look at the details of the maps exactly to note the locations of certain places. That did make it a lot harder. That, and they may not use the Latin/Greek names in the course, but they will on the test. Ah, and the transcript often may mess up on words! It often puts Larry's instead of Lares. That is something to be careful of. Regardless, I did enjoy the course. It was interesting! I hoped to study this a bit to help determine if I'd like to study it further in university. I'm still not the most sure, but it was worth it, I think.