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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Fundamentals of Visualization with Tableau by University of California, Davis

4.5
stars
6,601 ratings

About the Course

In this first course of this specialization, you will discover what data visualization is, and how we can use it to better see and understand data. Using Tableau, we’ll examine the fundamental concepts of data visualization and explore the Tableau interface, identifying and applying the various tools Tableau has to offer. By the end of the course you will be able to prepare and import data into Tableau and explain the relationship between data analytics and data visualization. This course is designed for the learner who has never used Tableau before, or who may need a refresher or want to explore Tableau in more depth. No prior technical or analytical background is required. The course will guide you through the steps necessary to create your first visualization from the beginning based on data context, setting the stage for you to advance to the next course in the Specialization....

Top reviews

DA

Aug 24, 2020

Am glad I learnt a lot from this module, which I know will sharpen my skills for my chosen career path as a data scientist. Am hoping to learn more new skills to improve on my already existing skills.

HR

May 1, 2017

Amazing course, amazing instructors and assignments. I really enjoyed working with Tableau.

You may experience some confusion for some assignments but don't worry! Just use the discussion boards :)

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1 - 25 of 1,533 Reviews for Fundamentals of Visualization with Tableau

By Mykola S

Aug 24, 2016

This course is terrible for many reasons. Firstly, the amount of content is ridiculously small - only about 20 minutes of video lectures per week. Moreover, more than 50% of content is just non-relevant.

Secondly, practical assignments are very poorly planned:

1) in weeks 3 peer graded assignment students are asked to save Tableau workbooks as twbx files, even though this feature is not supported by Tableau Public that is used in this course. The assignment itself is just opening and saving file in Tableau.

2) in weeks 4 peer graded assignment you just asked to write some vaguely defined 1 page description. It doesn't include any Tableau-related activities.

Thirdly, quizzes are ambiguous and very general.

Overall, this course is just a waste of time. For comparison, you can easily get more useful information about Tableau from the 4 minute long "Getting started" video on the Tableau website than from this course. Just wonder how Coursera allows such courses to be places on the platform.

By Katrina

Sep 9, 2018

The content might be ok but the support on this course is ridiculous. Mentors/teachers don't respond in the discussions which means assignments are poorly understood. Then 'peer graded assignments' are a joke - how can a peer grade you when they don't even understand the assignment cause its so poorly written. I got completely opposite grading from two different people, meaning one is clearly wrong but both count as my 'grade' - don't bother with this course, save up a few months and go to a real course where you can speak to the teacher and don't have depend on morons scoring your assignments.

By Juan P H G

Apr 18, 2019

I'm sorry but this course is just bad. The fact that the assignments are peer reviewed put you in a dead lock. You are at the mercy of "peers" that doesn't even check the answers you provide and are just plainly rude. Disappointing.

By A

Mar 10, 2018

The course content is very good and lots of efforts have gone in to create this course.

**Request**

Since number of enrolled students may vary, "peer review" type questions makes it difficult to get a grade. Even if you've submitted your assignments, if there is no one to review your work, you don't get a grade. This is disappointing and very discouraging.

I request the course creators to consider this and try to make the tests such that learners can complete the course on their own. I believe this would motivate students to complete the specialization.

By Rohit B

Apr 23, 2020

This is an excellent course on fundamentals of visualisation. Mixing the title with the word "Tableau" may give the wrong notion of the course content to the students (did to me at least). Ok, I am a bit harsh here as there is indeed some introduction to the Tableau Public variant. However, it is very limited. So many students may give up due to mention of Tableau (without being a Tableau course).

That said, I have now attended courses 2, 3 and 4 already as well. So I consider myself reasonably familiar with Tableau. My suggestion is the following:

1. Do this course even if it disappoints you along with course 2 (goes on the same line).

3. By end of course 2, you would learn some very cool concepts around the visualisation topic and some very interesting background reading materials. Note that the time mentioned to read the background materials is heavily understated. It took me a lot longer than 10-15 mins that they stated as recommended time to read it.

3. Once you hit courses 3, you would suddenly start realising the true power of Tableau. That course is awesome.

4. You'd see true powers of Tableau in course 4, with storyboarding where you really start seeing your viz shaping up.

By Deleted A

Jan 19, 2018

I found this to be a disappointing course. Yes, its an introduction and you can't do much in an intro course... but...

The Tableau parts have no real added value on top of what's available for free on Tableau's site.

The Week 3 assignment was very frustrating, it was poorly worded and the instructions to export didn't work for the Tableau Desktop that I had installed as per the course instructions. The assignment should have been a consolidation but it was the first time that we played around with data sources.

The Week 4 assignment did not use Tableau at all.

It would have been much better to have had one example to follow through from start (obtain data, prep, import) to creating a Visualisation that was part of the course work. Then add some assignments that allow you to build on what you've already seen.

In terms of visualisation terms and concepts, this was very light and relied on some other well known (& readily available) material.

As the content was very light I was able to finish the course in a lot less time than the course overview estimates, well, everything other than the confusing Week 3 assignment.

I won't be continuing with the specialisation.

By Irving G M

May 29, 2020

It requires to have tableau Desktop and an account of Twitter, it sould't ask to have an account on any social net and should work even for tableau Online. The level is extremely low and it goes extremely slowly.

By Gregory S S

Sep 14, 2020

This course focused too much on what to do with not enough on how to do it. 2 projects that made-up 60% of the grade for the course was peer-graded based upon criteria that had nothing to do with Tableau. Finally, visualizations were published to Tableau Public AND to Twitter. I see no value in publishing to 2 places and suspect that the publication to Twitter was to promote the course, the instructor, and third party sites.

By Steve R

Oct 18, 2017

Course outline is logical, content is great but the presentation videos are something to behold. Or not. The presenters speak in a bizarre rambling vernacular that I find to be infuriating. Spent five year on a ChemEng BS and another two on a BiochemEng MS and NEVER once had to suffer through a lecture as messy as these ones. They are completely lacking in clarity and professionalism. Read the transcripts of the viedeo lectures and you'll immediately see what I mean. If english is not your first language you will be confused. If it is your first language you will be frustrated. There are better online courses on data viz out there taught by genuinely intelligent and articulate professionals. I'm looking forward to taking them after I complete this series of five sloppy courses. In spite it all, I did learn a few basics and put them into practice and became familiar with a top-of-class BI viz tool. So, if you can slog through a few month of sub-amayure style teaching you just may learn someone but you'll have to be motivated to do a lot of self-directed learning.

By Kashyap M

Feb 7, 2019

It's a good course. I am currently in the second course in this specialization and it has already captivated me in the world of Tableau.

Also, the energy of Govind Acharya is infectious. It clearly can be seen and heard from his voice how much he is enjoying teaching this course.

By Daniel A

Aug 25, 2020

Am glad I learnt a lot from this module, which I know will sharpen my skills for my chosen career path as a data scientist. Am hoping to learn more new skills to improve on my already existing skills.

By Jayson M (

Nov 3, 2021

final project requires you to create and use a social media account

By Wojciech H

Dec 22, 2020

It is highway robbery that they charge you for this course. I've gone through the entire specialization in about 7 days and this course is about 70% fluff, 27% visualization theory, (which goes out the window in the corporate world), and 3% hands on with Tableau which they will glaze over quickly and expect you to create visualizations during peer assignments. The worst part is that they stop you in the middle of lectures to quiz you about material that has not been introduced yet, expect you to memorize very nuanced Tableau details and fluff material for the quiz. You can get much more detailed material on Youtube for free, or even at Udemy for a fraction of the cost. I actually regret wasting my time on this course. Just to give you an example of how much of a waste of time this course is, this is taken verbatim from the 4th course, week 2 lecture. "Table calculation are really cool because they do a lot of stuff and it's downright magical."

By Siddharth K

Aug 18, 2020

It was a great learning experience on Coursera helps me a lot, Pursuing the course from Coursera will help me build my knowledge and skills. Because Coursera is a platform which is providing life-transforming learning approaches and development of personality in real business challenges understanding concepts with learning tools facilities of notes, quiz other helping guidance to makeover Monday. The discussion forum also helps in solving queries with posting comments through mail or feedback. Once again thanks to Coursera, It's a platform which can make us personality develop and learning approach. This can help us to build our potential and ability to study more with a professional network.

By Igor S

May 5, 2017

I am very glad for my participation in this course. As always, it´s a very good work from the Coursera team and the University, I think. I you don´t know any information, the discussion forum is open for all of you. Thank you so much.

By Raj J

Oct 23, 2021

The course deserves a 5-star rating because: (1) content is relevant, (2) the professor is concise and possesses great teaching skills, and (3) the learning modules are applicable to daily problems.

By Alpesh G

Aug 12, 2021

Define interactive visualization and install Tableau Public so you can start to get acquainted with it. identify and describe the various parts that make up the welcome screen, worksheet screen, and dashboard screen. You will be able to make three different charts: a line chart, a treemap, and a bar chart. You will be able to create a dashboard with those charts, and be able to add some simple dashboard interactions. You will also be able to discuss where to go for inspiration and how to get involved in the Tableau community. You will be able to discuss and apply 5 data visualization best practices and participate in a #MakeoverMonday project.

By Martin N

Feb 7, 2021

Great overview and introduction - not only to the software but also to the visualization community.

One issue I did come across was that one or two of the walkthroughs were not consistent. For example, one walkthrough designed a graph of a series of lines, and when it was carried forward to the next lesson, the colors of the lines changed. It was only a cosmetic change, and the content was the same, but I had to go back to see if I missed a step (nope); and some of the other students commented on it as well.

By Manthan K

Mar 23, 2020

It\ helps to understand all the basics regarding Tableau and also how to use it and install the tableau. It covered all the fundamental;s of visualization with tableau and the quiz were also good.

By Hossein R

May 2, 2017

Amazing course, amazing instructors and assignments. I really enjoyed working with Tableau.

You may experience some confusion for some assignments but don't worry! Just use the discussion boards :)

By Navneeta S

Mar 3, 2020

Coursera provide us platform to enhance my knowledge and capabilities, if you are not capable to pay then it's provide a tremendous help to do any course and enhance your career opportunities.

By Nancy L L

Oct 5, 2017

I think I loved everything about this class. It wasn't easy, but it was fun and enlightened me on better ways to tell stories and tell stories with data visualization. Can't wait for class 2.

By Tumelo M

Aug 29, 2017

This course is very good intro to anyone that has never done Data Visualization. You get clear understanding of the objectives and the Fundamentals of what Data Visualization is all about.

By Obinna F E

Jun 30, 2021

I recommend the course. It presents an excellent introduction to the course.

By Josh J

Aug 10, 2020

Overall, it's a good beginner course to understand the fundamentals of Tableau; I learned a couple of new things as a novice.

My only criticism is the use of third-party affiliations such as Google Sheets, bit.ly, and Twitter, and the fact that I had to create profiles on these sites. For one, my company makes applies security controls which made submitting the exercises way more tedious and the fact that I have to expose myself to more social media when I'm trying to limit my self from them. Apologies for the rant :/ but it seemed like we could have done with out these tools. Thanks.