This format of course is new for me. I've never had a course that's as flexible and "pick-up-as-you-go" as what this online course is offering. Pausing when you want, picking it back up when you feel more involved in learning, and the discussion board seem like great tools to help me learn the material better. Using discussion boards instead of talking in person also helps people make sure their thoughts are fully formed before posting them. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to future discussions on Scholar.

One thing I was skeptical about is the lecture. I'm really used to watching a lecturer and focusing on them as they speak helps me retain information. I'm hoping future lectures have more of a video component to help me follow along, but pure audio is still fine in the end too.

Regardless of me wishing the lecture had video, I found this first lecture to be quite interesting anyway. I never really thought about all the components that go into forming a good global health solution. The lecture also helped clarify certain statistics that I often hear about and how those stats are gathered.

The first week's discussion topic was great, too. Taking the standard communicable disease and trying to argue whether something that isn't a standard disease helps raise a great discussion on communicability and whether our world has more epidemics in it than we care to admit.