I am a recently admitted MD student from a nontraditional background, and I wanted to share my experiences with online coursework (specifically biochemistry) because I don't want future students to have to go through the same ordeal that I did. I graduated from a regular brick-and-mortar 4-year university a few years ago and realized that I needed to take biochemistry before matriculation to my #1 school of choice. However, no brick-and-mortar biochem course was available in my area, so I settled on taking an online course (for the very first time). After some initial research, I went with UC Berkeley Online Extension, with Nidhi Ahuja as my 'instructor,' due to the flexible timeline and name-recognition of Berkeley.
This was a major mistake, and one that cost me almost a thousand dollars. I assumed (though I shouldn't have) that the course consisted of lectures and reading with a midterm and final exams, in addition to regular assignments. In reality, the course consists only of reading the textbook (not included in tuition cost), busy-work 'homework' assignments, and two vaguely worded exams. There are no lectures whatsoever, or any real source of information other than the book (with which you'll become very familiar, given that the homework is most often to paraphrase the entire reading selection, which sometimes took me 10-15 pages single-spaced). The exams are hastily written, and they are graded in such a way that you'll lose points over semantic issues even if you give a correct answer. Also, there is no review material for the exams, even though you're accountable for ~200 pages of text. The one midterm is taken at-home and is unproctored.
Obviously, I can't speak for every instructor, but I can only hope that mine was the exception and not the rule. Dr. Ahuja responded to maybe one out of three or four messages, and was generally absent from the course other than to grade. When she would respond, I found her to be condescending and unhelpful, offering 1-sentence responses to page-long emails from me. She stopped responding to me altogether in the latter half of the course, probably in some connection to what came next.
After I took the exam and received my (very low) grade, I wrote to her to ask for a regrade on a question where I had misunderstood the format but had answered correctly. I lost 20% of my midterm score on this question alone, and it had wrecked my grade in the class. She responded by accusing me of cheating based on similarity of my answers to the textbook (of course, I didn't cheat--the textbook was all I had to study from), without actually responding to my issue with the exam question. I couldn't prove my innocence because the exam is unproctored and, furthermore, I would have hoped to get a better grade than a D if I had actually cheated. Next, she tried to force me to sign a form confessing to cheating, which I naturally refused. I took the issue to the administrators and eventually the dean of UCB Extension, and they were all totally apathetic and unhelpful. Ultimately, I was forced to withdraw, losing my tuition payment of $850 in the process.
It's hard for me not to see this as a kind of scam, especially since I spoke to other students in the course before I left who had had similar experiences. It felt like the institution was just waiting for an opportunity to kick me out after I complained, rather than actually deal with the issue. It seems like they're aware of these institutional issues but allow them to persist. Meanwhile, students can't organize to ask for better treatment, because they lose access to the forums when they're pressured to withdraw. They wouldn't even allow me to submit a formal complaint, so I'm putting it on SDN to hopefully deter at least a few other prospective med students.
My experience may not be universal, but I've seen enough to know that 1) UCB Extension is relying on Berkeley's name recognition to get away with very poor academic conduct and 2) it's very difficult to learn biochemistry from reading a textbook alone. If you're in need of a biochemistry course, and you have to take it online, save yourself the time, money, and energy and don't take this one.
This was a major mistake, and one that cost me almost a thousand dollars. I assumed (though I shouldn't have) that the course consisted of lectures and reading with a midterm and final exams, in addition to regular assignments. In reality, the course consists only of reading the textbook (not included in tuition cost), busy-work 'homework' assignments, and two vaguely worded exams. There are no lectures whatsoever, or any real source of information other than the book (with which you'll become very familiar, given that the homework is most often to paraphrase the entire reading selection, which sometimes took me 10-15 pages single-spaced). The exams are hastily written, and they are graded in such a way that you'll lose points over semantic issues even if you give a correct answer. Also, there is no review material for the exams, even though you're accountable for ~200 pages of text. The one midterm is taken at-home and is unproctored.
Obviously, I can't speak for every instructor, but I can only hope that mine was the exception and not the rule. Dr. Ahuja responded to maybe one out of three or four messages, and was generally absent from the course other than to grade. When she would respond, I found her to be condescending and unhelpful, offering 1-sentence responses to page-long emails from me. She stopped responding to me altogether in the latter half of the course, probably in some connection to what came next.
After I took the exam and received my (very low) grade, I wrote to her to ask for a regrade on a question where I had misunderstood the format but had answered correctly. I lost 20% of my midterm score on this question alone, and it had wrecked my grade in the class. She responded by accusing me of cheating based on similarity of my answers to the textbook (of course, I didn't cheat--the textbook was all I had to study from), without actually responding to my issue with the exam question. I couldn't prove my innocence because the exam is unproctored and, furthermore, I would have hoped to get a better grade than a D if I had actually cheated. Next, she tried to force me to sign a form confessing to cheating, which I naturally refused. I took the issue to the administrators and eventually the dean of UCB Extension, and they were all totally apathetic and unhelpful. Ultimately, I was forced to withdraw, losing my tuition payment of $850 in the process.
It's hard for me not to see this as a kind of scam, especially since I spoke to other students in the course before I left who had had similar experiences. It felt like the institution was just waiting for an opportunity to kick me out after I complained, rather than actually deal with the issue. It seems like they're aware of these institutional issues but allow them to persist. Meanwhile, students can't organize to ask for better treatment, because they lose access to the forums when they're pressured to withdraw. They wouldn't even allow me to submit a formal complaint, so I'm putting it on SDN to hopefully deter at least a few other prospective med students.
My experience may not be universal, but I've seen enough to know that 1) UCB Extension is relying on Berkeley's name recognition to get away with very poor academic conduct and 2) it's very difficult to learn biochemistry from reading a textbook alone. If you're in need of a biochemistry course, and you have to take it online, save yourself the time, money, and energy and don't take this one.
