A Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior

I am a student interested in the field of humanities and took this course during my free time and I have to say it was one of the most rewarding experiences. The course is well-structured and planned- no hiccups on that front. All the course materials are relevant, thorough and interesting with real life illustrations and applications. The course instructor Dan Ariely needs no introduction and is one of the most promiment authorities in the field of behavioural economics. Though this course is founded on economic principles, it is very much related to fields such as psychology and human behaviour.

The course is structured in such a way that you have to watch a bunch of videos and complete a few readings every week before taking the weekly quizzes. The weekly quizzes, a mid-course written assignment (a very interesting one!) and the end-of-course quizzes are all mandatory if you want to take a shot at the certificate of accomplishment. The course also provides loads of recommended readings that you can delve into if you are interested deeply in the subject. I took all the mandatory assignments seriously and the learning experience was highly enriching. After taking this course, I have become a regular follower of articles online on behavioural sciences and above anything else, I find myself relating to and applying the concepts that I learnt in this course in my day-to-day life.

It was an Excellent course both from the perspective of content and presentation.

The course will reveal flaws in basic human intuitions and will likely change the way You view the world. Thus it should be interesting for a broad audience. Additionally it provdies You with some basic mechanisms how to compensate for those flaws and links You with a lot of related research. In fact I have joined twitter specifically to follow the latest research in Professors Ariely group in general and Behavioural Economy in particular.

The Lecturer made an effort to present the material in a light weight and entertaining way, yet provided lot additional material in forms of readings, recommended readings, guest lectures for people interested in more in depth study. The office hours very used well to react on student opinions and provided a connection of the discussed principles to daily life problems (office hours from the last Year were also provided).

The student community was very nice and active, both in the discussions groups and Facebook page of the group.

The course also comes with a distinction track, in which students can propose a solution to a problem and design an experiment, both of which are peer reviewed. I haven't participated in the distinction track but I believe it would be very rewarding, albeit also quite time consuming.

didn't expect an online course to change the way I think, but this course was that good. The video lectures are engaging, because Ariely is a dynamic speaker who's clearly passionate about behavioral economics and then on top of that silly cartoons, graphics and photos make the videos stand out among the MOOC crowd of talking heads with powerpoint. The lectures also fleshed out complex concepts and invited you to read more.

I didn't expect to do any of the reading, which was for a certificate of distinction, but I ended up reading most of it and taking the reading quizzes. Ariely also provided a lot of extra videos and quizzes. I'm now a participant in Ariely's research app. Ariely successfully harnessed my irrational side and I feel a sense of debt and gratitude to a person I've never met or even engaged with online.

I got BA in Economics and MBA. Therefore, I was familiar with economics before taking this class. However, behavioral economics is new to me. And the name of the course attracted me, so I read about it and decided to take it. I was very excited to start this course because of the new subject and also because it was my first online course. I was very pleased with this class. Every week after reading and watching the video lectures, I would share with my friends and family all the interesting things I've learned or found out. The videos were fun, readings were new with all the research done. It was challenging too with 2 papers to write. I enjoyed it a lot. I hope Dan and his team continue this course as I beleive there's a lot for people to learn from them! Thank you!

This course is the most entertaining of all coursera courses I've taken. The lectures are brilliant -- full of jokes, animation, and funny examples. My favorite one is Eve's (Adam&Eve) problem with self-control. "

Q.: Would you sacrifice eternity for an apple in the Garden of Eden?

A: Depends on how hungry you are" :))

This course explores consumer's psychology in non-traditional way. Thanks to in-video real time surveys I discovered that l'm as irrational as it gets and so are most of my classmates :) and started inventing motivational tricks to deal with my irrationally.

There were few things I didn't like about this course though : some of the solutions that were offered in the guest lecturers' studies seemed unethical (lottery as a motivation) to me, in the hotel study the numbers were just made up, and even if there was an observed correlation, but was it a causation? How scalable are these solutions?

I agree with previous reviewer that it's not easy to get a certificate : weekly lecture quizzes (15 to 20 questions) + quizzes on reading material (5 research papers up to 125 p. long) + writing assignment + exam. In addition, there were tons of optional hangouts, announcements, groups, discussions, videos, assignments, and surveys to catch up with...

Anyway, here is a great collection of Dan's talks http://www.pearltrees.com/#/N-play=2&N-p=72962712&N-s=1_7614268&N-u=1_850581&N-fa=6354390&N-f=1_7614268 "ask-arielly"blog is great toohttp://danariely.com/tag/ask-ariely/,

and the books http://www.amazon.com/Dan-Ariely/e/B001J93B34/

This was my first MOOC. I found Dan Ariely to be a very persuasive and engaging speaker and a great introduction to behavioral economics. I found the course guidelines on workload understated the workload. I was aiming for the Statement of Completion with distinction, which is the "highest" workload path. There is a pre-course week and I spent an average of 11 hours/week to cover the required material (lectures, quizes, reading, videos). It took me another 9 hours/week average to cover off work involved in the additional 2 written assignments revision and exam for the distinction path. I never did get to read the optional material. On reflection, I probably spent more time than necessary coming up to speed with research writing techniques and experiment design to support the two written assignments.

I have learned an extraordinary amount and I value that learning. The Coursera MOOC works very well. Dan and Aline provide great seed material to kick off classes and support students. The Community TA's work very well. There were no technical glitches accessing material from Australia.

I recommend this course to all- just allocate enough time to cover it at the level that suits your objectives.

behavioural psychology has always been a subject of my interest but this was for the first time I have pursued it to this level of depth. This course if one of the bestest courses I have ever ever taken. I am not only in love with this subject but I love the whole team that has worked to make it fun to learn and comprehend the more challenging aspects. I loved the animations, the involvement of the team to break the monotony, the creative cartoonings, the content, delivery, Dan, his jokes, his kids, the change of settings, the readings, procrastination alerts ...pretty much everything. One thing I did not like was the deadlines (even though I do believe that the team had good reasons to keep them so close) but it would really help to space them out a bit to be fair to people who are travelling, sometimes we fall sick...a lot happens during the week and it is not always possible to devote time to a course despite high interest. Personally, I would have loved to get more time to read all the reading material! Sometimes, I just ended up reading only to complete the assignments, which I feel affected the quality of my learning.

hat is more important for human being than understanding causes of his own actions as well as others? This class hopefully make you aware of probable reasons of someone irrational behavior and you'll be less stressed about it.

The quality is extraordinary. Dan is one of the best teachers I've ever had. Videos consists of Dan explanations and lots of figures and even cartoons. The team put a lot of work into preparing materials and making things easy to understand.

As the Dan's explanations are straightforward and colorful there is a quite high bar for passing the course (85%).

I've chosen a path with distinction, so I had to read additionally about 4-5 scientific papers (which was really fun!) and finish two additional writing assignments (solving real life problem and designing an experiment). Dan exactly knew what he is doing making it so hard (you'll get it when learn about IKEA effect and cognitive dissonance). I feel really good about myself after finishing the course! I would definitely do it again, and waiting for an advanced course :-)

Great course, great 1st experience with an online course.

Recommended for anyone interested in the material. Accessible to high school level students and beyond.

Prof did a good job of presenting the material, providing extras, and giving opportunities to feel involved (tough trick for a MOCC)

Summary

My background - read 2 of prof's books already; engineering background (so reading research papers wasn't new or challenging)

Readings - interesting and mostly very accessible (I have a science background, so research papers are easy reads for me).

Lectures - engaging and fun

Extras - guest lectures, additional reading, chance to participate in research, debate among the academic leaders ... pretty over-the-top for a free online course

Quizzes - perfect tool for learning and retaining material covered

Final - not challenging ... exactly what you'd think given the online format

Assignments - reasonably good for getting students to actively apply course materials ... definitely limitations because of online format

I read one of his books a while ago and was a little bit put off by the tone in which he preached his knowledge. This course is even worse for me. I am questioning his research from a statistical perspective, but my main gripe is more of a subjective nature. It is the way Dan Ariely presents himself and his ideas. Good science is not a popularity contest. I guess if you like his style as a platform for presenting ideas, than you'd have less difficulty finishing the course than I do.

As far as the content goes, the way Dan Ariely blatantly presents most of his inferences and conclusions as a matter of fact as opposed to possible models given the circumstances of measurement is just wrong. Before you know it you believe it ;)

Read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking fast and slow for a tad less pedantic and more professional overview of many of the same ideas.

PS: I didn't go for the "with Distinction" track, so statements above is just about Ariely's lectures and not the reading assignments.

The course was magnificent , the teacher very very good , and also the staff . Compared to other courses is superior because it provides a lot of material on the subject and makes greater use of films, drawings , diagrams and excellent slides . Many excellent opportunities to explore the topic ( I personally buy the latest book by Dan ) . Very useful and beautiful external interviews , the " Special Guest " and also " Office Hours" that have only a few courses and not so well. Dan Ariely has done a great job and I think his commitment , as well as that of the staff, it was huge and it seems to me just thank him only in this way [the only other form that came to mind was to join the his initiative on Kickstarter Campaign for ( Dis ) Honesty : The Truth About Lies https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1501481976/dishonesty-a-documentary-feature-film and invite all those who appreciated his commitment to do so ]

The standard certificate is super-easy to get in terms of time and difficulty: you need to watch less than 1h of videos and answer 15 easy questions per week (you can repeat the quizzes up to 15 times!) and an easy final exam of 2 parts of 30 questions. The distinction certificate is also easy to get but much more time consuming: same workload than regular certificate plus ~5 papers to read per week (10 questions about the papers) plus 2 written assignments (+ grade 5 other people's text per assignment).

In general is pretty easy but you need to be up to date. The due dates for the quizzes and assignments are strict and you need, at least, an 85% of points to get the certificate. That means that if you missed the due date for one quizz you really have a narrow error margin left. Provably the only thing I would change from the course it would be to ask more conceptually difficult questions and leave more margin to answer the quizzes.

I took this course in Spring 2013 and was disappointed that I didn't score highly enough to earn a certificate then. (I was just a point or two away from it!) I was determined to get the certificate the next time it was offered, which was this spring, and I went for the simpler certificate as opposed to the certificate of distinction. This is possibly the best course I've ever taken of any kind. The course material is amazing, Dan Ariely is a tremendous presenter, and the videos were superbly designed and developed. (I'm an instructional designer and using ideas from the videos for some videos I'm doing for a course.) I learned a ton, and watching the video lectures the second time helped things sink in, so I can't complain about taking the course twice. Thanks, Dan Ariely and the rest of the development team!

:-) my vote: **** of *****

positive:

teacher: very congenial

presentation: very professional, entertaining, rich in content; nice design

content: interesting , fascinating, descriptive examples

a little negative:

office-ours: sometime too long-winded, sometime too private/casual

questions/quizzes: sometimes boring/ too ironic

- optimal for target group “beginners”

- probably disappointing for target group “advanced” (just to found their knowledge or to enjoy Dan`s presentation)

- suggestion for the next course: a short subsumption with short bullets at the end of a lecture (verbal + written)

- my personal recommended additional support: Dan Ariely`s book “Denken hilft zwar, nützt aber nichts (sorry, don`t know the original caption). I will read more, in any case!

I had already read the book Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.. so i knew this would be an interesting course. This also meant that i knew about many of the topics beforehand.

The course is different in how friendly everything was, of course Dan knows how to persuade and make us get pleasant feelings from the course. I was actually excited to listen to the lectures, and to relate to things in everyday life. I even watched all the office hours (i never did this for any online course before)

The assignments have been wonderful, i liked the idea. They might seem a bit hard at first, but once you finish them you feel good about yourself, and you learn something.

One of the best online courses i encountered, i think i can rank it at the top 2 of the 12 online courses i took so far.