Confronting The Big Questions: Highlights of Modern Astronomy

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.

Outstanding. Nuanced, yet accessible. Love the professor's infectious passion about the subject, and also his rather lovely choice of words at times!

Excellent course. Very clear lectures that cover a lot of ground in not a lot of time. Fantastic overview of most of what we know about astronomy and how we know it. Best class I've taken on Coursera.

Professor Frank is super down-to-earth (ha) and easy-going, so the difficult concepts seem less intimidating. I like how the videos are cut into short, topical sections, and the information on the green screen next to him helps with understanding. The weekly lecture note PowerPoint slides are even more detailed.

I had a basic understanding of astronomy coming in, and this course struck a good balance between reviewing info I already knew, and introducing me to some more challenging concepts.

The quizzes were pretty difficult for me, and I had to take 3/4 twice to get a passing score. You really have to take what you learned, think about it deeply, then apply it. It wasn't just regurgitating information, which was good, it also meant I was scouring my notes and Google for a long time. They aren't kidding when they say the quizzes take 50 minutes!

If you can finish this course in four weeks, I applaud you. I admit I wasn't very diligent, but it's a lot of information to digest each week. I took closer to 10 weeks, but they were well-spent months! I learned a lot, and could subsequently "wow" my friends. Very well-done course! Thank you!