good

good

good

good

good

good

cool

nice

good

good

nice

good

good

good

good

good

good

4.5

no

NA

h

o

By now I can recognize the pattern this course follows: we start with one or two more general questions about data analytics and work in general, then there's one more intense technical module, and one or two easier modules as an outro.

For the technical stuff, so far I think that to really learn SQL or spreadsheet formulas you have to learn elsewhere. This course can only serve as a reference guide. It is actually quite annoying how in some lessons they treat you as if you've never seen a spreadsheet before, and in others, they plunge you into formulas without ever explaining anything.

I also didn't appreciate the silly stuff that sounded like Barbie Career bedtime stories, all the "Data Analysts name folders this way, Data Analysts back up their work". Like, really, literally everyone that works on a computer does those things. I guess this is just stuff meant for high school or college students taking this course, but it's pretty annoying to anyone else ;)

Also, the course challenges have been disappointing so far. I'm downloading the tables, reading the PDFs etc, only to see super basic questions that don't even require me to do anything with the material. Le sigh.

On the other hand, I enjoyed working with BigQuery, even despite the fact that the UI seems to have changed a lot, and many of the datasets referenced are not available anymore. With some troubleshooting, you'll be able to get around those issues. But I do wish that the discussion boards on Coursera were actually functional and helpful, and that the course had an active TA.

So far, I am not sure about the job readiness claim. I am actually starting from zero here and I don't think anyone would hire me as a Data Analyst just because I have the certificate.

All in all, I like parts of this course and found the instructor very nice to listen to.

This course definitely took a bit more time and effort to complete. I found myself confused a lot of the time, and needed to find external sources and videos to help me get through some of the assignments. I find the "Self-reflection" assignments to be unhelpful and a bit of a waste. The section covering BigQuery was wildly confusing. I spent such a long time just following the video just trying to navigate BigQuery, and after an hour and a half, I got frustrated and stopped for the day. The next day, I watched a short BigQuery walkthrough video on YouTube, and was able to complete the assignments relatively easily. I definitely think there are some things in this course that need to be updated. I also wish that some of the information was also put into "reading" sections instead of having most of the content in video format. It makes it a lot more difficult to go back and reference information I may have missed when taking notes.