Potentially interesting and useful material presented in boring and sometimes unclear manner. Quizzes failed to correlate to the material in the lectures. Got something out of the course but the potential was there for much more.

This course fills a gap that is rarely taught by explaining biological origins of musical experiences. The material is very easy to follow. I wish there were more practical exercises or home works to play with the concepts.

Interesting material but the instructor was so monotone and spoke so slowly, I had to play the videos at a faster speed to stay awake. I'll bet it came in handy for those whose English was not as fluent, though.

Superb topic... Very interesting, but insufficient content... Videos are difficult to follow and comprehend. So is true for tests.

Moderately recommended because of these teaching imperfections...

This course needs a whole lot of editing. Many confusing mistakes both in lessons and in quizzes. Some fundamental concepts were not explained properly/sufficiently.

Great topic, but the course was less interesting and profound than I expected. The professor could be a little more motivating. Worth the time though!

Interesting, but has an evolutionary basis which was a bit disappointing. The piano and mbira demonstrations were both enjoyable and interesting.

Quiz choices should be more carefully put together. I noticed typos, erroneous grading, and MANY answers that are not mutually exclusive.

I did enjoy the course enough to see it through but it could use help on presentation correlation of lessons and tests

The second part of the course is very good. But first part, with introductions and definitions were very "heavy".

An overview of lots of topics, but the answer to the question in the title can be given without any of that.

It was an interesting class but the quizzes did not reflect the class material.

Great Professor and content but poorly designed quizzes.

The instructor is very dry and the mat

It is odd that a course that concentrates so vehemently on speech tone, as a segue to music would be taught by a monotone and mostly unenthused professor. Often verbose, but never succinct, I had to listen to his drone twice to glean anything of value.

His tests were wrought with "gotcha" questions, having nothing to do with the important material of the course. As a physicist, I was very disappointed in his treatment of the important equations associated with the mathematics of music (mentioned as "too hard" to understand).

There was nearly no mention of rhythm and its importance in music, as relates to biology and/or emotion, and no mention of how those rhythms relate to heartbeat.

I am deeply disappointed, but I do hope this critique is seen as an opportunity to create a better course.

Caveat: I am not a music major or minor, and have no music theory background...I'm a computer scientist and polymath, but not deep in music. My low rating is due to unclear and rambling lectures, many small errors in the text and one very large one in week 5 lesson 1. This isn't up to the par of other Coursera courses I've taken. He could use more visuals to present the concepts, and speak more concisely to make the points. There are tons of materials available in this area of knowledge, and he didn't use that many of them, so it wasn't that great of a learning experience for me since I learn visually and he used only a small set of visuals.

The course tackles an interesting topic: why do we enjoy music?

But there are two problems with this course:

1) It fails to provide convincing evidence for its claims; the evidence is circumstantial and flimsy.

2) The lecturer is, how shall I say this politely, monotonic. He lacks enthusiasm.

My recommendation: if you are interested in the topic, take this course and make your own mind up. Maybe it will convince you. If not, you will have learnt a bit about human perception a sound perception.

The content was interesting, but the quizzes didn't relate to the lectures very often. It was as if there was a major piece missing in this course. One of the questions even referenced a book that was never mentioned or made available. Also, several of the musical sections seemed to be in the wrong place. I think maybe this is one of the classes that doesn't work well in this format.

This class isn't very good. It is confusing and not well explained, and the quizzes are too short and badly written. I gave up on week 5 (of 6) because I just didn't feel i was learning very much, particularly about what the title of the course would suggest you'd be learning about.

Very dry and uninspired.

The lecturer monotonically reads off some material.

The explanations don't usually make any sense.

The quizzes are a guessing game, arbitrarily connected (or not) to the lecture material.

In retrospect: a waste of my time.

I found that this course requires at least a basic knowledge of music and sound, which i did not have , making the classes a bit tedious. I would recommend it to musicians though, who might find it more interesting than I did.

Very interesting subject. I was really wainting for a course like that but, with all due respect and aknowledgement to the instructors, their is many ways this course could have been an inspiring and exciting journey. Vincent

Very dull lecturers. Most material is poorly presented

too boring

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