Explanations and examples are not so good.

Honestly, there is a lot wrong with this course. The professors glass over a host of very important explanations that are needed to understand the basics of the formulas they are trying to teach. A lot of the time they will fill the formula in and just say "so when you solve for that" which leaves a lot of people at a loss for how to actually solve the formula. The tests are poorly worded and put together, many times the questions will say "state your answer as a percentage rate" and when stated as a percentage rate the answer is wrong because "what you submitted is not a number". I am a person with very little financial background looking to expand my financial knowledge and I have struggled to persist with this course because time and time again a basic formula is taught in the lessons and on the test other more complicated formulae are needed to obtain the right answer.

In summary, the tests are poorly worded and often include material more advanced than what is being taught in the lessons themselves, the professors don't seem like they know what they are talking about, merely reading off of an auto-cue telling them what to say. The professors skip a lot of material needed to understand what they are talking about and what is being asked on the exams. In order to complete this course you will need to spend a lot more time utilizing resources from other parts of the internet to gain an understanding about the financial instruments and how to calculate them.

DO NOT SPEND MONEY ON THIS COURSE. I ended up paying for the course only because I have A LOT of time on my hands and did not manage to cancel my subscription before the free trial ended. From such a prestigious university such a Rice it is disappointing to see the amount of half-assed effort gone into this course.

At the end of the day, this course will give you a better understanding of the financial world than you had previously and if you stick with it, it is quite educational. However be prepared to do a lot of figuring sh*t out yourself.

The course information is very interesting but covers the material too briefly. The topics were covered very quickly and not in very much depth. Quizzes often asked questions in a way that was not covered in the course material and were therefore quite difficult to figure out at times. I'm taking this course series to learn the material, not to be tricked of failed on a quiz. Also as this is a rather math-intensive subject, a more comprehensive review of the algebraic tools and skills required would be helpful. Lastly, there were many mistakes with grammar and spelling in the written portions. I know English isn't everyone's first language, but if we are paying for these educational materials then it doesn't look very professional for there to be glaring errors repeatedly throughout the material. It's not that difficult to have a native speaker proof-read before publishing (I would be happy to do this for you, any job openings?). Just some thoughts.

Possibly the worst course I have done on Coursera.

There are errors in the videos, only some of which have been corrected by stopping the video and adding a voice over. At least one of these errors leads to an incorrect answer in one of the quiz questions.

The quiz questions themselves are often badly written and unclear. Where calculations are required it is clear that intermediate steps have been rounded but if you don't follow the same rounding as the question setter, you'll get a slightly different answer which Coursera will mark as wrong.

And they ask you to round the answer when what is really wanted is truncation.

They've even used the same question in 2 quizzes in Week 3 with different answers because they're rounded (truncated!) differently.

I'm a paying customer (I have a Coursera subscription) and expect better.

2 out of 5 Dr. O!

The material was interesting, but it lacked in sufficient practice resources for the mathematical portions. Also, instructor support / feedback to student questions was lacking. I found this course adequate if it was free, but not worth $79 for the amount of resources I was given to practice what we learned. This is highlighted by the fact that the weekly quizzes didn't show you the solution when you missed a question, so you were left guessing (instructors don't respond to student discussion questions) if the videos didn't address that specific question type.

It is such a disappointment for this one. Maybe it just could not fit my aim.

It teaches more about calculation instead of how to invest. I think maybe the title was wrong, it is more in finance calculation instead of investment itself, or how to become a smart investor.

And the worst part, is even for the basic calculation part, there are errors..... Finance is such an elaborate job. I could not make the balance sheet balanced if I got one little mistake during the calculation or recording process.

Basically and logically, I lost my trust for this course.

very inconsistent with ease at the end and difficult beginning of the course. lots of wasted time for formulas which never been used in real life and manual calculation. not university course for sure by knowledge. cheap: all articles by Dr O asking for subscription, not good. If its part of the course add it for free, tons of information in inet which is free.

sorry

In my opinion, the course material can only be used as a quidance for further reading from sources and text books which you have to find because it is not an in depth course of the subject . A text book accompaning the material would be extremely helpful or even detailed handouts.

outdated content based on 2015. professor makes calculation mistakes in videos. very difficult to follow the limited material and how it relates to the questions. video quiz questions are raised before the relevant content is presented

While course provides a good general direction, lecture videos are full of mistakes, handout material is useless and you have to complete the missing material by searching through other online resources

So many equations left with "you can solve that" or not fully explained. Most of the teaching was done like a classroom that you dread with writing on the chalk board and so many miscalculations.

Brief highlight of topics, with no proper demonstration of formulae derivation. Examples are often brief and the practice questions are often much harder than the actual examples given.

Quite a few types in lectures and quiz solutions. The typos discredit the lecturer in a sense even though she is actually very knowledgable.

Aprendí mucho pero no es los suficientemente claro, no están bien hechas las traducciones, y los paper están todos en ingles, mal ahí

Some calc and formulas are not clear otherwise the course allowed to have a general overview on financial instruments and trades

Repeated math errors, some corrected, some not. Terrible instruction.

way too many peer reviewed assignments.

Insufficient examples or analogies

I didn't enjoy the lectures

This course is horrible. I was expecting to acquire some finance basic skills before starting my first finance course in uni, but this has done little for me. I'm okay with the fact that no one is answering learners' questions on the discussion forum because there could be no obligation for Rice University to do so, but the content itself is absolute disappointment.

Despite her spectacular skills on writing in mirror, the lecturer jumps around concepts too quickly and I often have to find certain information on google, as these are not being covered in videos but will appear on quizzes, which is really frustrating and annoying. She probably thought she had explained the concepts well by using synonyms. For example, the slides say this is a conventional way, and she'll say 'so it's typical, it is what it is, right?'. Most of the time, she doesn't tell us what par values, market values and face values are. I get that this could be quite elementary, but as a student who haven't learnt anything about Finance, this course has done nothing -- Googling is probably more efficient and helpful than this cramped content. Hence the 1 star.

The professor makes constant errors during her presentations. One or two is okay, but I completed the first module and she made an error in almost every video. It’s not very conducive to learning. Also, she often said “you can figure out the calculation...” and wouldn’t provide the answer for us to check if we were right.

Sadly the instructor is very hard to understand. Her speech is not clear and she jumps around too fast without explaining how she reached solutions ,conclusions etc.

Very possible that this too advanced for my level of knowledge.

Lectures do not cover the formulas that are needed for calculations or are doing a very poor job with it. No references to where to find the stuff which is unclear. The course is quite frustrating at times!

The topics and concepts are touched just on the surface, assignments often have confusing questions and/or incorrect answers

A week in and there have already been several mistakes in the lectures. Very uninspiring.