Postmortem: Fundamentals of Immunology part 1 at Rice University

Rice University have put up a Fundamentals of Immunology on edX; part 1 is closing right now. I've been quite successful at it with an overall grade of 90%; it's been rather a lot of work to get to that level so I'm rather proud of it. It's also going to be my second Verified Certificate from edX.

Immunology?

Yeah, you know; the study of the immune system. White blood cells, lymphocytes, the CD4 receptors that VIH binds to, auto-immune reactions (including allergies), the lot.

I've actually got a vested interest in learning about all that, as a lot of people around me have autoimmune diseases; but it's a fascinating subject in its own right. The downside is that, as most medicine-oriented courses (it's based off a pre-med course at Rice) it's heavy on memorization, so be warned, if you take this course or indeed any other course on Immunology, you better be ready to spend hours revising.

What does the course cover?

This is the first part of a two-part course; I expect most of the really hairy stuff to be in the second part.

First off, the course focuses on the operating principles of the immune system in vertebrates, especially humans. Mice and even birds are mentioned at times, but really, it's all about people.

The course starts with an overview of the different types of pathogens (in ascending order of complexity: viruses, bacteria, single-cell eukaryotes such as Giardia, fungi, worms), then a 30'000-feet-high overview of the immune system(s) in higher organisms (plants, fungi, animals) and the distinction between the innate and adaptive immune systems (the latter being specific to vertebrates). Starting with lecture 2, we dive into the details, with an overview of hematopoiesis (how blood cells are made and how they differentiate) and a long list of white blood cell types (myelocytes, lymphocytes, neutrophils, basophils, dendritic cells, B-lymphocytes, T-lymphocytes, etc.) Lecture 3 is a quick run-down of innate immunity.

Most of the rest of the course focuses on B-lymphocytes, the immune system's antibody factories: how antibodies are structured, how B-cells differentiate, how and where they mature, etc. That takes three whole (and information-dense) lectures. The course finishes with a discussion of the complement system, that is to say the molecular process by which pathogens, once identified by antibodies, are neutralized and killed.

So, quite a lot to fit in 6 weeks of lessons. The estimate of 7-10 hours per week on the course presentation page may be a bit higher than what I actually did, but it's not very far off.

Who is the teaching team?

The lecturer is Dr Alma Moon Novotny. (Don't be fooled by her Russian-sounding name, she has a very strong American accent!) She obviously has a long experience of teaching the subject, and makes a lot of effort to make the “memory load”, as she says, lighter. She does it by way of models, cartoons, and analogies. It's a bit strange at first to have cartoonish characters in the slides for a college-level course, but as soon as you realize that you have to learn the essential characteristics of each of these cells by heart, you start thanking her for the fun way in which everything is presented.

In a similar vein, she is generally funny and jokey (for instance calling the stem part of an antibody the “Yoo-hoo! bit” since it's the one that summons other cells) and, well, just fun to listen to. This really helps in such a basically arid subject.

My name is Bond. James "B-cell" Bond.

What about logistics?

The course lasts for 6 weeks, plus two for wrapping up (review, final exam, grading). Each week is generally taken up by one lecture (three lectures are squeezed in the first two weeks), divided in shortish segments of about ten minutes each. Below each segment are one or two ungraded “fact check” questions to make sure you've understood it all.

The lectures are accompanied by two PDF documents: the lecture outline, and the slides themselves. Dr Novotny recommends using the outline to follow along with the lectures; I've been doing a mix of reviewing the outline before watching the lectures, and following along with the slides. The outlines and slides are a great help for reviewing; to prepare for the quizzes and final exam I eventually printed them all out and carried them around everywhere.

(Phew, revising lessons on the bus: hadn't happened to me in fifteen years!)

A quiz wraps up each week. Somewhat unusually for MOOCs, the quizzes are “closed-book”, which is to say you're not supposed to have the course material (or indeed anything else) at hand while taking them. There's no way to enforce the policy though, so it's all a matter of honour on the students' side. (To be perfectly honest, I hadn't understood they were closed-book until the third quiz. Note however that I didn't actually get much better grades on the first two, when I had the outlines etc. at hand, than on the other four or indeed the final exam, for which I did adhere to the closed-book policy).

The course is wrapped-up with a longish 60-question final exam covering the whole course, also closed-book.

One question per page… doesn't quite mesh with the edX navigation system

As usual for MOOCs, there is no textbook (which is why the outlines are so detailed). Dr Novotny does provide a handful of links to interesting resources on the Internet though; while revising, I found (as she mentions) that the relevant Wikipedia pages are actually very good.

My impressions

I enjoyed the course a lot. First because I learned a lot of stuff, then because Dr Novotny is simply a joy to listen to.

The less enjoyable parts were, of course, the quizzes. I doubt there's anybody on Earth who actually likes doing quizzes… It didn't help that some of them were mis-coded (this was obviously the first run of the course and the staff obviously had to get to grips with the edX platform; they were, however, very responsive whenever errors were flagged on the forums). We're evidently far from the very sophisticated 7.00x Introduction to Biology from MIT with its wealth of interactive tools instead of simple yes/no/maybe quizzes. However, it's also obvious the Rice team hardly had the same budget as the MIT one's for producing the course − and it would be unfair to decry the course for not being up to the very best course I've ever seen. This Immunology course is all that can be reasonably expected, and more.

Dr Novotny with an antibody

A quick note: as I said in the introduction, I paid for the Verified certificate. Not so much because I think the certificate will be helpful in my career (I don't see how it would) but because it's cheap (25 USD, about 20 euros), it's a way to indicate appreciation for the work being done, and it's an added motivator: having paid, I'm less likely to drop the course, even if it's hard work.

Overall, I'm eagerly anticipating part 2 (where we'll learn all about T lymphocytes). Do be warned though, if you want to take up this course: it's a lot of work, and a lot of it is unfortunately (but unavoidably) about memorizing stuff.

[Edit] And now the certificate's arrived!