My first Coursera Course Completed

Well, actually, it happened in May, but now I have some time to finally reflect on the course I took.
I wasn't completely new to coursera, I attempted couple of courses but never finished them. Now I can say it happened because I didn't have enough motivation. Motivation, in its turn, didn't pertain because I wasn't very good at the subject I studied. I got low results on the quizzes or peer assessment, my English was constantly pointed at (as illegible) and overall I felt disappointed. So when I came across Shaping the Way We Teach I didn't have great expectations. But to my surprise I completed it and even got a high score.

The "secret" to that was that the course explored the topic I was familiar with (teaching English) and was relevant to my current interests.

How did the learning happen?
This course took five weeks. Each week consisted of a video lesson, required reading, quiz and required forum posts. Apart from that, weeks 2 and 5 had a lesson plan assignment; weeks 3 and 5 peer assessment assignments. There was also a variety of additional readings and video sources. It took me about 3 hours per week to complete all of the assignments.

What were the topics?
The course explored topics of authentic materials and realia, pair/group work, critical and creative thinking, learner feedback and assessment, language in context. Most of the material was familiar to me. However, course stuff made a point of including this topics in the lesson plan assignment. So we were required to think about these ideas in the context of an actual lesson. The course material and tasks were divided for the teachers of young learners and for the teachers of teenagers/adults which was a sensible thing of them to do. However, we could have studied both parts if we wanted to.

What I found useful
As I noted before, most of the material was not brand new to me. It was useful to revise and consolidate the knowledge of these topics especially in the light of my upcoming TKT exam. Another thing which I found the most useful was their youtube playlist which contained recordings of real lessons from all over the world. And although, I found very few of them to be "ideal" lessons, I still consider watching other educators teach one of the best ways of learning for me. The course was also linked to the American English website that contains a bunch of resources for teachers starting from lesson plans to articles and books that we read for the course.

What I didn't like
There were couple of things that almost prevented me from finishing the course. First of them being the required forum posts. And although I understood that the forums was supposed to be the most useful part of the course, I found myself dreading this part of the assignment each week. Maybe it is because I'm naturally shy and prefer to watch rather that participate. Maybe it was the element that made it OBLIGATORY that didn't excite me. Anyways, I don't think I used this part of the course to the fullest. Another disappointing thing was the skills level of the students. The lesson plan assignment demonstrated both the best and the worst examples of the supposedly working teachers. Either the concept of learning online wasn't grasped entirely or the actual knowledge wasn't there, but some teachers' works left me speechless.
The quizzes, seemingly easy, were not always easy to understand. The form of the questions was ambiguous, couple of times I found myself guessing the most probable answer, though I studied all of the materials thoroughy.

Overall, it was a useful experience, but not useful enough for me to continue with the second part of their course.