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Week one and two were not bad, one complaint I have with week one on two were the overwhelming amount of tools mentioned in the videos which are quizzed on. It feels more like being tested on memory. I don't think my memory is bad or anything, but I just feel like it is irrelevant, but I do understand why they're mentioned in the videos, it's just the quizzes. Other than that, week one and two were not bad.

As for week 3, wow. Week 3 was convoluted. Major problem I had with week three is that the videos are outdated. I do think Watson Studio is a great resource to use, especially if you want to work for IBM, but it was confusing to figuring out how to sign up for IBM cloud for free unless you looked at the forums beforehand. There should be a disclaimer or something to give learners a heads up to read the forums before doing anything; however I don't know if you can do that currently on Coursera, would not fault the staffs or moderators if it isn't possible to do on the platform. I've seen some learners stressed regarding to signing up and using IBM Cloud. Not only signing up on IBM Cloud was an issue, it was also the interface change that is confusing to navigate for me and others. Other than that I've got everything out of the way and managed to complete week 3 and this course without being stressed out over these problems.

Anyways, continuing on the next courses and acquire the goal to get the certificate despite the problems I had with this course.

TLDR: Modules 1, 2 and 3 are terrible. 4, 5 and 6 are great. 7 is OK. This course is a bit of a mixed bag. The first three modules are basically laundry lists of different tools, libraries etc. They are introduced without much context and often using terminology that has not previously introduced either in this course or the preceding one. These modules could basically have been converted largely into a series of glossaries or reference resources. Modules 4, 5 and 6 are pretty good though, getting you hands-on with the (very) basics of Jupyter Notebooks, Python and R. The Final Assignment has you creating a simple Jupyter Notebook with some markdown and simple code cells, then sharing on GitHub. This is great. The optional module 7 is kind of a quick start guide for IBM Watson Studio and includes getting a code that means you can use the free tier of this service without entering a credit card. This is a pretty good benefit, giving access to a data science toolkit that I suspect will also be used in future courses in the series

The basic content was helpful, especially for a beginner. However, it is imperative that the videos be updated to match the current version of Watson. They now show a defunct DSX environment that is very different from the Watson environment being used. One of the videos that the course analytics labeled in a "helping" pop-up comment "Was the most visited and considered important by learners" was the confusing outdated one...no doubt this was the actual reason learners played it over and over trying to make sense of it, not because it was especially valuable for learning. Another suggestion: many of the videos or reading material used a lot of jargon and DS terms as if they assumed that learners already knew these terms. It would be helpful to have an online glossary for each course with short definitions of the terms that are thrown around casually in the early videos, and sometimes defined later in the course (or maybe will be in later courses in the certificate), but that many learners are not familiar with at this point.

The actual course content was fine, but the link they used for accessing the software rarely if ever worked. It continuously showed essential software required for the course as "coming soon". Literally hundreds of students were reporting this problem in the discussion forums, but the only instructor feedback was "clear your cache and try again". Which was a not only a solution that had no bearing on the server side cloud environment features, but in many instances made the situation worse.

My only feedback is to PLEASE PLEASE make sure the software environment is working, and to PLEASE take student comments that they cannot access the environment seriously and propose real solutions. In the event that the environment is simply not usable, please suggest other methods of working through the material- IE, how to install Jupyter and Zeppelin on our local workstations.

This course was helpful, but was too reliant on IBM tools. I realize this is an IBM course, but lots of students were unable to create a Watson account, including myself. Because of that, it was difficult to do any labs or assignments involving Watson. I requested help from the tech support e-mail and never got any help. From incomplete instructions, I had to figure out how to do my final assignment in Jupyter notebooks in Anaconda and submit through Git Hub. It took lots of extra time and I was worried I didn't do something correctly with Ananconda and Git Hub and wouldn't finish the course on time. Also, too many tools were presented in this course. Although it's helpful to know of the existence of these tools, simply describing the most common ones and letting us do a Google search to learn about others would have sufficed.

It was a pretty great course. I have learnt a lot about data science tools. However, the pacing is a little bit too fast. I feel like I am in rush, so many things to absorb for a small course. It would be better if you guys extend the course a bit longer with in depth explanation about the tools with practical labs and exercies instead of breifly explaining things within a video. Another reason i gave this a 3 stars was due to some out of date instructions & screenshots in lab exercies, especially in week 3, IBM watson studio exercies. The instructions are not clear and screenshots do not match with the current version of the studio. It took me a while to understand what the instructions want me to do. Other than that it was a great course. Hope you read my review and improve the course in future. Best of Luck....

This course is "information overload". Personally I think that the structure can do with some tweaking. The reason for this is because the information lacks context.

Week 1 and 2 were a bit daunting, but if you stick with it it does get better.

It would help if there was a resources tab with summaries of the content discussed in the videos. Also, when introducing the programming languages, they should say whether these languages are required. I spent a lot of time downloading, installing, and trying to load the required libraries to do the assignments. It was only later that I discovered that it is not necessary, and it is far quicker and more reliable to do these assignments in the free resources provided.

Overall, not as bad as the other students make out in the comments, reviews and discussions.

The course is not bad at all, on the contrary, it is very rich in information. However, a lot of the IBM additional Tools were presented very briefly, with no practical examples / labs, so I believe all that info will be forgotten very fast. The quizzes are often about memorization, while they could be more about understanding the principles behind what we're learning. For instance, a few pieces of code to be interpreted could be given, instead of the same old generic knowledge. Course is a bit too heavy on the theoretical side, but manageable nonetheless. Adding a few additional practical labs could make it more balanced.

Also, the interface has changed compared to the videos, so I used a lot the forum to help me find a workaround. I am very thankful and happy with the responsiveness on the forum.