By Sai from Tokyo 5 months ago Completed

Great course that deepens our understanding of the world that we are living in. The course textbook is freely downloadable at http://www.earth.illinois.edu/sustain/sustainability_text.html. This course covers broad topics such as population, ecosystems, extinction, climate change, energy, agriculture and water, environmental economics and policy, and ethics. To me, these do look crucial to every global citizen and I think I learned what I expected to learn from this course. I didn't give it 5 stars because of poor video editing: it shows the professor just too long instead of showing the slides.

By Laura Cushing from West Berlin, New Jersey 6 months ago Completed

I really liked that there were multiple methods of course completion, and badges for achieving different areas of success in the course. I thought the tests were way too hard though - it was often difficult to determine the right answer even though I had studied and read the matterials and watched the videos.

I also really liked that there was a free textbook that could be downloaded to my Kindle. That was great.

Interactivity between professor and students was limited to a few emails, but students were encouraged to get together and do projects and so forth. The discussion forums were lively.

By deicidereigns from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 21 days ago Completed

Everyone should take this course, or a course like it. I found the ideas in this course incredibly enlightening to my understanding of the environment and our place in it. There were so many new ideas in this course, it's pretty amazing. Tragedy of the commons, Malthusian collapse, demographic transitions, insolation and weather vs. climate systems, energy conservation/displacement, virtual water, agricultural water efficiency/contamination/limits, types of environmental policies throughout the world and their impacts, etc.

However, the lecturer can often be biased, making many prescriptive assertions; the video background pictures can often cause a strain because they're not distinguished enough from the lecturer; some of the quiz questions can be poorly worded; and last, but not least, is the overcomplicated way in which the course is organized. Otherwise, it's a very insightful course -- answering a lot of questions I had and providing insight into many I never knew about.

By Glaucia Loebmann 3 days ago Completed

This was my first MOOC course, and a life changing. It set very high bar criteria of comparison. The course was well organized, the forum discussions were very interesting. The exams difficult and sometimes a bit confusing, but in the end the feeling of learning a subject that has always interested me and I never had the opportunity to study, were incredible. Especially opened to this new world of education on line. Since then I am completely hooked, became a continuous learner. I can´t thank enough professor Jonathan Tomkin and team for the tremendous effort.

By Equanimous Creativity from OSAA, Århus, Denmark 32 days ago Completed

A very academic overview on Sustainability e.g. how is the earth doing on water,energy,food and population. I was missing a personal perspective e.g. if I become vegetarian /installed solar panels on my house or simmilar what impact would it have.

By Magd from Warsaw 2 months ago Completed

Fantastic course. It was the first Coursera course for me and it set very high standards that I refer to when taking and assessing other courses. I liked the fact that there were various ways to complete the course. The quality of the videos was fantastic - clear voice, the professor was talking to us as if we were just next to him, in a lecture hall. I also loved the fact that the textbook could be downloaded to Kindle and read off-screen.

As regards improvements, I believe that more consideration should be given as regards the forums badge - the information about the details came late. There is definitely a room for improvement as regards the forums - they are huge, fast and simply impossible to follow on a regular basis.

Thank you, professor Tomkin, for a great and mind-opening course, I hope that there will be other courses here on Coursera that you will be conducting, as it was a real pleasure.