So far, it's… unequal. It's notable that the teaching staff are all geologists rather than biologists, so they're in their home ground when discussing fossil formation, perhaps less so when they're talking about molecular biology. In any case, I like the fossil-discussing segments, they're informative and help driving the geological time-scales into my head; plus I like weird beasts.
Where I'm less enthusiastic is that the lectures are disjointed, often approximative (like mixing the terms eukaryote, metazoan, multiple-celled organisms − y'know, plants are multi-cellular organisms, but they're not metazoans, likewise, there are these things called saccharomyces, amoeba, giardia, etc. : all eukaryotes are not multi-cellular). Sometimes they'll use an inappropriate picture to illustrate what's being discussed (illustrating armored jawless fish with a toothy placoderm isn't a great idea!) There's little logic in how a segment connects to the ones before and after. It's a bit annoying that the clearest segments are the ones from the very young PhD student introducing taxonomy, while the segments from the official professor are somewhat confused (and confusing).
But I can live with that. Playing spot-the-fossil in the quizzes is fun.
Another thing I find upsetting is that the forums are basically drowned in two kinds of posts:
- corrections for approximations made in the lectures
- creationist crap (multiple threads discussing intelligent design, “global warming: fact or fiction”, etc.)
Huh. Okay. I'll just steer away from the forums, then.
That, plus the outright idolizing of Carl Woese (can't we grow up beyond the “great man single-handedly upsetting the establishment” type of narratives?) means the course isn't all it's meant to be… oh well. It's still something to do of an otherwise quiet summer.
(That said, I like the funky music and titles.)
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