Very useful.

The delivery is highly professional. The course started off well with the first two modules being easy to follow. However, the quality seemed to decline thereafter due to several reasons: Lack of thorough explanations: While it is shown how to use a certain tool, the course often fails to provide the rationale behind that (why it is used). Unnecessary complexity: The assignments and assessments are occasionally overly complex, requiring additional research. Disconnect between lectures and assignments: The assignments and assessments often seemed unrelated (to some extent) to the lectures. Course structure: The course provides a “Toolbox” with terms and tips at the end of each week. However, it would have been more beneficial if this was introduced at the beginning of each week. This way the leaner may understand the new concepts better; that would also help to complete the assignments. The course does not have any prerequisites. However, I believe that someone new to Excel would struggle beyond Module 3. Even with my decent level of Excel skills, I found the course challenging, especially after Intermediate I. On top of that you would need some understanding of financial analysis when in Advanced module. Therefore, I would not recommend this course to those without some Excel skills or accounting background. There are plenty of online resources for understanding Excel, such as exceljet.net, trumpexcel.com, and Microsoft Support. Overall, the course left me feeling unsatisfied. I felt that I should have opted for a different course, but since I was already halfway through, I decided to finish it. If you do not need a certificate, I would suggest looking for alternatives. However, if you are already skilled and just seeking a recognition, this course might be suitable for you.

Not satisfied with week 5, also the exclusions of practice assignments in some of the weeks too was something that must be taken care of in my opinion.

The course introduces several functions in the excel, while the details are not clearly stated. Therefore, the course is difficult for me.

An assignment didn't work on my system (Mac) even though I followed the said instructions.

the instruction in assessment is confusing, making it hard to solve

No practice challenge for last few weeks especially for Dashboard.

Evidently this course is now unsupported. There are versioning and integration problems with the assessment spreadsheets which must be downloaded and filled on the local machine. For prior courses in this specialization, I had no problem, but for the advanced course, it was impossible to complete the course assessments because of these problems. As a result, I was only able to complete the Intermediate I and II courses, which makes me look bad when I post that on LinkedIn. The question from recruiters will be, because this is such a well known certificate, why didn't she complete the advanced course if she is now a business analyst???

I would rate the course very highly if there was versioning support, but because there isn't, the specialization isn't worth spending the time on, because it's impossible to post it on LinkedIn without reputational damage. This is so disappointing, here I thought MacQuarie University was one of my go-to sources for high quality courses!

There is some alright information in this course's videos, but it's a pretty obvious attempt to get people to sign up for the free trial, take longer than 7 days, and then have to purchase the class. Many quiz questions were not taught on which can make it take a long time to finish this class, or for many students I saw on the forums who dropped out, forever. For that reason, I can't give it anything higher than a one star due to the creators preying on people trying to learn.

Not a very good course, most material is in video format and there is very little reading material

some of its excel files do not match with the lecture video which is very very annoying.

lol