Awesome!

good

The course has been very informative, the mystery cases we had to solve challenging.

The topic and how the team approached it was great, but there have been some downsides too. The transcripts were full of mistakes as done with a voice recognition software and obviously not double checked (which is bad for non-native speakers like me), and some of the material given in the mystery cases would have needed some further explanation on how to interpret them. Especially for the ones without any previous knowledge - like me - there should be more information or a help desk. Peer review is another issue. I am still not quite sure what I have done wrong, as there was no feedback. And, sometimes I really didn't know how to give feedback myself, as I didn't know if I was right or wrong with my analysis. If relying on peer review only, there should be solutions handed in after you have submitted so that you can learn from your mistakes and are able to review the others correctly.

All in all I have learned loads within these 5 weeks and I will definitely come back on another course. It has been fun and challenging!

I like the course, things are quite clear and straightforward. I particularly like the fact that you need to do some work yourself, with the mysteries. You need to practice what you learned rather than just read a course. I am going to university as a mature student where I will study archaeology but eventually, I would like to work in osteology/osteoarchaeology. This is one of the reasons I did this course.

What I like less about it, is that peers have to review your work. Now, I have not had issues personally (I passed with 92.5%). But there is so much wriggle room with wrong/right answers and we are not trained in properly grading work.

The other thing I didn't really like is the fact that there is no help available. There is a forum, but there are no longer any volunteers who can help with questions and issues (course work-wise).

These last 2 things are the reason I have given it 4* instead of 5*.

The content and instructional videos are very good. The in video questions and weekly quizzes help to reinforce materials with most questions being well crafted. The weekly mysteries are a very good learning exercise because they introduce material or methods in a new way. A small issue with the interface for the exercises not being intuitive for all learners & no instructions to assist with first exercise.

Two issues with this course/platform:

1) The discussion areas are not designed in a way to encourage exchanges.

2) I did not notice any interaction from any instructor or mentors outside of the prepackaged materials. Perhaps this is an unreasonable expectation; however, I have taken several courses where instructors and mentors encouraged discussions and suggested additional materials / links appropriate to issues raised by students. A great plus for a course when done well.

I really enjoyed learning from this course. It was diverse and exciting. The assignments were interesting, and makes the student feel as though you are truly an osteo-archaeologist who needs to 'solve the mystery' of the skeleton. The only downside of this course is the peer-reviewed assignment. The peer review is done by multiple-choice from 1 to 5 for five 'aspects' of your submission and many 'peers' do not leave any comment to provide feedback for improvement. So, if you didn't pass the assignment the first time, you might not have a clue what it is that you should improve for the second submission. Apart from the fact that you are reviewed by peers (= not specialists) who might be wrong themselves, it is very annoying that you are not able to learn from your mistakes. Perhaps this course could improve on this point by making it obligatory for peers to add a comment.

This is a very good course, I have really enjoyed taking this course, and I learned a lot. I have already put to use what I have learned in this course, into another course I am taking. The only criticism I have of this course is the grading system. The peer review grading of the papers lacks a lot to be desired. People give you arbitrary grades without giving any feed back. You can submit a graduate level paper, and be graded off by someone with a high school education. I feel this problem needs to be corrected before I take another course from Leiden University.

Please we need pdf printable "booklets” of slides (no headshots “and use PALE backgrounds) under downloads below the video screen. I love MOOCs that do this for us to help integrate knowledge. Thanks so much. The course content is very good - I have taken bricks and mortar forensic classes as well as a Forensics MOOC out of China and yours is comparable. But please the downloadable slides? Thanks so much

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I thoroughly enjoyed this class! I've completed about 6 courses so far and while I've found all of them very informative this is the first one that I was sorry to see the end. Maybe Professor Waters-Rist and her team could conduct another Osteoarchaeology class introducing techniques not covered in this course. Regardless, great job and thank you so much for allowing me to learn more about this fascinating field!

I thoroughly enjoyed the course, and learned a lot, though there were some technology 'glitches' to overcome.

I would recommend that the administrators, for future courses, ask students to upload their assignments as PDFs, as this would enable non-Microsoft/Open Office etc. users to review the assignments directly in their browser, rather than having to download the files, convert them, then dispose of them :)

Very interesting subject matter. Lecture content is well presented and just challenging enough to make you think a little when you're completing the course assignments. It would be nice if the work was a little more detailed (purely because my interest has now been peaked) and if the assignments were a little more spaced out (I found one a week was a bit of a push for me)

This is a great course, very interesting with real case studies and plenty of references for further academic reading. Some minor technical issues with peer reviews of assignments, but overall I liked the combination of written assignments and quizzes, and the (ungraded) forum discussion questions.

Very interesting course... but very exigeant! One evaluated subject per week, it's hard and if you don't give the necessary time to complete this work, you'll lose your time and waste money!

Overall I think it is a very good and informative course. However, the grades do not provide relevant feedback, since it is peer-reviewed assignments by fellow students.

Very interesting, but some of the assignments were way too difficult for someone who isn't science minded, or who is just here to learn for fun.

Detailed course with excellent staff and challenging assignments.

learned a lot, good reading, shot an clear explanations

Good introductory material without being simplistic.

great course. very well presented

Absolutely fascinating!

very interesting

Although a little dry, this course is TREMENDOUSLY informative to people who know little about Osteoarcheology. Loses a star, though, for requiring outside Word Documents for the completion of it's special assignments, which I do not have.

I enjoyed the course very much but having my completion tied up by other people did not appeal to me in the least. I would definitely warn people of that element.

Positive: Very interesting and informative lectures and subject matter.

Negative: Fellow "students" who have no knowledge of the subject (other than what they themselves are learning) are required to submit case studies for "peer review" by other students who have no more knowledge of the subject than they do. These case studies are heavily weighted and if the person is reviewed negatively (for whatever reason), they must resubmit it never knowing why they were given low scores or what the correct answer should have been. No instructor assistance is given. Huge turn-off for me and many of my fellow students. I want to withdraw (drop) this class and take another with more clearly drawn parameters.

This is a nice effort, and it obvious how hard everyone has worked. There are too many presumptions presented as 'facts', though, and too much certainty about research issues that lots of debate is still going around. So, good work, but unless the course is supposed to attract only ignorants and people that haven't been in contact with 'science', some of the instructors act a bit 'I know it all' and that is how it is, although no-one does yet. Sorry to discover this spirit in here.