While this course did provide some useful material, mostly when it was focusing on what sorts of questions to ask during data analysis, I felt that much of it was irrelevant to the specifics of being a data analyst. I am taking this eight-course certificate program not to learn how to work an office job, but to learn how to be a data analyst. Sections focusing on office etiquette are ancillary to that goal, and are irrelevant to the time I am putting in here. I feel that these sections could better be put into a supplemental course rather than a core part of the analytics certificate.

Additionally, I struggled some with Ximena's presentation. Many of her examples were not helpful because they were too vague or not rooted in real-life situations, so I could not connect them together or make sense of what I was supposed to be paying attention to. Primarily, she would say things like "You're in this situation, and you need to do this," but I wouldn't have any way to know *why* I should "do this" or why I would be in that situation in the first place. By contrast, Sarah's lone video on her specific experiences as a data analyst was very helpful because she walked me, as the viewer, through each step of the process she went on to analyze the data in her situation.

Lastly (and this is somewhat unfortunate), Ximena's accent, though not very strong, did make it difficult for me to understand her at times. I found that I had to focus a lot more on the specific words she was saying, which made it harder for me to connect the dots and get to the meaning she was trying to communicate; this wasn't a problem I had with the primary video presenter during the first course (I can't recall his name now). It's possible that I'm alone in this, but that was my experience. I also found her constant encouragement at the end of each video a little off-putting. I am looking for a teacher in these subjects, rather than a cheerleader.

I found it very hard to enjoy this course. This is just a personal preference/learning thing but it felt like there were substantially more reading articles in this course overall compared to the foundations unit. As someone that has sturggled with reading comprehension their whole life, this made learning this unit a little more difficult for me. I have been copying and pasting the articles into microsoft word & having word dictate the articles to me. The dictation of the article helps but I find that I learn best by watching videos and taking notes vs reading. I often have to listen to the article twice or even three times to fully grasp everything that was covered. I understand & appreciate this program is designed to benefit all learning types, but this unit in particular just felt extra challenging for me personally.

The assignment projects were a felt tedious and redundant. Not because of the assignment itself but because of the length of the overview leading up to the assignment objectives. The overviews mainly seemed to reiterate what was explained in the video/article prior to the work assignment. Which just meant more reading of what was already covered. I did not find this helpful at all. It just felt like the reiteration or "reminders" took up more time, making the course take even longer to complete due to redundancies. I still read through all of the overviews though just in case there were extra instructions or overall objective points in the overview. Sometimes there were, so I didn't feel I could skip over all of the overviews even though 90% of the information was redundant due to literally the prior article/video before the assignment.

It seems like a lot, or at least a majority of what was covered in this section did not relate to the "ask" part of the process. We touched on SMART questions, but only for a small period of time. I would have liked to see some more elaboration in that area, especially with the readings. We also spent a lot of time going over quantitative and qualitative data, which seems like it would be more suitable for the "prepare" or "process" phase. In addition to that, we also spent a chunk of time on reports vs. dashboards, small data vs. big data, spreadsheets, formulas, and functions, which all feels like it belongs in other categories. I really wish we had spent more time focusing on the question part of the process instead of, what felt like, touching on it for such a small percentage of the time.

I also found the videos frustrating as it would be a 4 or 5 minute video, but there would be a solid 30+ seconds at the end that was a summary of the first few minutes. That may be necessary with a long lecture or presentation when a lot of information is covered, and you want to remind the audience of the key factors, like when it was done after the course challenge to remind you of all the topics covered in the class. Having that recap at the end of each video is redundant and feels like a waste of time.

I am in the second course of the certification (Ask Questions to Make Data-Driven Decisions) and what I think and would like from the course so far..

So far from what I have taken from the course.... I would like the course to be a little more pedagogical and not a person standing in front of the camera reading absolutely everything. I do not see teaching in this type of presentation. I only see one person, which could be anyone... reading a whole script and nothing more. I still found it super interesting and I liked the topic, but not the way of teaching.

Please change this person, it's the most fake thing I've been able to find. it's supposed to be a course taught by someone who really knows the subject and not someone just reading an entire script. Or at least put someone who doesn't notice this so much. but this person is too obvious and very fake in everything. This course should be taught by some teacher really and not just any person just reading a complete script. For that simply put all a literature and we just read it and that's it. But I think this type of teaching is disrespectful to us the sutdentes students. I liked the subject a lot, but this type of teaching makes one hate it.

The course was unfortunately not very well planned and felt rushed overall. The organization of the material was lacking, particularly in the Excel section, which was a major draw for me. This section was not properly detailed and skipped over important functionalities and advanced techniques, leaving many learners unsatisfied. Moreover, the time allocation across different topics was unbalanced. While communication skills and conflict management were stretched out too much, other crucial topics like the Scope of Work (SOW) and Excel were rushed through. This made it difficult to fully understand and apply these important concepts. Overall, the course's poor planning and the rushed treatment of key sections significantly hindered its effectiveness. Future versions of this course need to be better organized and provide more detailed coverage of the critical topics that were inadequately addressed this time.

Generally, this course isn't as good as the 1st one for multiple reasons. First, Ximena wasn't as engaging as Tony from the 1st course. Her illustration style is a bit boring and makes me lose focus. Second, The course has a big shortage in examples for nearly all concepts although discussing important ones that need multiple examples each to stabalize and deepen this concept into the way of thinking. Third, the course should have less readings and more videos. Readings aren't as illustrative and engaging as videos since videos make the human feels addressed in person and the illustration will take much less time than readings. Last, Ximena's dressing is completely inappropriate and unprofessional. She was nearly TOPLESS!! Her top was very revealing and distracting. To be honest, this is totaly unacceptable.

Too many repeated materials - our time is valuable, too. Either keep it in the video and use slides so we can save it as notes, or skip it all together in the video and let us read it.

The course was supposed to be about Asking Questions, but more than half of the course was about something else, including business etiquette and communication. Business etiquette and communication are not what the "ask" is about on data analysis process. Giving us examples using real life cases on questions that gave rise to mismatched expectations or incorrect data collections and how the questions should have been framed to avoid the time wasted would have been better for this course.

This was one of the topics I am very interested about. Unfortunately, I don't think I managed to get the information and insights I was hoping for. The information were too broad, there were not enough real life examples, and I wished there was a way we could really put into practice what we learned in a more interactive way. On another note, something very subjective, it was very hard for me to follow the videos, as in my opinion the presenter was too robotic and I felt like she was reading instead of presenting and really explaining and emphasising some aspects. So I ended up stopping watching the videos and reading the whole course by myself.

I was under the misunderstanding that this would be courses to improve practical data analytical skills using Google tools like GA4, Search console, creating reports in Looker Studio. It is not. Is a very broad theoretical course on what data analysts do, what career opportunities there are, basic fundamental ideas and concepts etc. Content is mainly filler. It is similar to what you might learn in you first week or two at an intro course in 1st year university. Probably good for people looking for a new career path or high school students deciding what to field to study but not for anyone looking to improve their data analytical skills.

Ok I might have rated this course more stars if a lot of stuff was non-repetitive. Also, there should have been more case studies and some peer-review assignments to actually push a person to learning, otherwise its just a speed-run as the majority questions were easy, none of them were hard or complex. The course only aims to help you ignite curiosity and push you to study subject matter on your own instead of completely relying. Lot of stuff grad students have already dealt with was covered in a sugar coated way. If there's someone who is looking for a refresher can surely go for this course.

While the course is presented well, it covers a lot of topics that don't really support the mindset behind data-driven decisions. Most of the course is extremely shallow spreadsheet usage and communication. So if you are extremely new with spreadsheets (like you don't know how to add or subtract using one), or if you are extremely new to any business communication (like never worked at an office before or did a college course), then you may find some value in this one.

Ideally, it would have been nice to having more exercises to work on making a mindset of data-driven decisions.

There are some errors in the quiz questions where a statement is followed by a question mark and then we are asked to "select all that apply" - this is unclear and I suggest a rewording of the quiz question. Furthermore, I don't see how learning how to be a good team member has to do with asking questions to make data driven decisions. I think that learning to work well on a team, keep volatile emotions in check, and respond to conflict professionally is important - but it is important to all teams in all fields. Learning about it here feels inappropriate for the course topic.

This course is all over the place. There is about 3 seconds of "hands on" kind of followed by hours of watching someone talk at you about examples of Data Analytics and multiple choice questions. It was very mind numbing and personally i feel i learned almost nothing. After taking these first 2 courses, if i were to be asked anything about data analytics, i would have zero idea on how to answer that question. Im really regretting my choice in taking this course but its paid for so im forcing myself through and hoping that the next course will be more engaging.

If you enjoy the phrases "in this course we will cover...," "this is just an introduction to what we'll cover later in the courses," and "we just covered" being repeated in every video, then you'll love this course. The amount of times the instructor talks about what you will learn or have learned outweighs the amount of time you actually learn something.

I will say, if you are completely new to spreadsheets, they do a great basic overview. But, if you already have a good idea of how to work with them, then you won't get much from the course.

The course offers fundamental background information on the topic. However, if you have had previous experience in any kind of data role, in any industry, the information provided can become a drag to complete. I am already discouraged from completing the entire course because it is too basic and doesn't mentally challenge me enough. The content is also repetitive. This course is probably suitable for anyone just leaving high school, who has no prior experience with analysis or even spreadsheets.

I don't have experience in creating courses or much teaching experience, so read my review with that in mind:

This section of the course felt very redundant and drawn-out. The information in multiple-weeks worth of material felt to me like it could have been covered in a few days. Much of it also felt self-explanatory (the importance of communication, being polite to coworkers, how to write an email) and thus, in my mind, did not require such an in-depth discussion.

It was a little bit too easy. I think a topic that could be included is how to communicate with NON analytical stakeholders. Or how to speak data outside of the data team, also how to manage stakeholders that want data but may not know the process (the work that goes into analysis)

I think this could really help because analytics is a buzz word that many like to throw around without knowing what it entails.

I disagree that ourse ia Ask Questions to Make Data-Driven Decisions have a right title, because they give you many information about how to write letter and be a good cowoker. The first two weeks are better than the last two weeks. In last two weeks have more soft skills information then hard skills. For me it was important what should I ask, but afterall I haven't a full answer.

The descriptive questions section were not clear and  it seems with no instructure you don't know if your answers are correct or not. When you do the test with particular answers it helps you to improve yourself and the answers shows you are on the right track. When you should write your answers with no instructor to guide you, it looks like you can't improve yourself. 

There was too much content for one course and it didn't all fit together in a way that made sense. The topics didn't flow logically one into the other. The final "challenge" was awkward at best with having to pull up so many handouts for questions that could have been asked pulled together in a much clearer way. The number of handouts became a distraction.

Week 1 was good information on question asking frameworks. Week 2 was pretty basic data/reporting types. Week 3 was pretty basic excel/sheets usage. Week 4 was about communication and stakeholder management. Overall, I think only the first and last weeks were valuable, but they could have been covered by two short articles.

These programs need to focus more on teaching what needs to be known instead of life stories. I find they drag out and make it discouraging to want to continue to participate, although vocabulary is great, it needs to be more showing what we will actually use in the work force such as SQL. I'm not taking an english course.

The videos are so jam packed with buzz words and 'story-time' examples that the actual learning opportunities in the course are limited. I'm aware the course those with no professional data analytics experience (like myself), but there's some things that are common knowledge and don't need to be covered in this course.

The course dealt a lot with theory, without us getting enough idea of the practice. To ask good questions one needs a better acquaintance with the material being studied. It is difficult to understand in advance what is expected further down the road. Also, the instruction of the course was a bit tedious.

A lot of the questions during the activities are nonsensical, confusing, and don't provide learning opportunities--very ironic considering the course material requires you to think about the kind of questions you ask and to be more specific about them. The contrast is pretty jarring.