The start
Medical Neuroscience starts in 2013. The first time professor White ran the course was in 2013, so our course is celebration its 10th anniversary. As course on the brain, full of valuable information, images and resources Medical Neuroscience has started to inspire many.
Professor White created the course to share the medical neuroscience and clinical neuroanatomy that is taught in most medical schools around the world. Duke University commemorates this achievement in an article in the online news service, Duke Today: “A Decade of Global Reach, From Len White’s Backyard“.
Format of the Course
The course in 2013 was designed around six units of neuroscience in 13 weeks. Professor White was reaching out to learners in a personal way, inviting them to Duke and his home where many lectures were recorded.
As one or our current mentors (Victor Malakhov) who has been active in the course since 2013 says it: “I believe it’s one of the best — if not the best — online courses that I know of because it’s undiluted. That’s the beauty, for me. Len is a special teacher because he has a way of tailoring these lessons that are both precise and actually easy to understand. And at the same time, he has a way of hinting at the depth that exists, almost provoking you to study more. It’s a treasure of a course to me.” (1)
In 2013 it was not an ‘on demand course’, as it is today. It was a session-based course scheduled in to start in January with all students learning at more-or-less the same pace. This structure created a unique learning community, with some original learners still in contact with one another now a decade later. The next offering of this course ran in 2014. In 2016 it started to be an ‘on-demand’ course that runs continuously. The course material is still the same, with minor edits made by prof. White over the years. The benefit of the on-demand format is that more learners can access the course when they are ready to do it. However, the special bond that learners enjoyed is not the same as it was in the session-based format.
Medical Neuroscience important to a big audience
It was a great shock to prof. White to find out that such a big group of learners from all walks of life and nearly every nation took the time and effort to use the material and take the course.
Medical Neuroscience has been important to a lot of members of its learning community and continues to do so to this moment. It is a course thet continues to inspire learners from all walks of life. This includes qualified medical doctors that want to brush up on their neuroscience knowledge. It also includes young learners that have an interest in neuroscience, like Gouri, an 11 year old with the courage and determination to take Medical Neuroscience. You can meet Gouri in a recording of one of the Google Hangouts that were held in the session based editions of the course: “Hangout nr. 2 Medical Neuroscience, August 20th 2016. ” We also met there a TED talk speaker, Yoav Medan –Ultrasound surgery –healing without cuts.
It has been great fun for prof. White to meet many in live video chats, and for some, in person at Duke University and at international Neuroscience meetings.
There are a few individuals that really stood out to prof. White, some of whom became mentors.
Life events inspire some or the special learners.
In the 2013 cohort there were about 50.000 enrolled. The top 15 where invited to be teaching assistants in the next edition of the course. I (Ellen Vos-Wisse from the Netherlands) was one of them. As a teaching assistant and mentor I like to work pro-actively. On the course’s original Wiki pages I provided links to valuable resources and study tips. When the course changed to the ‘on demand’ format in 2016 the courses Wiki pages were discontinued by Coursera. I decided to start the website www.learnmedicalneuroscience.nl to continue helping learners. On the website the links to resources and the study tips can now be found.
Prof. White was thrilled by the website and regularly learners reach out to me through the contact form of the website to tell me how much the website has helped them and that they really appreciate my work.
Another special learner from the 2013 cohort is Victor Malakhov. He also did the course in 2013 and was in invited to be a teaching assistant next year. He is also a mentor in the course now. Victor has been one of the very active teaching assistants in the group.
The session editions of the course that were scheduled only once a year had a very vibrant atmosphere and a camaraderie that the on-demand sessions lack. Students interacted through the course forum continuously. Being a teaching assistant was a job that took a substantial amount of time for the three months the course ran. Victor and I were always present enthusiastically in those early years.
Victor stood out as a teaching assistant with replies to student questions based on a solid scientific evidence. You can see how he works in the article: “How to find relevant scientific literature” on the supporting website of the course. Currently Victor supports the community of caretakers of people with autism in Moscow
Special learners with a professional interest
Buqing Liang, M.D., took the course after completing his medical degree in China. He took the course while he was aiming at being admitted to a neurosurgery residency in the United States. Dr. Liang is now Chief Resident of Neurosurgery at Baylor Scott & White Health in Dallas, and he attributes some of his success at being admitted to his residency program to the online course Medical Neuroscience that he took he took before being admitted to professional medical training in the U.S.A. “He realized he wanted to become a neurosurgeon, and he did not have that idea before he took the course,”(quote from the article :” Len White on building an online community – one hashtag at a time”) .
Armstrong Mbi Obale took the online course from his home country of Cameroon. Now he is completing his master’s of science degree at the Duke Global Health Institute.
“In my country, many people don’t know about Duke University,” Obale says. “So not only did I get a lot of rich content about the subject matter, I also came to know much about the university, which prompted me to apply for the master’s degree at Duke.” (1)
Obale is hoping to put his background in epidemiology, nursing, and neuroscience to study traumatic brain injury and to improve healthcare in low-income countries like his home country.
“Medical Neuroscience taught me to believe in myself,” Obale said. “I know now that whatever you are doing, you may think you are bad, but you are just limited by the setting where you find yourself.”(1)
Course continues to inspire and stimulate
As mentioned before Medical Neurosience has inspired a lot of learners and continues to do so to this moment.
It is also important for prof. White himself: ” It has been transformative for me to participate in a global movement in education, and I am privileged to have reached, if not touched, so many people from all walks of life. To me, that’s the greatest privilege of all—to be able to share a bit of my knowledge and what I’m passionate about, with people from all ages and stages, from all corners of the world.”(1)
(1) Quotes in italic are quotes from the interviews by Isabella Kjaerulff (Communications Specialist, Duke Institute for Brain Sciences) for the article: “A Decade of Global Reach, From Len White’s Backyard”. Unless a different source is presented in the text.