Useless. Sure the course teaches some "cool" stuff, that I'm sure is very useful in the real world.

The one star rating is not about the curriculum, it's about the instructors. I feel that they just winged this course. While the beginner and intermediate one courses were very thorough, with plenty of opportunities to practice the material, this course just skims over the concepts. The course videos can be summarized by the student watching the instructor complete his/her spreadsheet. At no point do they spend time to explain the underlying logic behind their choices and the functions they're using...which means that I end up unable to use the formulas in a different context from that of the lectures (and leads me to waste 3 hours of my life per exam trying to figure out everything on my own).

To make matters worse, the practice challenges mentioned at the beginning of each week are nowhere to be found, which means that we have ZERO opportunity to practice using new functions that aren't straightforward at all prior to the exam.

Oh and did I mention that the exam just told you that you have the wrong answer, without telling you why?

Honestly, I was very disappointed with this course. You're better off using Google.

The first 2 courses in the specialization are excellent. The third I would give 3-4 stars. This one was very difficult because what we were trying to accomplish was never explained well. The exams were at a much higher level of difficulty than the instructions. Much of the wording on the exams is so complicated that without the help of the forums and searching on the internet, I would never have passed. I do not think that taking the lower level courses in the specialization prepares you for the complicated lessons in this course. I still have no idea how you decide which function goes where in a complicated nested function. They do great on the basic and Intermediate courses. This one is a total fail for me.

the final for this course is so hard given how unequipped you are off the practice. a lot of the questions I have no idea what to do. Ruined coursera for me

The course is great and the concepts are easy to understand. It added all necessary skills businesses require. However, it would be nicer if there was more practice material, even if not for grade. Just so who really wants to practice more have more materials offering different situations in which you can apply what we just learned. That is the reason for the 4 stars, needs more exercises to help in the process of refining skills and a deeper understanding of the concepts. Thank you for this opportunity. I am very grateful for it. It will sure help me finding a new job and to be very productive and efficient there.

Hello All,

First of all thank you very much for instructors Nicky and Prashan who have delivered, taught and present the contents of the course, which were clearly understandable.

That's why, I have completed whole specialization (4 Courses) in about one month and one week. However, I feel some difficulty to pass week-5 of this Advance course, in which there are more volatile formulas, but I devote more time to understand and clear the concept of these formulas of this week-5.

But, anyway, whole specialization is recommended to all, who have continuously regular working on excel to manage data, preparing MIS,and so on.

Regards,

Neeraj Jain

https://about.me/neeraj-jain

https://www.linkedin.com/in/neerajjain29/

Course & Specialisation completed successfully #EverybodySayWow. I really enjoyed this course and benefited greatly from completing each course in the specialisation. The format really worked for me. I liked the introductory videos and the initial high level overviews provided by Prashan and Nicky. I also loved the tutorial videos and as the specialisation progressed, found it beneficial to revisit some of these where my knowledge was still lacking. As often said, practise makes permanent so the periodic quiz questions and weekly assessments helped ensure that I really had grasped the learning objectives.

Great Work Macquarie.

The

The videos and the assignments of high quality and relevant to the current business environment. The INDIRECT function is still a function that I need to get my head wrapped around. So, as the instructors say "Practice makes permanent", so I guess I know what I will be doing from here on out :-). Some of the final exams were a little far removed from the course lessons and challenge assignments. I recommend adjusting some of the lesson videos and challenge assessment to bring the student closer to what they will experience during their final assessments, or at least provide links to resources to aid the students in their critical thinking.

Thank you for the ride. It was great to do these 4 courses. The first one was really basic, but especially the last course was really challenging (in a good way). I've learned a lot and already put my skills to good use. If there are more course from Prashan and Nikki i'm willing to participate!

I have thoroughly enjoyed this course, as well as all the courses in the Specialization. The instructors do an excellent job of breaking down each subject in an easy to understand logical progression.

It has been a journey for me and I am glad that I have learned so much in these courses. Also I want to thank all learners who have helped me through the exercises, challenges and assessments.

If you want to improve your Excel Skills for Business then this is your course!. It's actually one of the best courses i have ever studied.

It was an amazing ride!. Glad i made it to the final.

Thank you for everything. The course is amazing! It really improved my skills, and actually I've made some great analysis at work thanks to this, so it's more than useful.

Thank you once again.

It is wonderful to complete every course in excel provided by Macquarie University. These courses are really helpful for data analysis. Finally i am pro excel become a King of Excel

The EXCEL course I should have done years ago!

I loved the previous courses because they felt like complete courses. Nevertheless, this last one seems plenty different from previous ones, for example, not all the lecture weeks have practice challenge. I feel a little disappointed by this last course, however, I still believe that the content is completely worthy.

Some of the questions of the assesments were not seen during the course. Formulas laike indirect, index and match should have further explanation and more practice exercises.

The skills teached are a nice to have, however, the setup of the course is just poor. I also did intermediate 1 and 2. You can see that this one was just made quickly without much effort. The practice files for week 4 and 5 where never uploaded (even though they mentioned in the discussion forums that they were working on it 1 year ago).

The last course of this specialization is trash. The videos are explained easy and then the exams are like a 500% more difficult and ask for thigs that were never explained. Its also all over the place when it comes to business applications

There are way too many people in need of help, and no one is getting it from the Staff. Problems with the workbooks, most of the practice quizzes and challenges mentioned in the beginning of the course are nowhere to be found, and countless other issues. This is unfair to those who have paid and will pay for this Specialization. If no one is willing to fix these problems, the least you could do is make this a free course or just take it off your site. I'm beyond disappointed and unsure I ever want to use Coursera again because this made me feel like you're just doing it for the money instead of helping us learn.

That being said, if you see this and are considering paying for this Course, don't bother. You won't get the help needed.

The final course in this specialisation (Advanced) was not at all well planned or structured. Having completed the previous three courses in the specialisation, I was expecting the Advanced course to build on what was taught, however, it turned out to be very vague and not clear at all. The quizzes assume a lot more than what is taught in the course. It was a big disappointment.

Very detailed and very good. I didn't take the first three courses, so the assignments took some extra time. But I'm so happy I continued with this course. Teaches you a lot of good techniques. I will probably go back and take the first three now.

This was one of the best courses I have ever taken in my esperience as a student I really appreciate the effort your team had put on this

Could ve been better if user was stressed to comparatively analyze which functions suits best a given scenario. Also, Address and Indirect functions should have been taught in greater detail.

Nevertheless, a nicely crafted course.

The course is useful because it gives you more information and techniques that could be important to do certain things at your work, however, I think that the explanations could be longer and deeper in order to being able to understand every part of this course. In conclusion, I think that they would have to improve the explanations and add a higher number of them.

The course is good except week 3. The videos do not do a sufficient job at explaining how to successfully complete the assessments. I worked on it for 3 straight weeks to no avail.