Given enthusiastic student interest and support for the first run of Introductory Human Physiology, it was re-launched for a second run on August 5th, 2013. This 12 week course was developed by Emma (Mimi) Jakoi, PhD, and Jennifer Carbrey, PhD, both from the Department of Cell Biology at Duke University. If you are interested in how your body works, you too can join the course by clicking here: https://www.coursera.org/course/humanphysio.
Who are the students:
According to the 4,517 unique pre-course survey responses that we have received to date for the course, students are based in over 140 countries. Ranked by number of survey respondents, the top 12 countries of residence are the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, India, Australia, Brazil, Spain, Germany, Mexico, Philippines, Russian Federation, and China.
For nearly 43% of survey respondents, English is not their first language. Some other survey highlights include:
- 38% of respondents are working full time;
- 33% of respondents indicated that this is their first online learning experience; and
- 6.8% of respondents said they participated in the previous offering of this course in Spring 2013 on Coursera.
What’s new in the second run of the course:
This second iteration of this course closely follows the same course structure as the first run of the course. However, this new session does include some revisions to the course videos, exams, and lecture notes, as well as a new process for students to take practice problem sets and exams. In addition, 11 Community TAs have been recruited from the first run of the course. These TAs are individuals who successfully completed the coursework requirements and were enthusiastic forum participants. The Community TAs have been doing a marvelous job in answering the content questions and in giving feedback/support to the current students. They also report bugs and emergencies to the course staff as quickly as possible. Below is an example of a Community TA response to questions that a student raised in a forum.
Week 1 activities and overview:
After one week since the start of the course:
- 36,812 students have enrolled in the course;
- 20,730 students have been active in the course site (meaning that they at least logged in to the site);
- 14,589 students have watched videos for a total of 66,144 unique video downloads/streams;
- 2,057 students have taken the Week 1 Problem set.
- At least 797 students and the instruction team have generated 1,821 posts and comments in the discussion forums; and
- 235 students have signed up for the Signature Track.
Stay tuned for more updates on Introductory Human Physiology!
I started this course enthusiastically. But it’s way over my head. Often The professor speaks too quickly for me to hear wat she’s saying and I don’t know what she’s talking about. For example, Never hear of “mols” before this course. I’m an American and I often have no idea of what the lecturer is talking about. I have to drop out.
Dear Hyan Zhou,
It makes me glad that Brazil is the first
country among survey respondentes that don´t
have English as the fisrt language.
It also surprises me that only 2057 classmates
responded problem set in week 1.
It´s good to see these statistics, every week to
locate yourself amongst this very big universe of ¨students¨.
Receive my greetings!
From Brazi.
From Brazil.
It’s very useful, thanks very much ,really appreciate:)