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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Using Python to Access Web Data by University of Michigan

4.8
stars
43,991 ratings

About the Course

This course will show how one can treat the Internet as a source of data. We will scrape, parse, and read web data as well as access data using web APIs. We will work with HTML, XML, and JSON data formats in Python. This course will cover Chapters 11-13 of the textbook “Python for Everybody”. To succeed in this course, you should be familiar with the material covered in Chapters 1-10 of the textbook and the first two courses in this specialization. These topics include variables and expressions, conditional execution (loops, branching, and try/except), functions, Python data structures (strings, lists, dictionaries, and tuples), and manipulating files. This course covers Python 3....
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High quality content

(256 Reviews)

Practical assignments

(217 Reviews)

Top reviews

TA

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interesting course. well structured and paced with practical real-life examples and clear study materials. i strongly recommend this course for anyone considering learning python. Thank you Dr. Chuck!

AG

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The course teaches the basics of how to interact with the internet using Python. The course is simple, well explained, has great interviews with people who were part of the creation of the internet.

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7901 - 7925 of 7,938 Reviews for Using Python to Access Web Data

By prasad r

Apr 27, 2020

not so much into the subject

By Alicja

May 19, 2019

Not very useful material

By Rajan G

Oct 30, 2020

Not good

By Deepak G

May 15, 2020

.

By Mihai-Viorel L

Mar 4, 2022

I could not wait to finish this course of the specialization to write my review.

Even though the first two courses in the specialization were pretty straightforward, this one has terrorised me. Now, I understand the difficulty some people might have met in the previous two courses and left mixed reviews.

I do not even know where to start with how bad this course was. There has been incomplete information in the online course that you could find in the textbook. But, some written scripts/programs in the textbook are different/changed from the ones in the video. Moreover, the assignments' descriptions are so hard to understand that when we had to use BeautifulSoup to follow links it took me 1 hour to understand what I was asked to do. I am not a native English speaker and I could have worded it better.

Then there are other issues such as:

- explanations of installing BeatifulSoup, and where, unclear

- accessing Google API does not work anymore; how am I supposed to follow along with the example given for how to work with APIs?

- Twitter has changed the way you can access their API and now requires 3 tokens, not 4 as in the videos/textbook; I guess I have to look this one up on the internet too, so I can properly grasp the concept

- there is missing information in the course/textbook on how to approach the assignments.

I do not mind doing research on my own, but how am I supposed to know what to look for if I am not told what I need to finish the assignments? The other issue, and the reason I signed up to Coursera, is that infomation you find online is overwhelming and it seems no one wants to make programming easy for someone that has no clue how to start. I would expect this not to be an issue when using Coursera. And the structure, "written script" and explained before the actual script being written down is so bad that can confuse people so badly.

By Roberto D

Jul 4, 2023

I've completed the two previous courses and I learned basic programming, I had few things which weren't ideal. This "course" or section I should say, is a disaster.Previous issues were the little content available for each course, by the end of it you feel rather void because you expected better quality and more content than 15 minutes max video per week. The only positive were the exercises which you would see in the book at the end of the chapters.Each course is mediocre as the teaching uses little formal language, which would have been appreciated, it is not like a college "course": the standards are very low, and fails to explain anyway because the explanation is not well prepared and brushes off content. In this last Section: it is not a course, it became worse; became faster, didn't explain content neither in the slides nor the book and the main concepts are barely introduced. It looked like he bored himself while explaining and writing, and it is not an excessive description.There are at the end of each week course interviews with the creators of the programming languages and of himself traveling the world and having fun which left me perplexed, for obvious reasons for the latter, and for former as the interviews is about concepts and issues not related to the course at all, discussion which the supposed new programmer would never understand and of course I've never learned anything from the interviews, never understood what they were even talking about.I planned to do other courses like django and web development from the same teacher but the obvious lack of effort in the teaching made me reconsider my learning journey.

By LIM C C

Dec 27, 2020

This part (Using Python to Access Web Data) is not easy at all compared to the previous courses in terms of the topics and contents touch on for beginner level, particularly the assignments. There are several portions in this course need to be improved, 1. Lack of full guidance for the coding and workings (the assignments cannot be done solely based on the lectures, external study and research is a must - It defeats the purpose taking up this course, why not choose other vendors with better structured design and contents?) 2. Leading to confusion for the learner in assignment questions (No clear explanation for the expected outcome and poor design of assignment structure - e.g. Question, Expectation, Samples, Steps by steps guidance) 3. Gap of understanding (The details of coding and structures are not well explained from a beginner's perspective and there are some missing part in between the lectures and hands-on! It appears to be in a rush to complete everything in video lecture for the main topics instead of further explaining in details on the theories and hands-on and what come out in the assignment were not taught in the lectures). I couldn't do much but had to conduct research by myself from external sources/tips/guidance to complete this part. Is it really a good choice for beginners to pick up a new skillset in the world of advanced technology? It reminds me that the course name - PY4E (Python for Everyone). SERIOUSLY, I doubt it!

By patrick f

Dec 13, 2022

This is not a good progression in the Python for Everyone series. The difficulty and complexity increases ten fold and the support is limited. The earlier courses in the series are fully developed with the text and supporting website- multiple chapters from the text/videos for each course. In this course, the course is supported by a single section in the text. I

The specialization feels like it went from a reasonable challenge with good support (textbook and website) to an extreme challenge with little support. I tried the course support (via email) and got a short and semi-helpful response. The tone of the response felt slgithly condecending.

I really wanted this to be a good course. I want to learn Python, but this is not the place for me. I will have try elsewhere, maybe within Coursera, maybe elsewhere.

By Jacqueline C

Nov 25, 2022

Completed all assignments and quizzes as well as the extra work for the Honors certificate. Instructors refuse to grade Capstone assignment so I can get the certificate even though it is done correctly. It appears University of Michigan is using instructors who don't read the assignment instructions or who do not understand what they are grading. Awful experience. Only way to contact is through message board and the reply time is several days. I would have given a lower rating if I could. I do not recommend this Specialization to anyone and will NEVER take another course for University of Michigan.

By Edwin R J

Dec 14, 2016

I am running Firefox v50 on Ubuntu Linux v16.04. I was unable to watch any of the lecture videos due to the page reloading every 2 - 10 seconds. I tried moving to a different video with the same results. I don't know if this is UC Davis-specific or whether Coursera has changed significantly since the last time I took a class, but this course is totally unusable.

I would have left this review with Coursera rather than as a course review, but Coursera doesn't make contact information easy to locate.

By Nargiz

Jan 2, 2021

I liked first 2 courses but this one was horrible.I had to watch tons of YouTube videos and ask help from reddit subs in order to at least get RUDIMENTARY grasp...All lectures were rushed and tasks were confusing.I understand the course cannot magically teach everything 100% but at least it has to be more precise and detailed. Moreover ,teaching staff is RUDE as hell.I love and respect dr. Chuck.I hope upcoming classes won't be this vague.

By Ahmet B B

Aug 17, 2020

After taking two great courses from Dr.Chuck, this course was a disestar. It consumed all of my energy and motivation. I am not sure wheter I continue with this specialization from Dr.Chuck. In the process of this course he always pretend like I am a web programmer but in fact, I was not and I could not catch a great portion of this course. So sad... What a pitty

By Jorge O

May 30, 2021

En este tercer curso, pasó de ser entendible y retador algunas pruebas, para volverse frustrante, tener que estar buscando horas y horas en otras páginas, tutoriales y foros acerca las evaluaciones, ya que para alguien que recién lo lleva, se le hace imposible poder completarlas por uno mismo.

By Muhammad M

Jan 19, 2021

There were no details about how to solve a problem. The instructor covered only the intro. Really very disappointed with the 3rd course, the first two were good. The aim of this course to give skills to the students instead of intro about the topic and book.

By Shaun S

Jun 8, 2020

Nowhere as good as the first two courses in this specialization. Do not have high expectations as you will spend more time on Google and YouTube understanding things taught in this course as compared to the time you spend watching lecture videos!

By John J

Nov 16, 2022

First assignment is:

1. Very trivial.

2. Someone graded me 40% even though I did the assignment exactly as asked and I cannot re-submit it.

Whole course:

Brushes over html way too fast. Compared to the his first few courses this one is a lot worse.

By André S

May 17, 2021

The content is treated in a trivial way (what's is awful). The impression I had is that the instructor simply considered that I already knew the subject and had domain about it, so his explanations were very poor during the entire course.

By Richard E

Apr 23, 2020

The class was great.

I'm rating this course, because it looks I'm being prevented to go the next course, ***that I already started*** and can't get back to ! assume that nothing I say means a thing. but I am ticked off!

By Roberto Á

Jun 4, 2023

Courses 1 and 2 are fantastic, but this course is entirely unrealistic for beginners. I couldn't understand many things, and it suddenly started teaching about complex things with no previous context.

By Michael C

May 18, 2022

I encountered alot of difficulties with the programs like BeautifulSoup. I didnt learn much as compared to the past two courses in this specialization. Please endeaor to improe this course

By Scott

Sep 8, 2016

I only received 96% as a final result, even though I obtained 100% for every assignment. Pathetic rating system. If I had paid for this course I would be incensed.

By Raphaël S

Feb 16, 2022

Sorry but this course is totally impossible to understand without a previous knowledge and the gap bewteen the 2nd course and this one is huge

By Mohammad H

Dec 9, 2020

Disappointing. Instead of focusing on Python he's teaching xml and http. He only introduced APIs in the end. Didn't learn what I came here for.

By Hooman D

Jul 6, 2022

This course was confused and jumbled. Dr chuck tries to explain too much in just 6 weeks and the result is a lot of confused students.

By Айрапетян Ж С

Jan 28, 2021

There is a huge gap between some weeks. And seems recordings are made at different time and it breaks the logic of videos.