I am back with my MOOC series, I know I promised it would take only a few weeks, I just didn’t have the time to continue for a while.
Anyway, the next one is The Global Student’s Introduction to US Law.
I took this course last summer on Coursera. I took it during a really busy period at work, so at first I was a little worried about actually making it, but I really enjoyed the whole course, and that somewhat made it easier to work on the projects late nights and weekends.
The course is based on a study course of the Levin College of Law at the University of Florida, the MOOC course version of it gives a taste of all the basic legal subjects of the US. The basic course is for foreign lawyers, but in my opinion, the MOOC did not require any pre-education, while of course the topic is easier to process when you have a legal mind-set.
Besides the short history and basic definitions of each branch of law, the course provided us with plenty of case law, and a lot of useful instructions on legal research.
The structure of the videos was as familiar with Coursera courses, the videos were interrupted with questions to check your attention. The additional reading was not overwhelming, it was managable even with my tight schedule.
I loved the project work tasks, although there was no formal review system this time, we just had to upload our work to the forum, and that single act of uploading was accounted for the results. Nevertheless all the tasks were interesting and enjoyable, the final project was to provide a research plan for a specific case. We also had to post in the forums at least once a week to get a certificate.
The quizzes were difficult enough to make you think further about the topic and make you research what you could have missed throughout the course.
I see there was a second session this spring, so it seems possible they will announce another next year. I certainly recommend it to anyone with an interest in law wherever you are from and wheter it is your profession or just an interest. The course in all most definitely helped me understand the US legal system (and my favorite US legal TV shows.☺) more. In addition, I earned a certificate again with distinction.
