Learner Reviews & Feedback for Confronting The Big Questions: Highlights of Modern Astronomy by University of Rochester

This course provided a great overview of Astronomy. I thought the difficulty was about right for a survey course and recommend it to anyone who wants a better understanding of how we think the universe came to be and what we think will happen to it.

As a quick overview to modern astronomy and cosmology this is a very worthwhile course. Highly informative and well presented. Material is detailed enough to provide an understanding of the topics covered and hints at more complexity to encourage further exploration.

Marked down to four stars solely on the basis of the review questions. Some of these are ambiguous or have a lack of clarity. Otherwise this course, given the level and time allocation, would rate 5 stars.

Good overview of the topic. Inspiring lecturer. No need for any complicated math. Having a background in physics on advanced high school level should probably be enoughto pass this course.

Very good overview of modern astronomy. Easy to understand by non native English speaker.

Professor explains concepts well.

Excellent quality of presentation of the content; however, some of the questions at the end of each week required knowledge acquired outside of this course, e.g. the question about red, green and blue quark configurations. Also, there were a few typos in some questions. Most of the questions were fine though. I especially liked learning how to use some of the online simulators for weeks 1 and 2. Overall this was a good course which I would recommend to my peers.

Enjoyed it very much

Great professor. Simple to understand and made me love astrology... Quizzes are a bit challenging though...

Enjoyable and mind expanding course, great!

A sympatic and exhaustive presentation of the questions that are brought to our conscience

I learned a lot about rudimentary physics.

Good but not deep enough. It could be longer to cover more aspects or more profound.

Not for beginners in the slightest. Enjoyed the videos. But the quiz just made me feel stupid as I didn't have a clue on any of the equations and simulators I was supposed to use. It got me thinking of how ignorant clever people continue to be! Every time a smart person comes up with a new theory it's taken as fact. Give it a couple of decades and someone will prove it wrong. The sun orbiting us proving wrong, easth is flat, gas giants only orbit outside the habitable zone etc etc etc. So when will we learn that just because something happens on this planet doesn't mean it will, has happened elsewhere. The deepest depths of the ocean have life forms, yet we'd perish. So who's to say life forms can't exact on a planet, moon that is nothing like the earth! The world is still at the centre of the universe to these academics!

This is a very good and informational course : however, the person who is speaking tends to have a lot of mums and stammers a lot. Overall, pretty decent course.

too rudimentary discussion/presentation and frequent mention of undefined terms. More explanation would help with natural history of stars before and after main sequence, more detailed discussion of AGN, more discussion of particle interaction

The course material is very interesting, the lecturer is dynamic and communicates the information well. But I was unable to get any of the simulators to work on a standard browser, so could not possibly pass the quizzes, since the simulators are required to calculate many of the answers. Regrettably, had to drop course.

Too much time required. The first Quiz had almost nothing covered in the video lectures. I saved all transcripts and was unable to answer the questions. The Sim's... I have never seen anything like that and again - it most certainly wasn't covered in the lectures. Disappointed in this course. It took 3 hours for each segment of the first week... not 3 to 4 as was stated. Leaving this course.

Can't complete the first quiz because I can't download the simulators. - hence can't complete the course.

Again a course that comes with very simple (and not always good prepared) video lectures but for recieving a grade an enormous math knowledge is necessary, with no further help given