Archaeology's Dirty Little Secrets

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My new Coursera.org class, Archaeology's Dirty Little Secrets, has begun.

The prof, Sue Alcock, is animated and interesting.  She clearly thinks archaeology is the coolest thing ever, which makes it easy for me to be interested, too.

It's just a little class, relatively speaking.  There were nearly 200,000 of us in Think Again last winter.  Only 30,000 in Dirty Little Secrets, or so I heard.  Someone put up a map, so we can show where we are.  Cool............  (Even though only a relative handful of us have bothered to do this.)

Some Coursera classes have peer-reviewed writing assignments in addition to multiple-choice/true-false quizzes and tests.  My estimation of the value of "peer"-reviewed anything in a situation like this is very low.  Extremely low.  (I've seen the "quality" of the review of, say, AP History tests, where the reviewers are paid "professionals"......................)

I checked to make sure there wasn't any of that in this class before I signed up, but either I didn't look closely enough, or it wasn't in the class description....  Unfortunately there is a lot of it for this class.  At least six such assignments, in the eight-week class, and each one you do requires you to review the same assignment for five of your classmates.

The prof estimates the amount of work for the class at 4-6 hours a week.  Ho ho ho.  Listening to the lectures, if you take careful notes, takes up a good chunk of that, and there are readings, and a quiz each week.  Having to review the work of five classmates??  In addition to doing your own assignment?

Maybe I'll take on doing those assignments, and maybe not! 

Four to six hours.  Riiiiiiiight........

This class is way less flexible about when you finish the work than the others I've taken have been.  The others left quizzes open for the whole time of the class, and this one only leaves them open for one week after the week the lectures for that quiz were given.  I wonder if this will change as she gets feedback from the class.  If the goal is to expose lots of people to the material, what's the point of tight deadlines?  Particularly when no person is grading the quizzes.....................

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