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Welcome and Course Description

Welcome to Genomic and Precision Medicine, offered by the University of California, San Francisco, on Coursera.  Precision medicine has the potential to change fundamentally how health care is practiced, but requires a health care workforce that understands the complexities of this field. One important component of Precision Medicine is the use of an individual’s genomic information to offer targeted treatment, tailored to the individual.

Leading the course is Dr. Jeanette McCarthy, Visiting Associate Professor of Medicine at UCSF, and Dr. Robert L. Nussbaum, Holly Smith Professor of Medicine at UCSF.  To learn more about the faculty and the rest of the team running this course, please visit the About Us page.

Course Objectives

The course is geared toward practicing health care providers, although it should be accessible to anyone with a background in the biological sciences and a basic understanding of genetics.   Listed below are the course objectives; in other words, you should be able to perform the following activities on your own by the time the course is over.

• Detail fundamental knowledge of genomics

• Understand how to apply genomic knowledge in a clinical setting

• Evaluate the clinical validity and utility of new tests

• Appreciate the associated ethical and social issues in genomic and precision medicine

Weekly Overview

Each week, a new series of Video Lectures will be available for students to review; these lectures will total from one to two hours per week. Detailed information about each week's learning objectives, lectures, and deadlines is available on the "Weekly Information" pages, located in the left-hand navigation bar. Except where otherwise noted, each week's material is due at the end of the week it is assigned. In this course, weeks begin at 12:00pm (Pacific Time) each Monday at noon, and end at 11:59am (Pacific Time) on the following Monday.

Here is a description of each week's topic:

Suggested Readings

• Genomic Medicine: A Decade of Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities https://d396qusza40orc.cloudfront.net/genomicmedicine/McCarthy-GenomicMedicineADecade.pdf
• The New Genetics http://publications.nigms.nih.gov/thenewgenetics/index.html

There is no required reading in this class; however, there are two readings that we strongly recommend depending on your familiarity with genetics.

Unless you are already highly knowledgeable, we strongly recommend that you read Genomic Medicine: A Decade of Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities, a review of recent discoveries and obstacles in genomic medicine research, as well as a look into the journeys that lie ahead.

McCarthy, J.J., McLeod, L.L., & Ginsburg, G.S. (2013). Genomic Medicine: A Decade of Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities. Science Translational Medicine, 5(189), 1-17.

If you are feeling a little bit rusty or inexperienced with genetics, we also strongly recommend you read The New Genetics, "a science education booklet [that] explains the role of genes in health and disease, the basics of DNA and its molecular cousin RNA, and new directions in genetic research."

National Institute of General Medical Sciences. (2010). The New Genetics. Bethesda, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Grading and Assignments

Grading 
The overall passing grade for the course is 70%. To earn a passing grade, students must complete weekly quizzes, peer-reviewed writing assignments, and evaluations of their classmates’ writing assignments. Students are not required to complete quizzes and writing assignments to participate in the course, but cannot earn a passing grade nor a course credential unless the majority of quizzes and assignments are completed.

Quizzes & Short-Answer Assignments  
For most weeks, students will complete a combination of a multiple choice quiz and/or a short-answer peer assessment assignment about the week's material. Although multiple attempts are provided for the quizzes, correct answers and scores are not revealed until each quiz has closed.  The short-answer peer assessment assignments will only have a few questions each and will have very direct answers.

Homework Assignment
Students will be asked to complete one homework peer assessment assignment in Week 6. Detailed information on each of the assignment will be available in the Week 6 weekly information page when Week 6 begins. For all peer assessment assignments, please note that completing peer review of the assignments is a required part of your grade on each peer-reviewed writing assignment; if you do not complete the peer review of your classmates' work, your own grade on the assignment will be marked down 20% as a penalty.  Additionally, please do not use a mobile device when evaluating your peers' submissions as you may experience errors.

Deadlines
The deadlines on all quizzes, exams, and assignments are hard deadlines; thus, work submitted beyond the deadline will not count for a grade.  Please be sure to give yourself enough time to complete work well before the deadline to account for any technical or unforeseen issues you may encounter.  Additionally, you may also want to consider setting your timezone on your Coursera account to your timezone.  More information on how to change your account timezone can be found here.

Breakdown
Here is a chart that displays the grading for each assignment and the class as a whole.

Assessment Type	Weeks Assigned	Percentage of Overall Grade
Quizzes & Short-Answer Peer Assessments	1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7	14% each week (84% total)
Week 6 Quiz	6	16%
Total		100%

Note: In-video quizzes are ungraded and exist purely for your own personal knowledge gain.

Technical Requirements

To successfully access all course materials (video lectures, quizzes, and peer assessments), students must use a web browser supported by Coursera; newer versions of Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome, and Firefox are all supported. Coursera provides detailed information about supported versions of these four browsers (https://learner.coursera.help/hc/en-us/articles/201522945-Recommended-Browsers-and-Devices). Please note that mobile devices (iOS, Android, etc.) are not fully supported by Coursera at this time — although you may be able to access some course materials with a mobile device, these are generally not compatible with all course features (particularly Peer Assessments).

If you have difficulties playing back video lectures, click the link at the top of the Video Lectures page (https://class.coursera.org/genomicmedicine-002/lecture/index) which reads "Having trouble viewing lectures? Try changing players."  If this does not resolve your issues, try switching to a different supported web browser (even if the browser and version you currently use appears on Coursera's list of supported software).

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