The course made me work. Very Real

This was nice but basic

excellent course

The instructor did a good job of explaining Amazon's approach to product management and sharing the tools and the rigorous process Amazon uses to evaluate new business opportunities. I came away with the information I hoped to get out of the course, including a rigorous framework with which to evaluate product opportunities.

With that said, the instruction left a lot to be desired. I'll highlight two areas that could be improved, although there are more. First is the instruction format. Most of the instruction is verbal, meaning that there are few visuals. The instructor is a talking head, reading from a script. It's difficult to process that much verbal information and remain focused on the content.

Second is the lack of context. The instructor is not good at setting context or explaining concepts at a high level before diving into details and using lots of jargon. What's the goal of what we're learning? Why are we doing it in the first place? For those who don't know the jargon, stop and explain it. And for those whose first language is not English, slow down.

For example, for the TAM/SAM/SOM exercise , the instructor gave a very short definition of each one without explaining why they're important. When it came time to explain our homework, she read from a template she'd put together of TAM/SAM/SOM calculations, including some assumptions that weren't even well defined in the analysis - she didn't say why she was using these numbers or how she'd arrived at them. When I went to grade other students' answers it was clear many did not fully understand the exercise. They were copying her template and changing the numbers without understanding the goal.

The course was worthwhile for me, but I definitely left frustrated by the format and the teaching.

I really enjoyed the material of this course as well as the walkthroughs of the various exercises prior to completing them. I also appreciated the templates to help streamline the tedious work of the exercises so I could focus more on the important/"meaty" content of the exercises. The reason I give 3 stars is because of the quizzes. The question and answer options consistently did not match up. For example, a question/answer would be set up in a checkbox style and say something like "select all that apply." I'd select the one answer that I felt was right; however, I felt forced to select another answer because the question said "Select all that apply." Then, I'd get the question wrong and it would say "I didn't select all the right answers"; however, I knew that there was truly only 1 right answer, but the "select all that apply" threw me off. Because of the quiz feedback of "I didn't select all the right answers," I thought, "OK, there has to be at least two answers then. I just selected the wrong one." Then, I'd retake the quiz and that question/answer was now multiple-choice style, which only required the 1 right answer I wanted to choose all along. Why didn't it do that in the first place? And why did it say I didn't select ALL the right answers when truly there was only ONE right answer? There were quite a few of these question/answer styles and it really hindered my ability to enjoy the class because that frustration overtook the enjoyment I received from the course exercises. Please consider working on this issue with the quizzes. It takes away from learning and just aids in frustration overall.

I have very mixed feelings after completing this course. It’s not the first course I take on Coursera and I can tell you it feels like it’s less done professionally. I had a feeling that it was MVP that was not improved over years. 

Let me be more detailed

Speakers - there was only one speaker during the course except for the guests (but guests don’t really have a lecture). Usually, there are multiple people with expertise from different areas. 

I personally didn’t like the tests because first of all, I found the introduction too short. I couldn’t get some questions, like we didn’t discuss it and therefore I lost any motivation to do them properly. Also, it was very American-centred. I had to google some brands because here in Europe we don’t have them which took additional time. I would prefer to have examples with well know brands everywhere, not only in the US.

Peer review is great but I never received a detailed feedback… I understand people don’t want to spend time but it’s disappointing. At the end instead of writing feedback I just texted «nicely done» because I didn’t see a reason why I should invest my time in it. 

Overall I have a feeling like I was taught some different tools and frameworks but I’m not closer to being PM as I was before the course. It felt like learning this, that and that but not taking it as whole. 

The material presented is good and I found it to be great at building those Product Management fundamentals.

Areas that could be improved though:

1. Presentation material could be better aligned with Adult Learning methodologies in mind. Example, better slides and handouts for more visual learners. The section on TAM, SAM and SOM would have been better if the slides not only showed the circles, but also called out the definition, how it is calculated etc.

2. Less focus on split screen and more focus on the material presented. There were times it was hard to see the demo materials because it was so small on the screen due to split screen. For example the section on Competitive Analysis, the spreadsheet was really small on the screen and it made it difficult to follow along.

3. Many times there are assumptions made that learns know companies listed or discussed. Not all learners come from the SFO area or even the tech space. If you are going to use a company in a quiz question, make sure the learner knows what the company is first.

The content was good. It is a good start to the subject.

There were a couple of times I tried to flag concerns and I did not hear anything back. That made me feel like I wouldn't know what to do if I really had a big problem. I don't know if I missed it or what but it would be better if you could be directly assigned to talk to someone even by text. Sometimes the UX of coursera was not clear. One time I wasn't sure if I should take the quiz because it was very early and there were all these videos that came after. So, I watched all the videos first and went back and did the quiz. This order just seemed odd. Plus, I found the big count down timer beside each quiz question very distracting. Why not just have one count down at the top of the page for the whole quiz?

The information is generally good, but the quizzes really need to be rewritten by someone with educational experience. The questions are all trick questions. Often, the quizzes are testing on information not provided in the course material. The only way to find out the correct answer is to keep taking the quiz to see what answer is desired. Some questions are broken. Some of the explanations for wrong answers are nonsensical. Some of the homework assignments do not contain generalized instructions on how to go out finding the requested information. One live example is given and that's all. Many times the Your Submission page is talking about the review of other people's work rather than instructions for submitting your own. Better educational pedagogy is needed.

The content of the course is really good. The exercises required are so valuable to applying the knowledge learned and it will be great to reference these in the future. The major problem I had with this course is the quizzes. 30%+ of the material in the quizzes was never covered in the lessons. Additionally, many questions had errors (I literally received an incorrect response that said there was an error in obtaining the answer, so I lost that point). There was a question that said pick 2 answers but then I kept failing the question after being told 2 of the 3 answers were wrong. The quizzes were so frustrating & hard to pass (not from lack of understanding but rather poor construction) that I almost decided to find a different PM course.

I love the course content, its very well laid out but the execution of it on coursera is a bit of a let down. Having taken other courses on coursera like Google project management, I see how well the whole Assignments and peer grading system can be set up, that is the most frustruating part about this course. I also want to add that throughout the course the expectation is I need to review peer submissions to complete the course but there's no other submissions in 4 days.

I can see how this course can actually help, it's helped me get back into the product manager mindset, I really hope the course content on coursera is streamlined and structured better so more individuals can take it and be benefited.

The course was decent. The topics covered were comprehensive. The only suggestion I would like to give to the instructor is to be more interactive and conversational with the audience of this course. After working through this course, I felt more like that the instructor was reading the scripted material throughout all the videos and not adding any additional thoughts or ideas from her side. While the breadth of product case studies / interviews covered were truly great, but the way of presentation was not up to the mark, is my opinion.

Thank you for taking us through this course. Let's keep learning :)

I enjoy the basic principles of product being explained and supported by insightful interview of some people.

the thing i less enjoy is related to many references is taken from american startup/product. Because I come from Indonesia, and the ecosystem in Asia, especially South East Asia is very different here, especially the problem we are facing about the user is mostly about lack of digital literacy. Meanwhile in the West country, mostly of the user is have good digital literacy.

The good thing was that it was practical and we needed to submit assignments, also the examples were provided. Sometimes these examples did not look professional enough, especially for a corporate. What I didn't like, was the fact that Nancy read on the screen what she is going to say. It would be more authentic and interesting if you just speak as you speak, without written script. It is just feedback what to improve next time.

Content is decent

Quiz questions are misleading/unclear and as seens in other comments, lead to mistakes.

Would be way nicer if Nancy would stop reading off her screen & simply talk to us/tell a story. But this could be due to stress therefore don't want to hold it against her. I will continue with the certification because it is included in PLUS but I wouldn't recommend it to a friend.

Pros: new, necessary and interesting knowledge.

Cons: information is very poorly structured, tests are very unevenly distributed (there are no tests at all in the first week, and five at once in the second), a lot of unnecessary and side from the “I like to talk” series. I got the knowledge - thanks, but I will not take the continuation.

This course was a really great starting point for a new PM. However, it focused entirely too much on business and marketing tactics and concepts rather than the skills and knowledge a PM must use in their role. I would like to see more practical applications of these concepts in a future course.

Having no business background this course was interesting and I learned a lot about product management. There was a good amount of information and vocabulary that I had to look up though. I would have preferred to take a general business class before taking this one.

A bit too basic if you're not completely new to PM/ have a business background. I agree with the other reviews of 1 and 2 starts in terms of the content delivery, but overall it is an ok course to revise somes concepts.

Good course in terms of topics & graded assignments. Although it lacked few resources like summary/notes of a number of videos (especially where a new topic is introduced) which could have been helpful to refer to.

This way a pretty good high level overview of some of the key principles of Product Management. My favorite part was doing the Competitive Analysis because I feel like I really benefited a lot from that.

1. Good overview about what PM is about

2. See One, Do One is not enough. I wish instructor can also make personal feedback on the assignments submitted and not just let peers do the evaluation.

Achei um curso um pouco superficial no sentido de que tudo era superficialmente explicado e depois você já tinha que fazer uma atividade um pouco mais complicada do que o que foi ensinado.

You can enjoy but it can be very stressful as it can get confusing at times. I hate the fact that it doesn't give you a certificate upon completion even though I paid.

The course can be more structured with better visuals and better delivery. Use more graphics during videos.