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The first 7 courses were fantastic. Teachers were great- lessons were great- activities were great.

However the Case Study gets the biggest F (0 stars) that I can possibly rate. I did not finish it, I could not upload the giant files to any tool to be able to analyze it and I was stuck on a few things that did not work and was frustrated and lost.

Here are the reasons.

1. The files (for case study 1) are very large- and most learners do not have access to the enterprise versions of tableau, sheets, Rcloud or Google Big Query. Therefore, you were unable to get the files to where you needed them to be to use the tools that we learned about. I have used these tools for many years and I knew that on Big Query, you can create a bucket and load them there but the other software was not able to process files especially over 100MB

2. Since this was all new to us, I felt like i was just thrown into the fire- There was no way to get help on specific questions like 'I'm having trouble understanding what the ask is- or what the business task was.' There was a business task defined, but then we were only assigned step 1. I didn't understand if we were supposed to share and provide possible solutions for that question or the over all task.

3. The case study PDF needs to be much more verbose on what we are supposed to do. There are some suggestions like find the mode and mean and make sure the data is clean, but if one of those didnt work, again it was hard to figure out why and try to solve the issue.

4. I did not like the fact that there was no direction on what we were supposed to be looking for. We were supposed to analyze the data (once we got the upload problem solved and then joined the files and created all the extra calculated columns) there were some hints, but all were we supposed to do (in a nutshell ) is look at all the ways the membership people were different than the casual people. Once you look at some graphs (if you could figure out what you were supposed to graph) I was not sure what to do after that- Was I supposed to wait for the other team members to complete their parts and then work with them to come up with a share and act?

5. No matter what path you selected, the videos and materials took you through BOTH scenarios and I thought I kept picking the wrong one after I watched and read about case study 1. It should take you to the next phase after you select a study. Again confusing.

6. I would have all the career and interview and resume stuff in an optional module. We were learning about the case study, then went to resumes and interviews and it was a broken path that just made me wait until all that was done before I even started the study.

Anyway- I didnt get hardly anything out of the case study. And that waas disappointing to me as it is such an important part of doing data analysis. I felt I was alone out on an island and really had no clue what I was supposed to be doing.

Considering the pricetag and self-paced flexibility of the course, I suppose I couldn't realistically expect much more. However, I would be remiss if I didn't at least offer a suggestion, for how I think the course could be improved. A better course design would offer not only an improved means of some assistance (either in the form of web-conferencing, being able to call a tutor/instructor help desk, or even just an email address to send questions to, when we get stuck). In addition, it would be helpful to either have the 8th class consist of several graded assisngments, that would each be a portion of a case study, that would be reviewed by a human, and that we would be given some feedback on, so that by the end of the 8th course, we would know that we have a case study that would help us to land a job. Either that, or the aforementioned review/grading/feedback process could de divided up, and incorporated into the first 7 classes, so that by the start of the 8th class, we would already have a job-ready case study for our portfolio. From that point, the 8th course could focus on having Google or Coursera staff reviewing our LinkedIn pages, resumes, and portfolios look, to further polish everything up, and have us do at least one mock interview, in which we present the case study that we just finished. I realize that the cost is supposed to be affordable (and compared to a university, it is), but tweaking the certificate, in an effort to provide a better service to the students, in the manner described above, would make the program even more valuable to the consumer. If my suggestions were offered to me (and future students), either at no additional charge (or at a fairly nominal additional fee), I would give the program a 5-star rating. But, for the price, it gave me some beginner's knowledge of R, SQL, and Tableau, and improvde my knowledge of Excel, so I feel that it is worthy of a 4-star review.

As a disclaimer, I have previous experience with SQL, Excel, and Python. The SQL and Excel material taught in this course left much to be desired. In my opinion, the amount of material given for SQL and Excel is equivalent to coming into contact with either program only a handful of times. Having taken only a single short course on SQL using LinkedIn Learning, I was more than prepared to learn the SQL taught in this course, and the basic Excel functions would be more suitable for a computer literacy class. That is not to say that the instructors are incapable of sharing knowledge, but they have a unique ability to dive deeply into each subject to ensure that the student has a profound understanding of the topic. As a beginner, the information for R Programming and Tableau were exciting and informational, and - again - the instructors seem to be knowledgeable of each subject. A few complaints about Coursera directly: the Modules are inconsistent about whether or not there is an "End of Course" exam, the videos restart randomly and some are missing their transcripts, and several of the "attached files" available for download are not actually available for download. This course specifically, as produced by Google, attempts to drive the user to a Google based platform at every turn, and the exercises on Big Query are no longer supported (this was especially frustrating). All in all, I feel like the knowledge I gained from this course was still worth it. If you don't do it for the Excel or SQL, do it for the RStudio and Tableau experience, and do the capstone. Finally, this course does not take 6 months. The time estimates are completely inflated. Thanks for reading, if the comment allows for feedback I'd love for it to be housed here.

For the first half of the course, most of the material covered I was already aware of, specifically regarding spreadsheets, meaning the beginning was a little slow and I don't think I learned much new. It would have been nice to have 2 tracks to choose from, a beginner and intermediate track since most people have come across basic spreadsheet functions or some form of coding in their academic/professional career. I also did not always like that all the tests were in multiple choice format, I wish there were more questions included like the ones where you have to perform SQL or R code in order to answer the multiple choice. Additional to the individual project it would have been nice to have some sort of "graded" case study, which, similar to the end of each course exam, leads you through a small project, requiring you to use all the skills from every course in one exam, whilst still guiding you a bit through the process. Then I think it would be a bit easier to get started by yourself on the Capstone Project.

What was also a bit of an issue for me on a Mac was to match some videos in full screen, there was then not an option to rewind the video, the full screen always needed to be exiting, that was a bit annoying when one wanted to see the applications used in full screen.

Overall I thought the level was a little bit too easy, I do not think I would be comfortable applying for a juniour analyst position with this certificate alone, which is what the certificate is advertised as. Again, maybe having an intermediate track for people to have to chance to skip over the basics and go a bit faster into the complex aspects would be great.

The capstone case study is a good idea to capture all that was taught to this assignment and use the assignment as a portfolio. After spending hours with Tableau and R I could not remember what to do or how to start or approach the case study 1 bike-ride. I know Tableau and R is necessary to create the portfolio however I spent so much time on the course and they were at the end of the other modules that I forgot what to do. Now I have to review the course again to complete the capstone. My recommendation about the format to complete a capstone would be at the end of ACT the capstone be given to complete while these modules are fresh in the mind. Then have Tableau module followed by the same capstone to add Tableau. Then R module followed by the capstone to add R. This is a better approach because at the end of each module you build on the capstone case study while the course is fresh in your mind. Also, there was mention of a checklist in one of the lab learnings that I think would benefit students to keep track of what do first at the beginning for the course rather than somewhere in 4 or 5 module. Lastly, the Course Challenge ought to be reset after 5 hours instead of 24 hours later this too long a wait to return to complete the quiz.

Overall very good at the high level and moves chronologically in a way that makes sense. It gives a good framework for understanding how to understand and analyze data problems and the videos are very helpful. Because its a course that covers a broad spectrum, it falls short when it comes to some of the nitty gritty and the learning curve with respect to Rstudio and SQL. Specifically there were some basics that were missed in the SQL section that make the more advanced sections confusing so have supplementary learning materials ready for this section. BIG Query is also less intuitive to use than say, MySQL workbench. For Rstudio, it wasn't bad but again, some of the basics were glossed over that could make some of the more advanced topics confusing so have supplementary materials and youtube videos at the ready to fill in the gaps. Overall though, the course mostly strikes the right balance with respect to the three tools, how they interact and how to use them as well as their strengths and weaknesses. I felt I was able to combine Excel, SQL and Tableau very effectively to create a coherent case study for the capstone project and the additional resources related to job search and building your profile are extremely helpful.