Learner Reviews & Feedback for Ask Questions to Make Data-Driven Decisions by Google

Your topic header says Ask Questions to Make Data-Driven decisions. This jumped around on so many other subjects that this should have never been the header. Basically, the courses were all over the board from learning about spreadsheets, formulas, & functions, to how to conduct meetings properly to how to communicate correctly. For me, it was not structured at all and jumped all over the place

I finished the course within thirty minutes. If you are keen on picking up context clues you will ace this course. I was expecting more hands on experience, as opposed to one question asking how to use SUM or something simplistic like that. The course challenge questions? Are you kidding me? Honestly, I think high school courses were more challenging than this. I know this is the second part in an eight part course, but so far everything learned here could have been answered with a quick google search. Yikes.

I wan't given a chance to rate the first course, so this applies to courses 1 and 2. So far, It's hard not to think that this is largely a waste of time. After many hours working through the first two courses, only midway through this second course did I actually do something - create a spreadsheet, perform some functions and formulas and make a dashboard. Otherwise, these lessons have been mostly just watching talking head videos and then answering multiple choice quizzes. Very disappointing, and a terrible way to learn something new. The program so far feels very padded, as if the creators knew they didn't have much content and wanted to find ways to stretch the material they have. The rudimentary nature of some of the content is surprising. Maybe Google could take for granted that anyone signing up for this certificate already knows what "data" is, as well as "the cloud," and wouldn't need these terms to be defined and quizzed? In the second course, far too much time is spent "teaching" proper email etiquette and how to behave during a meeting! At best this should have been optional reading fo those who feel they need it. Way too much time is spent simply regurgitating definitions of terms. It's almost laughable to watch a 5 min video of someone introducing general concepts on a topic, answer a short quiz, and then have the next video begin with someone congratulating me on having learned all about the previous topic.

This course provides a decent overview, but it too often references terms that it either hasn't explained or hasn't discussed in enough detail. For example, the distinction between primary and secondary stakeholders is not made very clear, but one of the tests expects the test taker to have more information than has been taught. Another example is that a number of more advanced spreadsheet functions are shown, but the material doesn't make it clear that we're not expected to know that information yet.

Impressed with content. Gives concise, practical insight on how to communicate effectively in an analyst role. Definitely worth reading and watching all of the material.

This certificate program is not cutting it. It feels as if Google created a Google doc and asked their entire company to compile a curriculum. Fuzzy overlapping ideas, meandering, droning, endlessly repeating. The material is primarily delivered by "talking heads" through video. You will rarely engage in actual technical work or use statistical tools for applied analysis. This is a shame because the great power and utility of state-of-the-art statistical tools is what brings people into Data Science in the first place. Instead, you will hear a lot of stories and manufactured examples of how Googlers and Nooglers (whatever that is) have found success in their practice. Data analysis at Google is a far cry from what data analysts encounter in the broader business world. This is a punishing, miserable experience thus far that will have you feeling like you have spent hours upon hours listening to a seminar without acquiring any technical skills (consider this a review of the first and second course in the 8 course curriculum).

The course gives a great overview on how a data analyst thinks, poses questions and prepares their work to start a task on the right path. It also contains useful information on what to do in conflict situations, who to contact and how to politely react and communicate, which I found very valuable.

My main problem with the courses so far is that they feverishly focus on definitions. The way concepts are explained are very lacking and dry. They are in desperate need of visuals such as graphs, animations and screen captures. All these topics can be perfectly shown visually, so I can't understand the decision to almost exclusively have someone talking to a camera. The people are sympathetic, but all these concepts are abstract! There's a bit of an irony considering we learn that preparing data to stakeholders in a way they can grasp the information is important. So why not treat the students the same way?

The course challenge felt out of place and didn't really build on what we've learnt. It's strange we're focusing so hard on definitions and glossaries, but end up only needing an alarmingly shallow end-test to pass the course. It would profit from a timed exam that has far more questions and that actually makes the student utilize the provided spreadsheets, rather than having it all pre-chewn, only to peek at and ticking one of 4 boxes. Otherwise this course is set on the right foot. It's all there! But the execution feels very lacking and disappointing.

Dear Google Team, your work so far has been soooo great and I'm absolutely grateful you provide this opportunity, but this course definitely needs a lot more polish!

i liked this course and specially the last few weeks when we learned how to communicate healthly with our future colleagues and our stakeholders!!

cant wait to start the next course

In the videos they explain basic stuff, which is very boring, but when it comes to the quicklab that stuff starts to get really complicated very fast, also pictures, videos and writting that sometimes contradicts each other is pretty annoying. I do not think that whoever designed this courses had previous experince with people learning new skills on this kind of platform.

The weekly quizzes often are not clearly posed enough that an experienced learner who is taking the fast track can guess at the correct format for the answer. For example, one question asks for correct Formula syntax, but rejects answers with an "=" at the beginning.

I really expected more out of a course from Google. I don't even know where to start in outlining what was not up to standards. It seems clear that there is not a skilled educator involved in designing this course or the certificate program in general. This is more a forum for googlers to tell us a few things about what it is like to work as a data analyst rather than actually teaching the necessary skills of data analysis. Why on earth should we be learning about how to be considerate in our meetings as data analysts before we actually learn about data analysis? Honestly this is shameful. Do better, Google.

I just finished the 2nd Course in the Google Data Analyst course - even though I have experience in the field, this course reminded of areas that I should focus on and work to strengthen my skills in.

The best thing about this course is connecting the dots; How data is associated with communication. Not only focusing on knowledge limited to the scope of data but giving 360-degree knowledge.

Personally, I felt I was being lectured in some mistakes in the past relating with some clients who i freelanced for recemtly. So far so good, this is the best course I have taken on coursera

Some good hands on stuff, but a lot of review if you've done some stuff with spreadsheets already. Really it seems like it's naming and categorizing things I learned on my own.

Too much talk about unimportant stuff and not enough exercises to apply what we've learned. This course was way too oriented on beginners but didn't offer much to actually learn. The lectures should be more straight to the point. There wasn't enough material to cover 4 weeks of learning. I finished the course in 2 days.

There is very good content over here. Everything is explained well and in simple terms. I learned many things from this Amazing course. This is the perfect course for me, Thank You.

Everything is explained well and in simple terms. Special thanks to the instructor for making the course lively, with interesting examples. Her enthusiasm is contagious.

This is by far one of the worst online courses I have ever taken. The fact that this has been developed by Google makes it even worse. I have learned nothing that I can say will help me in data science and I honestly feel cheated. I don't recommend this course to anybody and I consider it a complete waste of time.

As many others have stated, this course jumps all over the places. I do appreciate career advices. We are here to learn practical skills. Frankly, I just have to wait until I get my new job to see if any of those advice is beneficial.

Did Google ask every one of their employees to log in and give five star ratings? Rambling, disorganized, hours of video on the general definitions of topics and mere seconds on actual technical skills. Waste of time and money.

The instructor was natural and enthusiastic, like most Google instructors. I think for the information presented, she was fine. As for the content of the course, I know that there was important information presented; however, it seemed like they didn't have enough content for this course, so they introduced a lot of other topics. They are important. I just think that most people are looking forward to learning specific skills with spreadsheets and databases and less soft skills. Like I said, though, the soft skills are important to. In sum, this is still just an introductory course and will probably be quite easy for most people.

Everything was on point you didn't bring to much deep information about topics which is understandable because, I who is one of the participants is a student and I don't have a lots of experience about it to deeply understand it , but I still think that topic Metric should be given a bit more explanation otherwise everything was perfect for a beginner like me, Thankyou.

A.

I think subjective questions in this course has helped me in understanding the concepts clearly. It actually erase any assumption and concretize my understanding. This course has covered wide range of concepts including effective communication, role of stakeholders, structural thinking and also spreadsheet basics.

I have learned a lot about how to make the right questions for gathering data, identifying the primary and secondary stakeholders, manage expectations from stakeholders and communicating with the team. Nice real world examples of interview challenges and Junior Analyst possible business tasks. 5/5 Ximena is great.