I took Introduction to Organic Chemistry part 1 on Coursera. (And passed it.) It was the worst executed Coursera class I have taken. The lectures contained onl

I took Introduction to Organic Chemistry part 1 on Coursera. (And passed it.) It was the worst executed Coursera class I have taken. The lectures contained only the bare bones of the theory and almost no examples, and there was lots of difficult homework (of the sort the NYT article describes). Even if they would want us to have no theoretical foundation, and just generalize from examples (like the NYT article suggests), they should have told us that that is the M.O. of the course, and then actually give us a large number of examples to stare at. Of course intro level organic chemistry is no secret knowledge, and there are good textbooks, but what's the point of an online course (or real university course lectures), if just reading a proper textbook would be more beneficial. Any subject can be transformed into a difficult course by teaching too little theory, and then giving too advanced homework.