You will get what you bring to the table - if you're an avid reader and have the smarts - you'll learn a LOT. Take note of the various books being recommended and read those too. Some of your classmates may not be producing the best work - don't worry - you do YOU and learn at your best level. It really helped me breakdown the basics of Writing and I now read books with a new eye. A new understanding of the art being disseminated. A wonderful course. Well designed.

Mr Scibone is a great professor with unique bulletpoints and suggestions and I thank him for giving me the skills needed to further help me develop as a writer. As for my peers, I appreciate every response they gave me and although at times it was hard to listen to the depth of errors I made in my writing, I felt I needed it to further help me progress. Either way both the readers and professor helped out a lot and I thank them from the bottom of my heart.

I loved the course very much, so much feedback and good reasonable comments for my works. Although the next time it would be really nice to have kinda more reviewing weeks, I mean, clother to the end of the course I felt an inspitation and I needed some feedback from peers, but I couldn't get it bc it wasn't a feedback-week. But still this course gave me SOOOOO much knowledge! Thank a lot! :)

I highly recommend this course. It has made me a better writer and editor. I took good notes that I will refer to often. The professors are all professional and very knowledgeable about their craft, encouraging students to persevere, sharing their own stories about writing and lessons they learned along the way. Each one made this course interesting and fun.

Had a feeling the Capstone Project will be good but it is truly excellent. I highly recommend completing the Capstone after doing the other four courses - it is like having dessert after a four course meal.

I have learnt a lot from this course about writing stories. All the teachers were excellent and contributed in taking our writing to a better level. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole writing experience.

An impressive course that help you improve your writing skills and takes your creativity to the next level. If your future dream to be a writer than I recommend this course for you.

This course was very interesting and I learned a lot . The course materials and videos are relevant and of high quality. I would therefore recommend others to enroll.

Excelente. Soy Argentina, y pude acceder a este Programa de Especialización de Calidad. Gracias

This course is a great value for money and perfect for a first, comprehensive deep dive into basic tools of the creative writing craft. The videos are very good, and the teachers have very different lecturing styles / personalities, which makes it livelier. In my experience, peer review quality was mediocre, before I adjusted expectations, to pretty good, after I did. This was the adjustment: accepting the reality of this being a MOOC, not a personalized teaching experience or a place of learning where all peers have equivalent standards, motivations and aspirations. Before adjusting, I expected to get 3 considerate, detailed, and usable peer reviews for each assignment, in exchange for my 3. After accepting the MOOC reality, I realized that GIVING the peer reviews is great practice and the greater value of the peer review part of the assignments; and if I got ONE single one that matched my standards, I took it as a fortunate bonus. I did get at least one usable review per assignment. Thanks much to Dean F for the extensive, usable and encouraging review of my Capstone story, in a genre you didn't like, and cheekily 5 pages over the ambiguous 15 page limit (in another video, it was said that the final submission could be longer.) Coursera Plus one year subscription is 300-something euros /dollars; Wesleyan in-person tuition is 60 thou a year or more. Summa sumarum: great value for money!

The course was productive in exploring a longer piece of writing, reviewing other author's work, and editing and revising one's own work. The course gave seven weeks to complete the process , but for writers that work more quickly, the interest in one piece of work began to flag, and the requirment of more than a dozen peer reviews seemed excessive, however, it was interesting to read many different genre of writing and the videos with the Wesleyan University writers were informative. This writer was disappointed by the video that discussed publishing and felt it might have contained more concrete information for writers in the program. Overall, the course was compelling in exploring a longer piece of work and for the practice of editing a piece and revising it to its most perfect presentation for other readers as was possible.

I loved this class! The teachers were excellent and the content was very helpful. My only problem was with the peer critiques. Especially in the later weeks of the Capstone project, I just received one word or even one letter responses. I didn't receive any helpful peer critique on my capstone. So that was disappointing. Is there a person who looks through the comments and makes sure people are actually critiquing? Overall I had a wonderful experience! Ryan

I enjoyed the time spent on the specialization and felt that the lesson exercises provided some use towards helping students develop their understanding of the craft. My only real criticism about the specialization is that I feel the curriculum could be a little more intensive. Keeping most assignments limited to a 500 word maximum is very constricting. I wish there were more meatier assignments to tackle building up to the capstone.

I liked the course in nearly all respects; however, I have been waiting now for nearly a week for a grade on my final submission. I turned the story in on time, on December 4th before noon Pacific Standard Time ( I live in the San Francisco Bay Area). I am very frustrated trying to get anyone's attention; I want to take another course but not until I know what grade I received on my short story. Help me, please.

Mike Hassett

I do not like that the capstone project grade is only based on peer reviews only. If someone does not really like the subject matter they may base their grade on that. I do not think I deserved a 80 percent on my capstone. I know there were very few errors with spelling and grammer. My mom a formal school teacher was my editor.

Let me start by saying this: the teachers throughout this specialization were great. I took each individual course in the specialization and learned a lot. However, the other students were less than great. This specialization places your scores in the hands of other students, NOT the teachers, in order to pass. Unfortunately, out of all the times I submitted work for peer review, only once did I get constructive feedback from another student. If you want a serious peer review, you should look elsewhere. This course is saturated with "students" taking advantage of the online platform to get an easy pass and complete the certification with no real effort. They do not review your work and simply give you a passing grade just to move on to the next part of the specialization. The remaining 99% of my submitted work was met with remarks like "..." or a simple "good" from the other students, just to complete their "feedback" without actually doing the work. My work was not reviewed for clarity or consistency, which I depended on other students to provide so that my writing could improve. Regardless, I did my best to provide constructive feedback to the students that I reviewed. It's quite disappointing that I spent so much time and effort to learn the material and no one wanted to take 10 minutes to help their fellow students succeed. Unfortunately, all reviews are anonymous so these students cannot be reported for skimping on a large part of the work. So, all in all, if you want some help with starting your learning journey, the teachers are a wonderful resource. Just don't bet on your writing actually being worth the effort when asking the other students for feedback.

I have enjoyed all the courses in the Creative Writing series. The peer review part is a joke, especially for the Capstone. I spend quite a bit of time trying to give helpful feedback and the feedback I get on my pieces are nothing. You get reviewers that will write "ok" as their only feedback or sometimes they just put in a single letter. Those folks should not get credit for finishing the course. In the Capstone, in the peer review, it took me taking 8 reviews before I actually got something to review. You should monitor that better. If someone doesn't download a file or puts in jibberish in the file, that should not show up for me to review.

I was a little disappointed in this last course. At the very beginning you are given the impression you will have a decent sized final project. This is reemphasized when your first assignment is 15 pages, and the course is 8 weeks. They were a very lean 8 weeks and the final project ended up being only allowed 15 pages. Mine went to 21 and I got rude people who apparently don't like to read and are taking English classes on writing but don't have time to read others work, despite others reading theirs.

I loved learning everything I could in this Creative Writing Course. Believe me I sucked up every piece of information that I could, and where the Professors are concerned, the learning experience was fantastic! However, when it came time to the peer-graded assignments, my ‘fantastic experience’ ended. It took so long to receive a grade on my last Capstone:Your Story assignments. About a week and a half, to get feedback such as this, and I quote,

“A;adv;ajbdsv;kajbdv;kjahsdd”.

In general the specialization has been great!

I feel like the capstone project could be a bit more challenging, maybe having more active instances each week where students could improve and receive feedback faster.

Course material was was good, and interesting throughout. The peer review system however was almost useless the majority of the time. There is nothing to stop people not reviewing or giving no feedback of any kind which very much undermines the product. As consequence there's no way for students to know if they are improving at all. A large number of students are also not complying with the task requirements and are submitted garbage (for what reason i have no idea), but still appear to be progressing. Without removing both these categories of people the course will continue to suffer. It's a real shame as the material is good but the marking system is incredibly poor. This is particularly the case in Capstone where feedback is so essential but i received absolutely nothing during this phase. I honestly have no idea, despite having completed the entire course, if what I'm writing is any good at all, or if I have improved in any way which is very disheartening.

Some issues were noticed in the discussion and this not seems to have been fixed in May 2020. From the presentation I could undertsand that, unfortunately, this course is not what I was looking for. I was lookig for to the point advices about building an outline for example on week 1. Like some sessions we have had in PLOT and STYLE courses. Reviews are too much (see what people says in the discussions) and efficient guidance too less.

The entire 5 module experience was wonderful, enjoyable, stressful (in a good way), inspirational and encouraging. The Professors, the readings, the assignments coupled with the peer reviews made this online experience as close to a real classroom experience as I had hoped it would be. The course gave me the tools needed to keep going myself, as well as tools for reading generally, in a more critical way and, editing tips which are always, invaluable. I looked forward to each new week for the structure and, for seeing what would be required of me for that particular week's assignment and, most weeks, I surprised myself with what I did write. I am sorry that the course is over but I have taken away so much! Thank you.

The Capstone and all its courses have helped me see writing through a different lens than I originally saw. All the classes challenged what I thought I knew about writing and what I needed to improve. I thank all of the professors for giving insight to their best knowledge on all the writing subjects and giving everyone who wants to be a published author, whether through a publisher or self-publishing, the opportunity to explore our dreams and write our realities on paper. If you want to grow as a writer and understand what is needed to succeed? Take the time in these courses and devote your craft to grow. Good luck to all future writers. I can not wait to read your stories!

This last course in the Specialization walks you through the process of writing, editing and submitting a short story. Salvatore's prompts, interviews and the advice form other writers are very helpful. This is truly a capstone of the other four courses in the Specialization. I never believed I could learn so much and improve my skills just by doing the exercises, understanding the principles and finding my way of putting them not practice. Many of the pieces form other participants that I had the opportunity to review were really great. An amazing specialization in all regards. Thank you to all the professors that shared their insights and experience and metored us!!