I work in Scientific Research field, were I use this knowledge every day and I know all the given information, just need a course certificate.

So my experience:

This course is truly well organized, it is full of information and has everything you should know about the topic. I loved funny examples, which are used continuously through the course and help to understand material very well.

However, I had an unpleasant experience with assignments (so it is not a problem to receive knowledge, but problem to receive a certificate). The first problem is time. Assignments are extreme time consuming. They basically consist of scientific articles peer reviews. For example, it said, that you should spend 2 hours on this task. However, to review 1 article you need to read it at least 2 times, then think, then take notes, then read again. And if you don`t know all the material and criteria – you need to go and watch or read lecture material again and then read the article one more time. I knew all the review criteria, I do it on my work, so I did not need to read lecture material more than 1 time, but I spent about 10 hours to complete 1 assignment (and you need to do 6 of them).

Next problem with assignments – I found my work (my assignment) to be stolen for 2 times!!!! It is a very hard and time-consuming work and I was terrified to find my work copy pasted by other student! This is a nightmare for a person, who worked so hard! So now I also need to worry about receiving bad grades from students, who will find 2 similar works.

And this article review is a very hard task if you don`t have any experience, so I found other students like 70% failing this task. This is not like me judging too strictly - students just can not fulfil all the requirements. Like they write only 2 points instead of 10. Maybe this is the cause why they still my work?

About peer reviewing – this is not my first course on Coursera and I know, that 5 peer reviews to complete the assignment is a lot (usually 3 is enough). The course is not very popular so I am already waiting about month to be able to review 5 assignments from other students. When I go in to review I receive the note – sorry, no works available right now. I am not sure if I will finish this course with such course organization ☹.

So I am not really happy with the course assignments and not sure if I will be able to receive the certificate, but I would recommend it to person, who seeks for knowledge not for certificate.

AND the last assignment is simply horror! I see it for a first time in my experience on Coursera!! You have only 1 attempt in a MONTH! and 30 difficult questions about actual research. If you don`t pass it - you can retake it only after a month, basically, when you have forgotten the half of material! And bonus - you will not see your mistakes as you usually do on Coursera so no cheating and coping your answers is possible.

The quality of the course is great. No objections. But the structure of it made the experience a bit awful for me. I have a job, sometimes I have to travel and I did this course on my free time in order to keep improving and developing my career. So I studied and took the exams gladly. But the surprise came when I realized there were weekly assignments... which had to be corrected by other students every single week. This made the course very unpleasant, because every single week I had to do this assignments and if I were to miss one of it (because I was abroad), then there was no way to pass this course anymore... on that period. I had to change the dates again... and pay more because I took more time to do it. I do not understand this practice, but it makes the experience very enslaving and kills the perks of the MOOC. This is not what MOOCs are for. Otherwise I would go to a university and do the course there. Of course, my mistake was not to confirm it before. And I decided to give it a try nonetheless. But the final result is very negative. So despite the quality of the course, the exams (I enjoyed them! They are very practical) and the superb English of the teacher, I had to rate this course badly. Because every single time I had to do the homework it was a constant struggle to keep on doing it and I was really close to quit it. Because I insist, I did not enjoy it because of its structure and particularly because of the damn weekly assignments that had to be corrected by the students every single week. This is why, unfortunately, I will rate it this way: 2/5. I shall give a try to the next course, but if it is as tedious as this one (exams + weekly assignment every week), then I will quit both the course and the specialization... and I will recommend my friends and colleagues to NOT do this specialization. My apologies and hope you solve this problem in the future.

The course content is fine, it provides you a basic outline of all topics you need to know for a basis in quantative data. However, I believe the course should be updated as the assignments have given students problems for several years now, they do not match the course content. Any comments about this in the discussion section have been left unanswered for 2-3 years.. It's sad that there is no one you can reach out to when you are having trouble with the assignments, but yet you still pay for it.

The course is great and I've learned a lot. I don't rate 5 stars because in my opinion the assignements are really too too difficult, too demanding, it's too hard to assess the quality of published studies and researches without a class debate, some guidances and hints from teachers and/or a way to directly contact teachers or mentors. In this MOOC system we are too alone to properly deal with the kind of assignements we find in the course. Besides, time of dedication is brutally understimated, it takes a lot more time than the announced 4-5 hourse per week. So, it's very (and in some sense unnecesarrily) hard stuff, but the content is great, course design is great, the teacher is great. Congratulations!!

It is well-structured and informative. The pop up questions are interactive and the animation is fun. I have learned a lot from the video instruction, recommended readings, and assignments. Thanks.

This course is really amazing. Instructor addressed all the topics with easy example which helped me to understand the topic easily. I am really satisfied. Thanks to the Quantitative Method Team!

This course is not well managed with lots of waste of time waiting for other peopel to rate your assignment.

Outstanding course. Very useful for me. Very relevant to my job too. Thank you very much.

With regards,

Kaushik Ray

VP-HRD

Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Limited,

Hyderabad, India.

This Course is not really free. You must pay to access quizzes and peer graded assignments.

Coursera is really moving downhill quickly in terms of free course offerings. It's such a pity.

This course is well taught, easy to follow and very interesting. I recommend this course for anyone who wants to gain a better understanding of research methods and critically reading research.

positive points: explanations in videos are often clear and comprehensible; video illustrations are fairly useful; the quizzes to test knowledge and comprehension of the concepts of the week are accurate enough (but only test 'passive' comprehension of the concepts).

negative points: explanations are extremely concise and often too short to be clearly understandable and effective; assignments are especially time- and effort-consuming and are not particularly useful in the perpective of passing the final test; the peer-assigned grades are neither reviewed nor moderated by course managers (so even if they happen to be rather questionable at times, they cannot be discussed nor changed); in the practice tests as well as in the final test some questions dealt with statistics concepts that were not featured in the course; the feedback in videos for the second practice test featured different response options for one question and an entirely different question from the adminitered test.

Couldn´t finish it because assigmnets were not graded.

When you are late in delivery, they tell you "everything is fine, do not worry, you have until the last week of the course to complete the activity, get your note and end of the course." They'll repeat over and over again in every week. My course ended on May 15, but they have not let me present my last activity, May 3 even before the final exam. They have forced me to leave the current session, still unfinished deadlines, missing a single activity after two months of work, and enroll again in the next session, which still nor has begun, delaying all the planning I had made for the entire course and all terms of the following courses.

In short, disastrous system to keep deadlines and complete the courses that make it totally useless any planning you have to do to set the course for the months that suit you, which, in my case at least, may at risk which I can complete the full specialization before the deadline. Money thrown away.

Abstract when the assignment is related to psychology. Could you give us some not that professional articles?

The whole course is not designed in a clear and logic way. Overwhelmed with so many terms without clear explanations.

This is one of the best courses I have taken on Coursera (or even in traditional university) in terms of its comprehensiveness and the high demand it places on students. By the end of it, I really felt that I had gained a lot of valuable knowledge. The explanations are simple and easy to follow, and cover the topics in quite a lot of depth. That was very important to me. The assignments are demanding and challenging, but doable, and it is nice that analytic and creative essays are combined so as to not put too much strain on students. The creative assignments are more fun and light weight, while the analytical assignments provide an opportunity to revise the materials more carefully and delve into the core of the topics. I can't wait to take qualitative methods in my next university break. Well done to all of you on the UoA Coursera team. Thank you!

Es un excelente curso, además Coursera me propició el apoyo financiero dos veces. Me ha ayudado mucho y tengo muchas ganas de continuar con la especialización. La docente fue excelente y el contenido estuvo muy bien organizado.

Useful and helpful course that is taught very well through the online lecture videos. However, think it needs to improve its help and guidance for students. I tried to get hold of the lecture organiser when the objective of the assignment was not clear and there was no-one that I could directly contact to ask a question and I was told on the live chat that my only option was to post my query on the forum - which nobody replied to. I think support should be more readily available from lectures rather than relying on other peers all the time who are sometimes just as confused.

I had taken 99% of the course last time, but didn't have time to do the assignments or complete it fully. I was pleased to see it was running again.

I've followed many many many Courseras and this is by far the highest quality. Well done!

What you did right?

Illustrations. They perfectly capture the concept without distracting. They are amusing and just-the-right-degree-of-imperfect, which makes the course material feel approachable.The graphic design. The slightly messy, hand-written, crumpled paper background design is perfect. Not pretentious, not overly boring. Just that little touch of individualism and authenticity we need. This is a great way to avoid alienating your students, to keep a connection.

Philosophy of science, history of science, research designs, etc. Despite having studied for a BSc, an MSc, and a scientific postgrad, I had to find out about these concepts through on-line courses and podcasts. I was really happy to see these neatly presented to me in a structured way in one spot in the context of a formal

Research methods course. When covering these sections, you also did a great job at sticking to the important stuff. I am extremely impressed. In the reality of research, we get sucked in by the nitty gritty and forget about the big picture. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful framework behind the scientific method.You actually bothered spell-checking the transcript, particularly for proper names. I've had Courseras where the transcript seemed more like a onomatopeas than serious text.

This is all I remember for now, all that's fresh off my mind, as am just up to week 2 right now, but I wanted to give you all a thumbs up for this great course you've wrapped up. I am seriously considering registering for the entire specialisation because of the quality of this course.

Despite holding a PhD in social sciences (ethnography), Quantitative Methods proved to be a great refresher course. Often while trying to learn Quant. Methods, the examples offered in many textbooks are off putting. But the course mentor/instructor Dr. Annemarie Zand Scholten provided examples that were very lively and easily comprehensible for social scientists. Yet, at no point the mentor diluted the essence of the concepts discussed and also ensured that there was further reading material available. The BONUS interviews at the end of each module too were very relatable. I would continue to watch these videos whenever I need some clarity of thought regarding quantitative methods. By the end of the course, I feel confident that I would be able to appreciate quantitative research literature in a much better manner.

I like this course so much! I am a law student and I think it is not enough for law student to only learn social science through reading laws, textbooks and writting essays. I think law students should learn how to conduct researches themselves and review researches of others. It is important because in that way, we have more possibilities to come up with more reliable hypothesises and hopefully improve the legal system (e.g., prevent crime). Really thank Pro. Annemarie Zand Scholten and UvA. The animations and transcripts of the course are just amazing.

我太喜欢这门课了！我是一个法学生，我觉得想要真正学好法律这门社会科学，仅仅是读法条、看课本、写论文，是不够的。我觉得，法学生还要学习如何自己进行（社会）研究，同时学会如何检验他人的研究。这挺重要的，因为通过这种方式，我们才能可能提出更可靠的假说，去改善我们的法律制度（例如，预防犯罪）。 非常感谢Annemarie Zand Scholten教授和阿姆斯特丹大学。这门课的动画和逐字稿真的做得非常棒。墙裂安利。

Excellent course! Very well structured combining different supports of learning! very effective!

The videos are clear with useful examples and chunked into digestible parts making the course look much easier than it is.

Critical reviews are an excellent way to use the knowledge concretely.

Also, the quiz questions during the videos are a very good way to make learning interactive.

Overall excellent course that I highly recommend! (maybe having the essays corrected by an expert (rather than peers) could help have more detailed feedback. However, reviewing others' essays provide valuable insights too).

I found the course to be very educational and rigorous. You really needed to study and interact with the materials. I felt like it delivered a really solid foundation to understanding quantitative methods. Thanks to the builders of this course!

This course was excellent in all aspects, including the interesting and extensive material, as well as Dr. Annemarie Zand Scholten's brilliant lectures that help students digest and enjoy the content.

Best course ever! Both didactically and conceptually. No redundant information, very good examples, practical tasks do make sense and scripts are provided as well. Thank you a lot for this course!

I am so pleased that I found this course and finished it. The instructor is competent and motivated. Her presentations are fluent, organized and methodical. Excellent sound quality and video processing. I really like the quizes. They were not simple, the questions require to think carefully and synthetically. I especially recommend to listen to bonus materials (interviews), they are a welcome contribution to the subject that has been presented. Forum was not of much help: peers are not eager to post or comment. Even though it is said that course requires around 4-6 work hours per week, if you are more thorough in studying (consulting related Wikipedia articles, browsing through forums, reading supplement papers), it would take you twice as much. The assignments were also interesting. All in all, I highly recommend this course.