the videos about Watson lab are out of date.

AVOID!! Complete disaster of a course. Probably the worst online course I've ever come across

This course exists almost entirely to funnel users into IBM’s expensive IBM Cloud suite. You CANNOT complete the course and get the certificate without signing up to it. From what I can gather this used to be offered free to all students but that is no longer the case. I spent 3 days trying to create an account, and sent a number of emails and forums posts but with no luck.

The support lines are completely useless. Once you sign up and go to the forums you will see thousands of angry users asking for access to the IBM Cloud suite and the moderators just ignore them. I trying signing up using the paid version but that didn’t work. When I queried with IBM, they responded telling me there was nothing they can do and that they will not allow me to sign up to their platform. Thus it is impossible for me to complete the course.

Aside from that the course quality is very poor, with outdated materials (all of with are either walls of text or powerpoint presentations) and endless lists that you are expected to memorise, rather than actually being required to understand the content. I had to watch most videos multiple times because I drifted off during them.

I expected more from Coursera and IBM. Will avoid this platform in future. I feel like I wasted weeks of my life on this course.

I'm very disappointed by these courses. I'm not sure if the other courses are going to be similar but so far the courses has been filled with unexplained jargon and lessons where the instructor is working on a dataset that isn't provided in advance. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be finding these datasets on my own before but I have no idea where to find the exact dataset the instructors are using.

From my understanding, these are supposed to be introductory courses which should mean that they take the time teach you on a granular level about what they are talking about. Instead, instructors teach as if you should already know the technical terms and don't explain anything. They walk you through what you're supposed to do without explaining the reasoning or what the process is achieving. It feels like they don't really care about the depth of the education.

Feeling kind of ripped off. I really hope that the rest of the courses are not like the first two courses.

I appreciate the efforts that were put together in the course, and I have had very good experience with IBM courses in the past. However, was a bit disappointed with this one. The videos for IBM Watson Lab were outdated, which resulted in a lot of wastage of time to submit the final assignment*. Also, it does not make sense for students to compulsory learn IBM software and use it for assignments. Basically had to learn an extra software which we did not even sign up for. As part of IBM professional certificate, I think it was a bit redundant and can easily be made part of a Python beginner or Data Science beginner course.

*Faculty were helpful to point this out and point a step by step procedure for the updated version. But this was in the discussion section, and also immediately makes having watched the videos completely futile.

The worst course of the IBM Data Science Certificate. It does not have the typical quality standards of an IBM course:

- The explanation is very poor, disorganised and very below IBM qualities (even below basic standards)

- Some videos have terrible audio because they are made in the instructor's car

- The teaching lacks consistency and logic: for example, (1) the instructor uses SHH keys but he explains how to make an SHH Key only 2 videos after (he says "I'll tell you how do it later"...); (2) Staging is not mentioned during the videos, but it is requested during the test for week 2 GitHub.

- The instructor takes way too many things for granted.

- Too many topics done in a very superficial way

Do not attend the course if you are not obliged (you are studying for the IBM data science certificate)

For the people who is interesting about taking this course , I will share my real opinions in order not to waste their time and money. 1) This course has not been designed to teach you something it is more about the IBM services. 2) Do not expect that something will be explained in more detial. 3) Especially who does not have any programming background will not understand anything at a specific part of course. 4) Especially during the second week, everything that a person explained in the videos were usefullness becuase if you do not know how to write a code there will be no meaning for you. Even if you know how do coding the sequence or the topics which explained during the 2nd week were just nothing ( no meaning). I can tell a lot about the course. BUT COMPLETELY NOT RECOMMENDED

HORRIBLE course. Outdated and boring tutorial videos where you learn nothing except to know the existence of IBM tools that I suppose IBM is trying to promote through this course. The videos were made in 2016 and are completely outdated so you can't follow any of the instructions. The tools themselves are extremely buggy: out of 10 clicks, 6 will end up in an error message. They are not intuitive either. There's no way those tools are used in professional environments.

The 5 stars reviews must be fake reviews from IBM staff. There is no way any genuine student would give 5 stars to such a crappy course.

Look at the forums' comments and complaints before paying for this.

Really shocked that Coursera allowed such bad courses on its platform.

I could not be more disappointed in this course and Coursera in general. I feel have waisted probably over $400 on a year subscription that I thought included the IBM Data Science Prof Cert, which was NOT included, and my card was auto charged for half a year which I did not want. I simply want to cancel the $40 I am charge per month and never deal with Coursera again. I would not recommend this service and am extremely disappointed and frustrated. I do not have the time to describe the many problems I had with the course but it included my IBM Watson usage expire and no help from Coursera in trying to figure out what was wrong.

I don't think this course is any good at all. It crams all the different workstations at you giving you tasks to do in each one. Without actually building projects or seriously using these workstations, by the time you need to use them for a project the retention on how do navigate and use them are going to be low. I have totally forgotten how to use RStudio and what Spark is and I am on course 5 of the IBM cert because it hasn't been used since this course. I believe in a stand-a-lone when I need to refresh, this will be good to go back to but seems kind of pointless in the beginning of the Data Science IBM cert.

I have enjoyed the other courses in the IBM Data Science certficate very much, but this one was very poorly designed and it felt like a collection of resources from other courses that didn't fit the need of this specific certificate/course. First, there were sheer endless lists of data science tools, without much context, explanations and examples. Then, there were some more practical parts on basic tools, but the instructor rushed through them (seemingly) without much preparation. It still taught me a few things (by pausing and trying stuff out), but I feel like this could have been done much better.

The only objective of this course is to push IBM Cloud and Watson Studio on the learners. The software is highly dysfunctional and user unfriendly. I can't submit my assignment due to unclear instructions and errors that come up when I try to do so. This is so far the worst part of this whole course. I have found a forum link with some troubleshooting which I have fruitlessly searched for an answer, maybe somebody will find something there: https://www.coursera.org/learn/open-source-tools-for-data-science/peer/xakrA/create-and-share-your-jupyter-notebook/discussions/threads/G7ITBorwEem4khKVBn768g

I regret the low review, but this course needs A LOT of work. Instruction is poorly formatted and (seemingly) lazily and sporadically delivered. This is supposed to be a beginner level course with no prerequisites, however, I wonder if newcomers to the course (and this cert overall) should be equipped with some other courses or specializations/certificates before entering this one. Thank you nonetheless for your effort, and I hope you can improve your material in the future after the chaos of the pandemic (and all the pressure it has most surely placed on you) has subsided.

Kind regards.

After a great Course1 i was really enthusiastic. Unfotunately, midway Course2 I decided to unsubscribe from the whole Specialization (after reading several other reviews matching my opinion).

Course 2 it's a bunch of bullshit with videos listing programs, tools, databases and a lot of jargon with no explanation. A lot of outdated stuff that brings 0 added vlue to anyone. Btw. I'm not really a newbie into data science, so it's not about difficulty. It's just useless! Don't waste your time on this!

I think Course2 is doing more harm than even brining something usefull to the table.

I enjoyed the hands-on lab work. Unfortunately, the instructions given in writing and in the videos are outdated regarding IBM Watson Studio, and this led to a lot of frustration and wasted time trying to click around and search for the correct instructions on my own. There were also many typos in one of the written lessons, and the quizzes didn't always match the material addressed corresponding lesson (or, in one case, the quiz question popped up before the topic was addressed in the video). While I'm grateful for the lab work, this was not a good educational experience.

This is just IBM marketing trash, and not actually teaching data science. Google has this one beat by a thousand miles. Why anyone would think this is learning needs is beyond me. They blatantly just gloss over data science and pitch their products, and dont explain anything. The readings from the book "Getting Started with Data Science" is just fluff and useless marketing trash by IBM. This course and the rest of the IBM certificate should be removed from coursera as they are not teaching anyone anything in my humble opinion.

Complete waste of time. Quickly glazed over subjects with no real insight. The interactive labs are just copying and pasting some code with a patronising instructions "Congratulations! Now you've loaded a library!!"

Incredibly frustrating when you're interested in a subject and so keen and ready to learn and be taught. I posted about my problems in the forum and received an automated reply so that really shows that they couldn't care less.

There's absolutely no point for this course to exist.

Shame

Unfortunately, a waste of time!

I write this with lo of pain!

This is nothing but PPT with voiceover, conveying the knowledge that is present in google if searched with common sense. I had to drop out of the program with a lot of pain.

Never judge a book by its cover! Just because it is IBM, it doesnt mean it teaches the content in the best possible manner. Human inclusion is necessary for a class to be interesting. And information overload doesnt mean information is rightly conveyed.

Worst course I have ever taken on any online learning platform. The whole course is basically an advertisement for the IBM Watson Studio and other tools. The course content only focuses on giving introductions to all the tools and there are many tools that we have to remember. I don't recommend this course to any person.

There is a lot of confusion while opening a watson account. I faced lot of troubles and still I am unable to access my watson account. I even generated a thread in discussion forum but i was given any satisfactory response.

Highly disappointed with this Course.

too theoretical. I don't want to learn the tools by heart. I want an idea of the interface and how to start approaching each. A case study of a mini project going from tool to tool until completion would be the most interesting showcase.

The course is way too basic to pay for it, you can get better value for your money somewhere else. I had too many issues with Watson Studio and the support I received from the tutor/assistants was repetitive and not helpful.

not good at all. when i couldnt use Watson studio and it keep message me that i havent active account while i had. and there was nobody to ask or solve the problem. so, it was useless. i dont keep lerning with IBM

The sections on Jupyter, Python, and RStudio tools was very hard to follow and unclear why we were performing the actions. The presenter was very knowledgeable but was unclear how it would be applied.

It's the worst experience ever!!! The "teacher" doesn't help you, support doesn't help you. THIS IS A MESS!!!

I want a refund!

You are forced to learn some of the Watson functionality, which is not useful for most students. Ridicules for paid study.