Learning something new is always exciting, especially when it’s a subject of your interest. I always had my interest in physics and was keen on learning new things and I wanted to have a challenge with a very different topic. I went on searching for online courses when I found “The Big Bang to Dark Energy by The University of Tokyo” on Coursera. It was a 4-week long course which approximately needed 30 hours to complete. The instructor for the course was Hitoshi Murayama, professor of physics.

LO-1
At the very beginning, many of the concepts taught were understandable, as I could relate to it from what I had learned from school however, as sessions passed the terminologies and language became scientific it was very difficult to follow through. At the end of a week, there is a mandatory quiz that is supposed to be completed. After I analyzed my correct and incorrect answers I realized all the questions with numerical were correct, however, the theoretical was incorrect. To improve my theoretical knowledge, I decided to review all the videos and sessions again, so that I won’t face trouble in future classes.

LO-3 &4
As this was an online course, I had to be proactive to set my timers and dates to complete it as per the given deadlines. At a point, it became difficult to organize me as per the timing of school, extra work, and course. I made an everyday goal book where I had to complete 3 sessions each day with 2 quizzes. This allowed me to have consistency and perseverance in my work. A 4-week long course is bound to have a heavy curriculum which can be tiresome and challenging to an extent.

By the end of the course, I had learned so many concepts that were unknown and very exciting to me. I learned about ongoing experiments such as “The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN”, and basic misunderstanding which I had for big band theory and dark energy were cleared. Moreover, this course gave me a sense of confidence in front of my peers to have more knowledge of physics than we were taught. It also led to an increase in my interest in the subject. While doing the course I continuously kept doing my own research to capture as much information as I can. I have successfully completed the course and gained the maximum knowledge from it.

Learning Outcomes- 1,3 and 4

Evidence- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XDQclWOcoXGBbNYVxKKKxSdU6syqKiuF6duEh4z_cRg/edit?usp=sharing