The course does not teach concepts. it just gives information on command line tool options (reading from the man pages of the programs) and file formats.

Very good course. Easy to follow and loads of useful skills and info.

It starts with some guidance on general Unix navigation and then teaches the format and tools for a range of different types of genomic data. Finally it teaches you to use tools for alignment and transcriptomics. It packs a lot in but plenty of demos and there's a chat board where you can ask questions.

I already had some experience with command line tools before doing this course but found I learned loads. If you don't have any experience with Unix or with bioinformatics tools I think you will find the course doable and you will learn a lot of very useful skills but it will take you a bit longer. I don't think you need to take the earlier courses to find this one useful. (I didn't.)

For me it was also useful to improve the organisation of my work when I'm doing data handling.

The online setup is good - it comes with pre set target dates for when to complete each module but you can reset them / push them back if needed. The videos have written transcripts underneath, these are mostly good but are made automatically so they occasionally mis hear more technical vocabulary. You can take the tests as many times as you want but only 3x every 8 hours.

The course content is very solid. It focuses heavily on the tools and technique, and there lacks the concepts and biology behind those tools. But I would guess there is some prior courses in this specialization explaining the concepts, though I didn't take them.

The tools explained in this course is the most popular ones for handling up-stream analysis. They are the must-have ones for current bioinformatician jobs.

The instructor, Dr Liliana Florea, did a great job, walking you through those tools step-by-step. I also found the exercises (exams) highly useful.

The course title is not the most accurate one. The title is not very catchy either. This course is more about the tools for analyzing next generation sequence data.

It was a quite challenging experience, especially the final module. The problem you have to deal with is not "how to properly use the programs/tools", instead, we have to learn "how to play with the parameters" so that we can have the right answers for the quiz/exam questions. There were a lot of failures throughout this course, I had to watch the lectures again and again, deeply dive into the discussions in course forum, search google and seqsanswer/biostar forum, etc.... I became hating the lecturer and the mentors for theirs not so well organized lectures and answers ... But afterall, I've learned a lot. Thank you!

Key points: It is accessible to beginners and the teaching quality is good.

Taking this course was a pure enjoyment. I have learned so much about the use of command line tools in Genomics. Why they are used, how they are used and what are the most popular tools. This course offers a real good overview of the field in general.

The tools of the last week are outdated by now but for me, the whole take-away of that week was learning about the workflow of an RNA-seq analysis and its importance.

Highly recommanded course.

The material was very clearly, thoroughly, and patiently explained by Dr. Florea. I also appreciate how explanations on how to arrive at the correct answers for the quizzes were provided in order to facilitate better learning through hands-on experience. I am very grateful to Dr. Florea and everyone involved in this MOOC. A job very well done! Thank you.

Great course! She actually teaches you what to do (the programming basics behind complicated genomic analysis) and why you are doing it. This was the most well taught and well designed course in this series so far, and helped me better understand earlier courses. Very glad that I jumped ahead in the series to take this one before the others.

In gratitude to Liliana Florea, the Coursera.org team along with the entire faculty of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine and the Johns Hopkins University initiative. This course added knowledge and an indispensable baggage for me, who am starting in bioinformatics.

Learned a lot in this course. Very useful if you want to do NGS analysis. Week2 and Week4 were too vast. Flowcharts would be useful to know in which step we are in the analysis. VM didn't work for me. I installed all the tools on my machine to finish the assignments.

Great introduction to the command line tools for genomic sequencing, alignment and assembly. The content is valuable to understand the prior art of genomic sequencing that is now included in the Bioinformatics Toolkit with Matlab.

The awesome course, I had encountered in coursera for NGS analysis. This course made my dream come true on NGS analysis and helped my research a lot. I would thank the course for financial aiding me to achieve this course.

Great course. I have learned a lot! That was the first time I had used the unix command line. However, some of the tools are outdated for today's standards. I hope they make version 2 of this series with newer tools.

I recommend this course to be provided early along the Genomic Data Science Specialization, probably before "Genomic Data Science with Galaxy" as it would help make the later one much more easier to understand.

Great course. The last exam is a little bit tricky, specially when some commands are large and confusing. But with the help of forums, you can still find the right answers.

I use for decade UNIX command but this course opens my mind into new horizon on UNIX command , data science and I realize learn a lot from this learning time...

Big Thanks

There were some typos and confusion about the need not to follow the example code for Exam 4.

However, I thought that the course was good and useful overall.

Thank You!

Very interesting and detailed course.

Most I liked the tasks: they are very detaild. Thanks to them I've leraned a lot of new things.

A very well planned course for beginners who don't have any experience with command line language for exploring genomic data

This is perhaps one of the most clearly taught courses I have had on Coursera. Thank you for putting in time to teach us!

Interesting course. I have used some of this tools for some time but I find their's still something new to learn

Leart a lot. Recommend all others this course. Lecturer also cool and explain every bit of course contents.

Very engaging course indeed. However, assignments were much harder and needed time to solve.

A really hard introduction to bioinformatics pipelines, it was difficult but was stimulant!

Very detailed and simply explained introduction to work in linux environment for biologist

Great resource to learn unix codes and prepare your self for analysing genomic data