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Back to Android App Components - Intents, Activities, and Broadcast Receivers

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Android App Components - Intents, Activities, and Broadcast Receivers by Vanderbilt University

4.2
stars
783 ratings

About the Course

This 4 week MOOC builds upon the overview of Java and Android covered in Course 1 by delving deeper into core Android app components, such as intents, activities, and broadcast receivers. You will learn by example how to program these core Android components together with Android concurrency frameworks and basic Java file I/O classes (such as File and InputStream) and Android storage mechanisms (such as Shared Preferences). You'll also learn how to use the Git source code management system. Throughout this MOOC you'll work incrementally on a project involving downloading, storing, and display images from remote websites. Each week you will add additional capabilities to the project, based on material covered in the lecture videos. You'll spend roughly 4 hours per week watching video lectures, taking quizzes, and programming assignments with Java and Android....

Top reviews

AT

Oct 7, 2018

Very good examples, I recomend taking the optional homework if you can. I couldn't take every but you can learn a lot from this course.

CK

Sep 16, 2017

I really appreciate this course, too good to understand the android framework fundamentals and how they work together.

Thanks.

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1 - 25 of 206 Reviews for Android App Components - Intents, Activities, and Broadcast Receivers

By Benjamin M

Oct 12, 2018

This course does very little to provide resources for different styles of learners. The information is only presented in video format. There are no pdfs to accompany the videos. There are links to to additional resources in the videos, but there isn't a link page to make visiting these sites easier. The worst part is there is no programming required for this course. Each week is just a string of videos followed by a quiz, and then an optional project. I don't see the value in paying for this course over following a youtube channel, so I won't be continuing with this specialization.

By Соломонов М А

Apr 5, 2018

The course doesn't contain any useful information. Course also is obsolete. This is not a course about development for android. This course consist from some theory about android global.

By Christine B

Mar 15, 2017

The entirety of this course is "watch and listen". There are no hands-on activities/assignments that get you implementing what you are (supposedly) learning. The assignments that are offered are optional and consist of filling in the blank code without actually providing you a way to see how your code works in the big picture.

For example - they go on and on about how intents are complicated and tricky, but they don't actually give you a required assignment. It's optional. Then the actual assignment is "Do this here, and this here, and then this here" and only when you have completed every step can you actually run the code. But this doesn't actually show you how to build the intent. All you did was write down what they told you to and where. You never actually build anything yourself. You don't actually get an idea of how these things work or how to implement them yourself from scratch.

The quizzes are also pointless. Every quiz is multiple choice, select all that apply. There's no thought required, just regurgitation of info from the lectures.

Also, the entire week 1 lectures are HORRIBLE. The lectures on git are sssoooo dull that I could not stay awake no matter how much I wanted to. They are given in a monotone, bored tone that will drive you insane.

Overall, this course seems more like it was hastily slapped together, without much thought, and then never looked at again. I would not recommend anyone take this course, let alone pay for it.

By Brandon V

Nov 1, 2016

I was really disappointed with this course, especially considering how great the first course was. IMO...there was too large of a jump between the two courses, and the plethora of "I'm totally lost..." threads in the forums would seem to back up my opinion. I'm currently reading Head First Android Development and it is exactly what I needed to grasp basic concepts as well get my bearings in the Android world. If this class remains the same I wouldn't be surprised to see attendance drop in further courses and/or Coursera starts receiving complaints about the difficulty.

By Shira J

Apr 5, 2017

I didn't learn anything more than what I already knew- which was basic concepts- and was able to pass anyway. I'm very disappointed. I want to be a good programmer, and this did not teach me any programming.

The videos are not conducive to learning. You need a more engaging teaching plan. Don't just read slides to me, I can do that myself. Use videos to explain concepts, but stuff your videos with practice problems. Put more code in the videos and walk me through it. Put in mini-quizzes in the middle of videos, to keep the student aware of how they are doing in short increments. Don't move on to the next thing unless they have learned the first thing.

I was unable to complete the projects because the practical coding was not taught - don't throw a third of the course into the first practice I get to without first walking me through short, contained examples of how to actually use the code, and testing me on each piece before putting it all together.

By Anne S

Oct 14, 2020

This course is unfortunately extremely dull. There are no short quizes in between. There are no excercises where all the information can be applied. There are only optional(!) assignments in the end of each week but there is no opportunity to see the solution of those assignments after submission. In comparision to the previous course of this specialization this is really a total decline of qualitity and I wont't continue with the specialization because of this. There are only very few people taking the course so you have to wait a long time in order to be able to give or receive peer review. The example code which is given on gitlab is not running with the configurations that where given beforehand. I got multiple error messages from gradle but had no opportunity to solve them. I am sorry to say that but it was no fun and a waste of money and time :(

By Karim A

Sep 12, 2017

The course focuses on principles & theories rather than coding and practical experience, also I found the code walk-through are not very useful.

By Satej B

Apr 14, 2020

It was very confusing, and the Peer Graded assignments were tough and couldn't be completed based on the things taught in this course.

By Suhaib O

Dec 24, 2017

Poorly designed, poorly organized, with very few example snippets here and there, don't waste your time.

By Maciej K

Nov 5, 2016

Course work was entirely optional and only started at the end of week 2. The required level of involvement was too low to be helpful. I don't learn well just watching lectures - I can get that much from YouTube!!! However, I expect a bit more when paying $500 for a specialisation.

The first module in the series was too basic but at least there was a lot of coding involved. This (second) module didn't even have that.

By Sawan S

Feb 2, 2019

This is not as much as good that i was expected before taking this course. In this course they only teach you the theoritical topics related to Intents, Activities and Broadcast Receivers and concepts which is good but not how to write code for these concepts. So, for me this is an OK course...

By Pekka H

Feb 27, 2017

The programming exercises should not be optional. I still intend to do them, but now I passed the course with a 100% mark but only 10% of knowledge.

By Tante K

Jan 3, 2017

very superficial

By Abdullah M A

May 14, 2018

more academic and i think it's not for the beginners, it will be good if there is more interactive projects.

By Antonio D C

Feb 12, 2017

More practical application would be helpful in solidifying knowledge. Concepts seem abstract outside of any programming practice. Additionally, flow of lectures seems scattered at times: concepts are introduced then not expounded upon. This creates a distracted learning path that makes it difficult to follow the lessons. (From a beginner programmer's view).

By Josh L

Sep 18, 2018

I'm disappointed with this MOOC because it's very confusing. The teacher talk so fast and explain things in the way that students all know about Android. Hope that they can improve the quality of this MOOC!

By Jade F

Jan 16, 2019

Here in the 2nd course in the Android App Development specialization, you can expect a shift in teaching style that will take more initiative and independent reasoning than before to follow what's being taught and complete the (optional) assignments. Skipping all the assignments probably isn't a good idea if you really want to learn this stuff.

Doug Schmidt is very very good - the lecture/slide style videos are from college courses and it's covering essential content - if you came to learn Android development, you've found the right course! The assignments are also very good - targeted programming tasks to add the missing component to get the app to demonstrate the topic of each unit.

Students need to understand that the material gets more difficult here and that you will need to study the content of the videos and get into the flow of figuring out the assignments without much guidance. That being said, the course will deliver content that is critical for becoming a competent Android developer.

By Utku K

Oct 21, 2016

The course is a very good introductory course. The instructor explains the concepts in detail and with nice and clear examples.

By Denis V

Jul 4, 2017

My opinion that this course is very useful for begginer android developers and middle android developers.

By Mohamed H M

Dec 20, 2018

More amazing and useful course and really i learn more of new things about android from this course

By Noorelddin E

Jun 29, 2019

It is a very good course and it is explained in a good way but the course concentrates on the theoretical part more than the practical part but overall it is a very good course.

By Eric V D D

Nov 27, 2018

It is a good course to understand how Android's internals work, but wich could be complemented with the google's android developer course

By Franklin F

Aug 23, 2020

While this course is very informative and explains a lot of things that happened under the hood, it covers too much abstract information which requires students to spend more time browsing in the internet about the things not explained in the course and thus, will lose focus on the objective of this course. It is also difficult for beginners with no background knowledge about this to write the code included in this course. It would be helpful for students if even minor terms are defined every now and then.

Also, the project assignment is not updated which causes errors when importing into and compiling in Android Studio.

By Ankit S

May 13, 2020

Just explaining the code is not much helpfull.. i understand the time constraints but it will be helpful if you can make a program on the go and expain while programming. Sure it will extend the course but it will help learners learn better. Cheers

By Gabrielle L

Nov 29, 2020

Sadly, this just wasn't as good as Java for Android Coursera class (also done by Duke University). You spend a lot of time figuring out how to implement the concepts that are introduced. For example, with intents, they mention explicit and implicit and spend a lot of time on implicit as that can be mentally challenging. When you get to the homework part where you are doing explicit intents, you have no idea where to start. I'll be taking the local community college class on this topic so I can actually do this stuff rather than having a manager's overview of what these are for rather than the actually process doing them.

Also, there are several items that are incorporated into the class with no explanation. Perhaps including another introductory module to cover Toasts and Lambda might be useful.

I would really like this to be better. It makes me glad I didn't pay for the whole certification track.