Interesting and informative

Enjoyable course. Thank you!

it was ok easy to follow

Interesting information.

Good one for beginners

Very intensive course!

I'm learning so much.

It's interesting .

Very interesting

very insightful

Love course

Interesting.

Interesting

Loved it!

NICE

good

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The course was extremely easy. I hoped it would be more of a challenge. No homework, only a 10 questions test every week (that is also extremely easy). As someone who's always been interested in Ancient Egypt, I already knew some things and ended up being able to pass the tests with 90-100% without even following the course. It's really an introduction for people who are pretty much new to the subject, so I'd recommend it, but for people who are looking for something more, you might find it boring. Even though the teacher is nice, the description of the course made me hope that it would be more interesting visually. I mostly read the transcriptions instead of watching the videos, because the teacher would just stand there and talk without moving, and it was not stimulating to me.

The first three weeks of the course are rather bland and hard to follow. They mostly cosist of listing the pharaohs and the gods. The later weeks are more interesting and easier to follow as the lectures have more narrative. The presentations appear sterile and robotic, difficult to relate to. This feature of the course has less to do with the instructor (he appears quite engaging in the last lecture where he interviews one of the preservation specialist. The videos are overproduced; the instructor is not looking into the camera. Most of us chose to study through MOOCs rather than just reading the material because of personal connection, even an imitated one. The production does not aim to create one. The course could be improved.

The course provides conservative vision of problematic of the pyramids. In modern course I would expect from the lecturer to deal with the controversial statements, rather ending the interesting part by calling to conservative theories "facts". It is essential to remember that the history written by the writers, the course even provides an example. If thousands years from now the same approach will be applied on excavations on Sophia church in Istanbul, then it will be declared without doubt as a mosque. For the good science it is essential to remain place to doubt the current theories and solutions, and be able to revise them once having a controversial facts. This course not trying to deal with controversial facts.

Although the different chapters gave a good, broad introduction to Ancient Egypt, I think it could get a little attention to make it a better experience. Professor Silverman unfortunately didn’t really shine in the little videos, only in the very last episode (‘In the Artifact Lab’) his nicer personality shines through his presentation. The quizzes were easy, multiple choice is of course about the only way to test the knowledge in this course. I would have liked it though if, after answering the questions and getting a grade, I could read some deeper explanation or summaries about these questions asked.

Oh whatever, I still liked this course. Thank you professor Silverman and Penn University!

It was okay in terms of the content and what I actually learnt. However, my main criticism would be with the quizzes. Some of the questions were about things not covered in the lessons and required additional reading. Which in itself is not a bad thing, but considering the quizzes are meant to be about things learnt in the lesson material, it would have made more sense to stick to lesson material only as not everyone doing this course will have time (or the money) for the extra resources. Also, any question that were incorrect, just had an X by them and the correct answer wasn't given - meaning if you got a question wrong you weren't told the right answer so couldn't learn anything.

The lecturer is obviously knowledgeable, but his delivery seems dispassionate. I would have enjoyed seeing him with a chalk board, outlining his points and personalizing the information with references to his own archaeological experiences.

The text accompanying the videos seems to be computer-generated. It has sentence fragments, misspellings, and artificial paragraph segmentation that does not follow the vocal presentation. English is my primary language, and that appears to be true for the instructor. Because I am a person who learns more by reading that by listening, the inaccuracies in the text were a distraction from the fascinating subject matter.

This course - although informative - was a complete and utter whipping to get through. I actually started it 7 years ago and quit 1/3 of the way through because it was so completely and utterly boring to sit and listen to.

Years later, I forgot I had taken the course before and re-enrolled, and realized it was "that" course; however, I disciplined myself to finish it.

Again, lots of good info; however, it's delivered by a monotonous droning reading of information by the same person in front of the same background for the entire course. Granted, there are images interspersed in the lectures, but it's difficult to listen to hour after hour.

I enjoyed learning about Ancient Egypt; However, I found the instructor to be monotonous. Dr. Silverman is a brilliant man, but does not seem to enjoy lecturing. I think this course could use a revamp with more engaging, interactive lectures, as well as some editing in the video transcriptions. I would also suggest more diagrams and visual depictions of timelines for those of us who are visual learners. I don't mean to be negative; I just think constructive criticism is a handy tool to ensure improvement.