The content of the course itself was engaging and presented well-enough, with some interesting data analysis whether or not you find the ultimate interpretations convincing. From a logistical perspective though, there were serious issues with the coherency of the quizzes and some minor issues with the organization and editing of video content (i.e. segments repeated multiple times).

Potentially interesting and useful material presented in boring and sometimes unclear manner. Quizzes failed to correlate to the material in the lectures. Got something out of the course but the potential was there for much more.

This course fills a gap that is rarely taught by explaining biological origins of musical experiences. The material is very easy to follow. I wish there were more practical exercises or home works to play with the concepts.

Interesting material but the instructor was so monotone and spoke so slowly, I had to play the videos at a faster speed to stay awake. I'll bet it came in handy for those whose English was not as fluent, though.

Superb topic... Very interesting, but insufficient content... Videos are difficult to follow and comprehend. So is true for tests.

Moderately recommended because of these teaching imperfections...

This course needs a whole lot of editing. Many confusing mistakes both in lessons and in quizzes. Some fundamental concepts were not explained properly/sufficiently.

It is interesting but it is slow and at some point in my opinion the class becomes boring. Any way it is worth to do it if you want to learn some things.

Interesting, but has an evolutionary basis which was a bit disappointing. The piano and mbira demonstrations were both enjoyable and interesting.

Quiz choices should be more carefully put together. I noticed typos, erroneous grading, and MANY answers that are not mutually exclusive.

I did enjoy the course enough to see it through but it could use help on presentation correlation of lessons and tests

The second part of the course is very good. But first part, with introductions and definitions were very "heavy".

An overview of lots of topics, but the answer to the question in the title can be given without any of that.

It was an interesting class but the quizzes did not reflect the class material.

Great Professor and content but poorly designed quizzes.

The instructor is very dry and the mat

Caveat: I am not a music major or minor, and have no music theory background...I'm a computer scientist and polymath, but not deep in music. My low rating is due to unclear and rambling lectures, many small errors in the text and one very large one in week 5 lesson 1. This isn't up to the par of other Coursera courses I've taken. He could use more visuals to present the concepts, and speak more concisely to make the points. There are tons of materials available in this area of knowledge, and he didn't use that many of them, so it wasn't that great of a learning experience for me since I learn visually and he used only a small set of visuals.

The analyses presented in the course are excellent... to some extent. It fails to provide a more complex explanation to why we like music on a biological point of view, considering they only talk about how human vocalization affects music. I think there should be more modules trying to address the subject...

This class isn't very good. It is confusing and not well explained, and the quizzes are too short and badly written. I gave up on week 5 (of 6) because I just didn't feel i was learning very much, particularly about what the title of the course would suggest you'd be learning about.

I found that this course requires at least a basic knowledge of music and sound, which i did not have , making the classes a bit tedious. I would recommend it to musicians though, who might find it more interesting than I did.

Very dull lecturers. Most material is poorly presented

too boring

.

I felt more like I was part of some experiment to see how long I could tolerate boredom than that I was in class where someone was trying to share knowledge with me. Needless to say I did not make it to the end which is sad because I was genuinely interested in the content. The instructor's delivery was absolutely monotone and he did not seem to emphasize the key points in any way so I found it very difficult to retain any information or to even stay awake at times.

I slogged through it and got an 89, but the videos were boring and the quizzes were poorly worded and should have had greater correlation with the course content.

I am dropping this course as it is too elementary. I had hoped for something at a more advanced university level.