Course: Genetics: The Fundamentals
Length: 6 weeks, 4-7 hrs/wk
School/platform: MIT/edX
Instructors: Michael Hemann, Peter Reddien
Quote:
How do we know what we know about heredity and how can we design experiments to test hypotheses in genetics? How do we study the inheritance of different traits? How does that information help us understand heritable diseases? …You will explore the foundations of the field of genetics and how to apply those concepts to understand modern studies of heredity.
I’ve noticed, more and more lately, a Conflict of Interests statement preceding academic research papers. Well, here’s my Conflict of Interest statement for this post: I don’t like genetics. While I’ll spend hours poring over biochemical pathways and G-protein coupled receptors and T-cells vs B-cells and the twists and turns of central dogma of DNA to RNA to protein, I just don’t care about the probability of offspring bearing recessive traits should a recessive phenotype and a dominant phenotype mate. I care even less about gene mapping, which isn’t to say I don’t appreciate its importance, just that I don’t particularly want to get into the nuts and bolts. Conflict of interest stated.
I do, however, feel like some idea of the basics is necessary, given my interest in other areas of biology. So when I saw a tweet declaring this initial-run of the first of three moocs in a series on genetics, I clicked. And in spite of my misgivings, I’ll admit: it was very useful in getting a firmer grasp on the basics, which is, after all, the point.
The course starts off with a solid review of basic concepts and definitions: genes and chromosomes, phenotypes and genotypes, recessive and dominant traits, and complementation. There’s also an optional section reviewing meiosis. From there it moves into Mendelian genetics, inheritance patterns, and pedigrees. The later sections involve mapping strategies using SSRs and SNPs and calculating genetic and physical distances to determine linkages. Some math is involved in the form of Chi square tests, Bayes theorem, and LOD scores. It’s all straightforward basic algebra, with the tricky part, as is usually the case, being knowing what data fits into which variable.
One interesting aside: in the section on pedigrees, which are graphic representations of inheritance showing male and female matings and offspring, some new symbols were included to indicate nonbinary and trans people. Obviously, the crucial info in a pedigree is who contributed the egg and who the sperm, so birth gender and biological sex was of primary significance, but it’s nice to see the effort towards inclusion. I hope this doesn’t get them banned in some states.
The overall structure of the course is similar to other MITx bio moocs: two or three lectures per unit, divided into short (usually <10 minutes) segments followed by graded Knowledge Check questions that allow unlimited attempts (meaning they’re basically free points); and four more stringently graded Quizzes, the fourth of which is paywalled ($99) for those purchasing Certificates.
The lectures will perhaps one day be classified as COVID-era by cyberarchaeologists: one set was delivered online with a zoom or chat function so remote students could ask questions (these are recorded, so this function wasn’t live in the mooc), and another set was live-in-classroom with a Masked Professor. While there were some well-produced graphics, particularly in the SSR and SNP sections, what was missing were those wonderful animated inset videos MITx has always been so good at, explaining specific topics in detail for those of us who don’t have recitation sections. I could have used a few of those for the mapping segments; I found the lectures covering LOD scores difficult to follow and I had trouble figuring out the actual approach being taught. Oddly, I also had a terrible time with gene notation: X^D X^d being represented in several ways to indicate an affected gene and a wild-type gene as dominant and recessive. Some pretty pictures might have helped a bit, though I eventually got it – and this is, after all, listed as an advanced course, so maybe they assume if you need pretty pictures, you shouldn’t be here.
I found the discussion forums very helpful on several occasions, with both staff and other students answering questions promptly and clearly.
The quizzes were where I actually did most of my learning. I’d go back and figure out what in which lecture was pertinent. I didn’t always get it right, but I understood the material much better afterwards. This made the quizzes functionally more of a formative rather than summative assessment. Unlike other MITx bio moocs, there were no assays (beyond performing crosses) so the quizzes were much closer to the Knowledge Check questions. I still could have used a middle level in there, a practice quiz before the real quiz, so to speak. But I did figure most of it out, and that is the point.
It’s interesting that the quizzes allowed access to correct answers immediately on completion rather than at the end of the quiz – or, in the case of some of the instructor-scheduled moocs, after the quiz period closed, which sometimes meant waiting two weeks to find out what you did wrong. This worked a lot better for me, in that, if you get the setup wrong and can’t figure out what the problem was, chances are everything following is going to be wrong. I don’t know if this was a pedagogical decision to provide immediate feedback, or an administrative decision to improve completion percentages, in light of the recent edX move from non-profit to profit-making organization – or, for that matter, a random decision in the time of COVID. Of course, those with more discipline can simply choose to not click on Show Answer. I confess to a complete lack of such discipline.
Despite my insistence that I do not like genetics, it was Duke’s Genetics and Evolution mooc back in 2015 that was my first foray into biology. It was a blast, partly because some mooc friends were CTAs and there was a great deal of camaraderie back in the day when camaraderie was possible in moocs. I’ve been doing bio ever since, though I have to admit, as many times as I’ve gone through Eric Lander’s terrific Intro to Bio course to refresh my memory on assays or whatnot, I’ve always skipped over the genetics section because, say it with me, I don’t care about genetics… too bad, since he’s a world-class geneticist, but that’s how it goes. Still, I’ve taken at least one run-through of all of MITx’s biology moocs – except the computational biology workshop, which scares me – and it all started with genetics.
I asked, as I finished the course, what parts 2 and 3 would cover:
We are still developing the next courses, so I cannot promise what they will entail. However, they will likely include methods and techniques to study and edit the genome (think genetic screens, mutant design, CRISPR, knockouts, etc.) as well as some applications such as gene regulation, development, and behavior. We are also hoping to develop material about population genetics.
Maybe I’ll face that as well, because as it turns out, genetics isn’t so bad after all.
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Length: total ~14 hours
Poets.” Kincaid confesses back: “Elementary Geology. Rocks for Jocks.” This course is essentially Physics for Poets: general concepts peeled down to their simplified forms, presented via concrete examples with minimal math. 
Each of the six weeks focuses on an object that demonstrates a related group of concepts. Skateboarding, for example, introduces force, inertia, and acceleration. I’d never considered weight as a force before (it’s usually ignored in favor of mass), but it makes a lot of sense in this context. And by spending a couple of weeks focusing on force – that is, newtons – I was much better able to grasp the idea of joules when we got to energy later on. For me, that alone was worth taking the course.
The other objects are falling balls, ramps, seesaws, wheels, and bumper cars. I can say I saw a lot of things more clearly, such as what’s a force and what isn’t, and what properties are conserved. By comparing linear velocity and momentum to angular velocity and momentum, the course helped me keep a lot more organized. I’m still a little confused about some stuff, but it’s not a total jumble. 
around, plays air hockey to simulate bumper cars, and does everything he can to demonstrate various kinds of forces and accelerations while also showing off the UVA campus. There is some math, but very little, and it’s of the a=b*c variety, very simple even for me. In fact, after I finished the course, I went back and dragged out the formulas that tended to get buried in the long runs of explanation. This also was a very worthwhile process for me. 
if relatively worthless cheating). A final exam similar (at times identical) to the Preliminary Assessment finishes things off in Week Seven. 
Course: 
stuff gets in and out of the nucleus. So there’s a lot about signal sequences, about channels and pores, and about enzymes, chaperones, and all kinds of supporting players. I’m still amazed every time I get even a peek at how complicated it is to keep us alive. 
two instructors; I also felt that the videos themselves were a bit more cut-and-paste (it’s not unusual for individual videos to show edits, removing classroom issues for instance), thought that’s just an impression. We started off with lectures on experiments, and with little context, I had no idea what it was we were experimenting on. Once the more process-oriented material started I was able to catch on, but it was a tough few hours there. Then again, I have the disadvantage of having never been in a lab, so I’m always a little behind the eight ball when lab work is the topic. I’m beginning to get it, though: biochem mashes things up and assays for products; genetics creates mutations and assays for function; and cell biology often uses microscopy, including some very cool fluorescing techniques. 
Each video is followed by a set of “check” questions; these count in grading, but in most cases have unlimited attempts so are pretty much free points. Three quizzes make up the bulk of the grades, and these are, of course, more difficult and in most cases only offer one attempt. The Audit version of the course does not allow access to the third quiz; that requires paying for Verified access. But the Check questions and the first two quizzes give a pretty good idea of how well you’re understanding the material. 
This series includes several fun features. Wiltrout Questions, named for one of the off-screen professors, are open-ended “What do you think about this” questions that invite students to figure out how something might work, to “encourage active engagement in thinking about cell biology and a deepened understanding of a specific concept or approach”. After each unit, students are invited to submit Mudslips indicating “the muddiest, or least clear aspect of that class period.” Then there were the “Neat Experiments” videos, detailed and carefully animated explanations of historically important lab work in cell biology that nailed down a principle or used a new technique. These aren’t new features, of course; questions in both directions have always been part of these courses (Journal Club in another course, for example), and experiments have always been central in these courses. But it’s a nice touch to formalize them.
Another fun aspect was the naming of the proteins. One set was named Mens, Manus, and Cor; it turns out the MIT motto is the first two, “mind and hand”; the “heart” was added because, well, it’s about time (and there was a third protein that needed naming). Another set was named after Greek muses or fates or something, I don’t remember. Each of these courses has little personalizing details like this; it isn’t as though there’s strong pedagogical impact, but they’re part of what makes these courses so engaging. 
Length: 12? weeks, 3-6? hrs/wk
for, what reactants do you need, what would you expect to see, what does this result – graph, gel image, whatever – mean. This is, after all, what biochemists are training for, not memorizing reactions. Something I discovered late in the course: the names of the fictional lab team in the Problem Set questions are the names of biochemists. They don’t have the distinct (and amusing) personalities of those in the Molecular Bio lab 
The material is broken down into eight modules, one released every week, but the due dates allow a week of extra time for all modules. I wish I had the chops to spend just 3 to 6 hours as predicted on the home page; for me, it was more like 10 – 12 hours, though I do a lot of extra work basically copying the whole course into a Word document for future reference. Each module consists of a set of between ten and twenty video lectures; these are each followed by a short quiz that allows unlimited attempts for each question. The module is capped off by a Problem Set, where the number of attempts are more restricted and the lab scenario is usually prominent. As you might expect, the Problem Sets count for a lot more than the Test Yourself quizzes. Some weeks have far more material than others, but it might be they seemed harder to me because they hammered my weaknesses.
Some of the Problem Sets included questions that required the use of MatLab; you can connect for free through the course (in fact I still had an account from a prior course, to my surprise). I skipped these entirely. Maybe another time. Optional PyMol assignments were also included. I used PyMol in another course, and liked it a lot, but I didn’t mess with it this time; I had too much to deal with already. 
I’m a big fan of MIT’s approach, even though I’ll never set foot in a bio lab or work on an actual science degree. The Harvard Biochem 
found… 
Let me begin with a disclaimer: This was not the right class for me to take. I was curious to learn more about the technical details of vaults, having seen some wonderful examples of structures from medieval and renaissance architecture, and this was, as advertised, a very basic introduction to the engineering of vaults. However, after a brief look at the Roman Pantheon, the course focused on concrete shells of the 20th century and more modern innovations. I lost interest quickly. Then I got sick between weeks 4 and 5, which further diminished my participation. I did end up “passing” the course, so it might be worth your while even if your particular interest is only partly covered. And I did come away with a better understanding of how vaults work, though keep in mind, I started at absolute zero.
Each week consisted of three distinct sections: a lecture series covering the historical and technical development of vault engineering, generally by focusing on one engineer who introduced a specific innovation, be it reinforced concrete or hyperparabolic shapes; a mathematical section, in PDF form, covering several equations in detail, though at a fairly simple mathematical level requiring only basic algebra; and a creative section, which invites students to post pictorial examples of some facet of the week’s material. Grading is divided fairly equally among these three sections. But don’t worry: although the material, particularly the mathematical sections (none of which go beyond basic algebra), may seem intimidating, the questions are manageable. Even though I skipped everything but the lecture sequences of weeks 5 and 6, I “passed” by a comfortable margin. 
The lectures were very good, with lots of illustrative exampes, interviews with a variety of engineers and scholars, and a very step-by-step explanation of the development and construction of the technique under study.
Libertarianism. Instead, it focuses on philosophical libertarianism, which is related to non-determinism and the potential of different outcomes for different choices. The second level of this is to become a different kind of chooser, a bit more sophisticated kind of free will, in which we can decide to learn a language or a musical instrument and thus open up those choices, or follow a particular way of life and make our choices there. Sound complicated? It isn’t, really, but it helps to take the first couple of weeks of the course to see the ways this works.
The first week presented an overview of determinism vs non-determinism, and the general outline of free will within that schema. Week two continued with a philosophical approach to the classifications of free will. The remaining four weeks focused more on neuroscience, and how our brains have evolved to allow consideration of choices, as well as random fluctuations that prevent determinism. 
In any case it was seriously interesting all the way through. If some of the material should seem overwhelming, don’t worry; the graded questions are looking for broader concepts. A set of non-graded questions follows up each lecture, with a quiz at the end of the week drawn from those same questions. There’s reallly no excuse to miss any of those questions, in other words. They account for 75% of the course grade, with discussion counting for 25%. Since the passing grade is 70%, it’s very possible to pass the course without doing the discussion. I avoided discussion deliberately, as there was a particularly argumentative student who basically disagreed with everything, and I just didn’t want to deal with it. 
examination of the broadest system, The Brain, began on Dec. 5. It’s all self-paced; in general, I finished each segment early, since I’ve been doing introductory neuro over and over for a while now. What can I say, I like brain stuff. I still have about a week to go before I finish up Part 3, but I wanted to get my postings done before the end of the year to clear the decks for Pushcart on January 1. 
I get the sense the developers of the course were really most interested in the first segment on electrical properties of the neuron –potentials, resistance, and the effects of electrolytes – since that’s where most of the fancy stuff was found: graphics to adjust levels of electrolytes across membranes with adjustable resistance, etc. I found some of it rather difficult to follow, and the material on length constant and time constant was far too brief. It’s possible I struggled because I was less interested in this particular area. Most neuroresearch, of course, measures electrical activity, so it’s appropriate that it’s emphasized. 
The second course in the series moved up a level to interneuron communication via neurotransmitters and modulators, synapses, and excitation/inhibition patterns. Included were several interesting “Extras”, interviews with researchers looking at such topics as optogenetics – using a light-activated channel from algae to stimulate and record neuronal activity – and connectomics, a technique to understand the informational organization of the nervous system. 
Each week’s material consisted of a number of short video lectures with two or three graded Practice Problems following, plus a final exam at the end of each course. Multiple attempts are given for each question in both cases; most of the questions are information-retrieval, the exception being the first course where a fair amount of applying various equations is required. 
bet it’ll be fascinating.
Course: 
It’s a short course, three weeks (there is a Week 0, for purposes of getting used to the edX platform, but there’s no content). There’s very little solid content; it’s mostly open response to acted-out scenarios and discussions of the issues raised. Ostensibly the weeks had different foci, but I found it all to boil down to: keep an eye on your assumptions, notice when you’re being triggered by a difficult patient, and think about what isn’t being said as well as what is being said. The instructors were mostly emergency room physicians, a setting that often requires action when there isn’t a lot of time to gather a great deal of data. 
The acted-out scenarios in W1 and 2 were dramatic as conflicts arose between patients and staff, patients and their families, families and staff. I very much liked the Week 3 exercise, in which an abstract painting was the focus: what story do you see in the painting? Look at the negative space (I had trouble with this; I didn’t see any negative space). Map one of the patient scenarios to the painting in a way that makes sense to you. 
My main thought was: I wonder how possible any of this approach is in the current healthcare system, which focuses on efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Insurance companies and accountants have reduced primary care physicians to something like data entry clerks, and socioeconomic factors more than medical factors impact patient decisions. 
biology, and chemistry, it pretty much started where my knowledge starts to thin out, and covered quite a bit. It is intended as an intro to physiology, so there’s a lot more detail left for future explorations. The material offers it as a good review for the MCATs, so that’s probably a good estimate of the level: some background is necessary, but we’re still in undergrad territory.
The remaining nine weeks all covered different organ systems. There was a lot of overlap, but it was handled very smoothly. We started with nervous system and senses, then moved into muscles (which of course require some understanding of the nervous system), then heart (which requires some understanding of nerves and muscles)… you get the idea. 
The lectures were a bit uneven. Some of them were great; others were hard to follow, and at some point became a flood of words. The transcripts weren’t much help in this case since they contained all the hesitations, restarts, half-thoughts abandoned in mid-word, but without the auditory clues to ignore them. However, what was very helpful was a lecture note summary outlining the lecture material. These were at a higher academic level, without a lot of preparation or metaphor to help with understanding, but combined with the lectures I found them invaluable. I wish I’d started using them before the last couple of weeks (stubbornness is my downfall again). Yet, again, I found the content to be great, which made up for any quirks of delivery. Example: I’ve been struggling with the different hormones secreted by the three layers of the adrenal cortex for years now, but one phrase – “salt, sugar, sex” – clarified everything. 
I found the quiz material – some graded, some not – to be very well designed. Rather than a recitation of facts, most of the questions asked us to extrapolate from the pathways and processes covered and predict or explain the result of some action. I used Cerego for the rote stuff, but the in-video questions, the post-lecture practice quizzes, and unit exams were excellent opportunities to turn rote into reasoning. Example: “Increased delivery of Na+ to the principal cells of the renal tubule leads to increased…?” I was expecting one answer, but it wasn’t in the list; it took a bit of doing, but I realized another answer was, indeed, correct (and, in fact, turned out to be clearly stated in a lecture, though, hey, I can’t remember everything, y’know). Some units had fewer practice quizzes than others; I missed them terribly. It’s not just 
that I’m weird and I like taking tests (which, well, yeah, why take a course if there’s no test?), it’s that it really helped point out exactly what I needed to understand better, before getting to the end of the unit. 
I’ve overall been quite pleased with Duke courses, particularly their neuro and medical options; this one was no exception. At times things could get a bit wordy, but if the goal is to understand the basics of how the body works, this fits the bill very nicely. 
Length: 4 weeks, 5 – 10 hrs/wk
I spend a lot of time thinking about literature, I started thinking about narrative. This is what happens when a course lacks narrative. It isn’t necessarily deal-breaker – the information is there and, drawing upon experience and using other techniques to stay oriented and motivated, it’s workable – but it certainly is a less pleasant, less engaging experience. 
hours per week – would be a bit tight for anyone trying to learn the material. It would be possible to pass the course in that time frame; it’s possible to pass most Coursera courses these days without even taking the courses, because you have unlimited tries at the exams. But learning the material? Getting a good picture in your head of what’s posterior to what and how nerves and arteries branch off? Recognizing structures on dissections? I suspect, for most of us who aren’t in medical school, that takes longer. I entered a lot of material into Cerego, so that took a great deal of time, but it also helped with retention (and will continue to remind me for months to come), and I consider it time well spent. 
anyway and roll over into the next session without penalty if they aren’t completed by the end date). Several videos covered imaging techniques – x-ray, CT, MRI, and ultrasound – from a light overview of technical foundations to a guide to reading images. It’s kind of a kick to see an MRI on Grey’s Anatomy and know, “Oh, that’s with IV contrast, supine.” And it’s really fun to hear Dr. Bailey refer to the SMA or the IVC and know what that is. 
to continue. The chest would be incised, the skin peeled back, the muscles examined, explained, and reflected one by one, the bones sawed through and removed, and the deeper structures pointed out. This was a lot more helpful than an isolated labeled photograph of a dissection. Material also included endoscopic videos from bronchoscopy, upper and lower GI screening endoscopies, cystoscopy, and a laparoscopic gallbladder removal. And if you stick with it to the very end, you can see a penis dissected. Longitudinally, then transversely. I may never eat kielbasa again. 
procedure videos). I found these quite difficult. First, there’s my difficulty telling a preserved nerve from a vein from an artery from a tendon, and second, the clickable areas were sometimes oddly construed. There was a kind of logic to it once I figured out any given structure; I could relate everything else to it. These tests weren’t graded other than for completion. 
order to translate it into verbal description. In general, I’d say the testing material was effective at reinforcing learning.
A Just Recompense 