Whilst a significant improvement on the dreadful first course in the specialisation, I found this course frustrating and poor in several key areas. Firstly, I am a Biomedical Informatician with several years hands-on experience and am looking to build up my skills in Systems Biology, and I hoped this specialisation would help with that. Based on the first two courses, it doesn't - at all.

Firstly, whilst the lecture videos are much better than in the first course, it really adds little to investigate lab procedures in such detail. An overview of how they work and a focus *on the data produced* and to how that are relevant to models based upon differential equations would have been excellent: this only happens in the final week! The instructor has never posted once in the discussion forums since the course began and there are issues reported with the quizzes which appear to not have been rectified - so the quality control is poor and I found for me personally, much of the material was irrelevant to my aims and objectives in taking the course.

Coursera really have missed an opportunity with this specialisation: the MIT Synthetic Biology course offered by edX is excellent, even though it requires a very high degree of background knowledge it doesn't shy away from the materials (it required too much Molecular Biology for me though it's an excellent course). "Experimental Methods in Systems Biology" *could* have been excellent - IF the material of the final week of lectures had been the majority of the coure. Very disappointing and, honestly, a waste of money in my honest opinion.

Un excelente curso que da un panorama muy útil de las herramientas comúnmente empleadas para experimentos enfocados a la biología de sistemas

Loved this course. Prof. Birtwistle is really into teaching and liked the way he has organized this course. Thanks!

3stars for the lab video, -1 for quizzes, -1 for the long lectures

This course has the best lab videos to offer. I have real experience for most of these techniques so I should be qualified to say that the course is extremely helpful to those who will touch on these stuffs. The concepts and the principles of techniques are covered comprehensively but could have been more concise; the lectures are generally too long. The major downside, as others have pointed out, is that the quizzes are not well-organized. There are too many confusing multiple choice problems; the tester clearly did not know the choice should be independent. I've passed this course with 100% grades (with a lot of attempts and trying) Some answers are clearly incorrect if you lookup the literature; the tester should consider some techniques would be improved overtime and therefore some limitation will be lifted, but this course will stay on coursera forever). Furthermore, some problems are not covered or not emphasized in the lectures.

Excellent course with a wealth of information about system biology technologies

Great course,

Recommended if you are interest in new technologies

A good course for someone interested to work in the field of systems biology, and thanks to Icahn School of Medicine and Coursera for the same.

But the course could have been a bit more comprehensive with respect to cellular experiments and include coverage of experiments done outside the Mount Sinai lab as well, especially 'non-omic' experiments such as cell growth and viability assays or KD , KO or Over-Expression studies that can be really useful for building network models.

This course is definitely not for beginners and students must have previous lab experience (in my opinion). It is a great course to get your feet wet in new techniques that you have not performed yet.

Once again, I have mixed feelings about this course. On the bright side, it was very comprehensive and cover a wide collection of experimental methods, which to me, as a non biologist getting into systems biology, has always been one of the most confusing aspects of the field. I also appreciate a lot the idea of lab recordings, so you have a better idea of how everything looks in real life; it makes it feel more real. On the other side, lectures are in general very long and tedious. Methods generally consist of a series of several and non trivial steps, for which usually one or two slides are shown. I understand this course is more than 10 years old and video or animations were not that available, but either or even a pointer, are very necessary. To anyone taking the course, I would recommend to use the syllabus as a guide and look for online videos or animations on YouTube, there are plenty and very, very helpful to understand these processes

A really nice course which I believe served its purpose. Maybe a pdf version of experimental protocols followed in the lab videos can be added in the reading section of the lab-based video or in optional reading. This will help students who are interested in knowing the specific protocols for the technique.

It is a comprehensive course, which covers all types of experimental methods in systems biology by introducing the machines/instruments used in analyzing the samples as well as how to perform the analysis in several types of biological samples such as DNA, transcriptomes and proteins.

Amazing course, only the final exam was rather an excercise in finding out out where the answers differ than trying to really understand what should be the ringht answer. I learnt a lot, thank you!

This a great course it helps a lot to get to know state of the art techniques and how to use them properly although the assigment questions of selecting the statements are quite confusing.

Excelente curso, en lo personal me dio más perspectivas para el trabajo con sistemas biológicos. Me gustaría que se profundizara más sobre el tema de redes metabólicas y análisis de datos.

The lab videos are great, thanks for teaching us. Not all university can afford those machines. If you have latest methods or anything please introduce more courses.

Very difficult, would help if instructor provides answer key or monitors the chat a bit more

Awesome delivery and exam questions are very practical....I enjoyed the 8weeks here

Gained meaningful insights into a new field of Systems Biology with this course.

I relly enjoy and learn so much with that course! I recommend :)

excellent overview of experimental methods in systems biology

Good lecture to know experimental method in lab

Excellent course! Learnt a lot!

It was quite knowledgeble

excellent!!!!

tanks...

A very good course.