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It was a good course. I love it especially because it covers linux for beginners like myself. Cindy as an instructor was quite good. However, it kinda felt like she never actually taught in a live classroom environment as a real teacher before. The reason I say this is because the way she explained stuff didn't seem like she was aware there were actually students who were listening to the lecture.

For people who had some sort of experience with real live classroom teaching would be aware about their articulation, delivery, and points that need to be made clear to students. The instructor always talked really fast (mind you there are many non native English speakers joining this program too, I am one of them).

Every time she typed something she would just type type type enter! It was at times so fast I couldn't even have the time to pause it (or have real difficulty to time it right to pause). I paused a lot of the instruction when it comes to the Linux materials. Because I never tried Linux before and I am so interested I want to try it along while following the video.

Another thing that's bothering me was why would they put the information about VirtualBox at the last week of the course?? I was already using the VirtualBox to practice all the Linux materials as I go through the course. I didn't even expect that they would actually give the info about the VirtualBox. I mean why? Why would you tell us that on the last week? Don't you think it is an absolute beneficial to the learners if they knew that from the start? So that they could install the virtual machine and have Linux (or windows) on their computer? That way they could practice it first hand along with the course. I literally almost shouted "WHAT?" when I got to the part where they were telling us about VirtualBox.

So my humble suggestion to anyone taking this course do yourself a favor and install VirtualBox on your computer so you could install Linux and learn by actually practicing it along the course. You can look videos on how to install it on Youtube. I watched a video on Benjamin's Tech channel called How to Install Ubuntu 20.04 on a Mac using VirtualBox (2020 Version). It really helped me tremendously understanding Linux because I got to do it along the course following all the instructions.

The last thing I want to mention is prepare yourself to be frustrated with qwiklabs. To be honest the majority of the time I had almost no trouble working with it. But, as other people wrote and complaining it does give you a headache sometimes. My only real problem with qwiklabs came at the final assignments. It didn't record my score correctly (I screenshot every steps and results). But anyhow I still passed and didn't want to bother more by contacting the customer support.

However, overall this is a really good course and I had a great time doing it.

As for the the instruction or the delivery of the course it definitely needs an improvement. It is not however the instructors fault. Cindy as I said as an instructor gave her best and was pretty good throughout the course. I would like to suggest to Google to make all the instructors to actually teach as a real teacher in a real classroom before making them the instructors on these courses. The experience of that would be really significant because they would actually be a teacher and not just an "instructor".

I always think that a "teacher" just sounds more human than an "instructor".

All and all, thank you Cindy and Google for making this course. It allows me to start learning about Linux and CLI in general in a "light version" kind of way. I guess see you in the next course.

Due to the quality of the previous networking course, I came into this course not having faith in the quality of videos.

This course turned out to be much better!

However, I pre-emptively decided to learn this course in a different manner, focusing less on watching the videos and more on practicing the commands. Here are some tips before you start the course yourself:

1.Download virtual box and install a Linux distribution as a virtual machine so you can practice along from the beginning of the course!

2. If you are not confident in the lectures then maybe consider a more practical approach. When you start a new week, note down all the topics which will be covered. From this you can start by finding the relevant commands you need to learn and can then start to practice. If you need help then you can supplement with the course lectures or external youtube videos.

3. Make sure you learn week 1's material well, make sure you can navigate and work with files and directories for both Linux and PowerShell.

4. If you are a practical learner consider using the labs to learn. What i did from week 2 onwards was to just do the labs straight away. All these labs contain detailed instructions and helped me learn by practicing. (NOTE - Week 6s lab removes the instructions to test you - managed to complete this anyway -so can you!

5. Once you have passed the labs (which are the main assessments), you can now go over the material again in PowerShell and your Linux virtual machine or even do the qwiklabs again, consolidating what you have learnt in a more practical and time efficient manner.

Overall, this course (the lecturers) seem to be better than the previous one, a strong point being the actual syllabus.

The course did a good job of building on the material. I was following along on a Linux machine and there are certain things Cindy would do off screen that i was not able to follow and had to do online research. For example, when it comes to mounting the USB drive, she creates a mount point off screen. Luckily I am good at googling things. I don't mind doing that but may hurt those who to do not come from a computer background or have had minimal exposure to computers up to the point of taking the course. I would suggest giving students access to virtual instance of Linux as we do for the assessments. This will be good for those who do not have the resources or the financial wherewithal to obtain them. I would also suggest maybe taking 2 minutes for a refresh on installing and uninstalling during this course as it was months ago we went through the first course.

For the Overall Program

I would suggest adding more assessment similar to the graded assessments during the modules. Not everyone will use Linux everyday and by the time they get to the final assessment, they will have forgotten. Nothing is more effective at retention than repetition.

There are definitely some out of date lab instructions within this course. One being was week 4 and week 6. Week 6 had an issue where you couldn't straight forward find the file that needed its permissions to be changed. While week 4 the instructions were not so clear about what drive you needed to format and how exactly you find out what megabytes you need to figure out the partition needs to create a drive with 1 gigabyte or 9 gigabyte. However after some digging I did find out the amount which was about 2000 something, but I guess in my head it didn't made sense as i thought 1024 megabytes would equate to a gigabyte. So I had to fiddle around a bit. Ultimately the course was educational and fun, but could need some tweaking with some of the exercises. I also saw that a lot of people's account were getting temporarily banned because they repeated exercise too much because they couldn't complete it in the allocated time. If there were instructions for people to gain access to again to qwiklabs and make it more.

Pros: I gained a lot of information about various operating system subjects such as using windows powershell, linux commands, and advanced file management. I have a greater understanding how operating systems perform tasks. I know how to read system logs, format hard drives and even more. Discussion prompts are fun. One is definitely going to learn something new from taking the course.

Cons: While I did enjoy the course the instructors should have of a professional appearance. The last two labs of week of 6 don't have clear instructions so I recommend using the forums for help if needed. Also I don't agree with some of career advice which is basically you don't need a degree to work in tech just many many many years of specialized experience, a lucky opportunity and a mentor. That sounds like those who are privileged socially are going to land the best tech support jobs.

Overall: I'm glad I took the course. My technical skills have increased which will help me grow as tech writer.