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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Java for Android by Vanderbilt University

4.5
stars
3,041 ratings

About the Course

This MOOC teaches you how to program core features and classes from the Java programming language that are used in Android, which is the dominant platform for developing and deploying mobile device apps. In particular, this MOOC covers key Java programming language features that control the flow of execution through an app (such as Java’s various looping constructs and conditional statements), enable access to structured data (such as Java's built-in arrays and common classes in the Java Collections Framework, such as ArrayList and HashMap), group related operations and data into classes and interfaces (such as Java's primitive and user-defined types, fields, methods, generic parameters, and exceptions), customize the behavior of existing classes via inheritance and polymorphism (such as subclassing and overriding virtual methods). Learners will apply these Java features in the context of core Android components (such as Activities and basic UI elements) by applying common tools (such as Android Studio) needed to develop Java programs and useful Android apps. Learners will work on several hands-on projects throughout the MOOC, i.e., each week will require learners to write solutions to programming assignments that reinforce the material covered in the lecture videos. There will be roughly 4-6 hours of student engagement time per week, including video lectures, quizzes, and programming assignments....

Top reviews

RB

Aug 3, 2020

This course will provide all basic information of android and it will also help you to understand the fundamental of java which is used in android. It really help me to improve my skills in android.

SP

Nov 16, 2019

Excellent !! As a beginner I found this course a major kick-start to building a strong base for my Android app skills. A lot of practice needed though, but these videos would keep me going well

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201 - 225 of 816 Reviews for Java for Android

By Sidik R Y

Aug 2, 2020

Good Course, I am very happy for joining this course.

By Vishal k o

Jun 28, 2019

this was a very nice course i enjoyed working with it

By Usman Z

Feb 4, 2017

A great course which covers a lot of practical java!

By Samer

Jun 8, 2016

Great Course as a first step course in android world

By Sarunas C

Oct 2, 2020

Nicely explained, good quality lessons and tests 💯

By Ismael G

May 3, 2020

Excelentes videos y explicaciones de los profesores

By Ludwin R P

May 27, 2022

Good introduction to Java for Android programming

By Prashant S

Feb 14, 2022

it made me better at android developer

By Sumanth c k

Dec 22, 2021

Place to kick start the basic of java

By Dinith C

Feb 7, 2022

Learn so much

By Carlos A

May 19, 2022

Excellent!

By Harshit “ k

Jun 25, 2022

..

By Sriram

Jan 2, 2022

Template projects with scope for auto-grading were quite useful. Would've been nicer had concepts such as threading and modern Java practices (like for e.g. lambda expressions) were included as part of the course contents.

By KANKAN J

Dec 15, 2021

Course designed to learn Java and Android. More on Android need to include,

By Aditya R

Feb 16, 2022

only for java programming

By Abhishek C

Jan 30, 2022

helpfull course

By RONITKUMAR M P

Mar 15, 2022

good

By Sarthak K

Jan 31, 2022

Not very nicely structured. Mostly talks about java than android development.

By David N W

Sep 17, 2016

As other reviewers have noted, this course is NOT for beginning programmers! (Unless maybe you are a mathematical genius with total recall.)

I have a little background in programming, HTML and CSS, but I found this course to be an absolute nightmare. It would be interesting to find out if any of the rave reviews came from real beginners.

Most of the problems have already been noted by other reviews, so I will only mention a few that I did not see mentioned.

The course requirements should include hardware and software essentials. In particular, the student has no choice but to use Android Studio. If their system is not running a 64bit OS at 2.4 GHz with at least 8 GB of RAM, it can literally take DAYS for Studio to complete the build so that the student can do anything with assignment code.

There is a desperate need for a glossary. The course dives in with more acronyms than the military, and assumes the attmpting learner already has a handle on APIs, SDKs, etc., not to mention many other technical terms (interfaces, ...). If I asked the average programmer to evaluate the MT based on comparisons with the Complutensian Polyglot and Codex Alexandricus, the effect would probably be about the same.

Another glaring omission for beginners is a battery of exercises for each concept/skill.

As for "We've organized all these topics into units that represent roughly 4-6 hours of work each," that is absurd! If you multiplied that by 10, it would still be a stretch.

I have no doubt about the programming and technical competence of the instructors (though there are some errors in a number of the instructions). And I'm sure they are very nice people who really want others to learn. The root problem seems to be what professional communicators call "The Curse of Knowledge" -- a syndrome in which a person is so familiar with their subject that they cannot begin to imagine what it is like for someone who is not.

My recommendation to a beginner is to look somewhere else. Take a good introductory course in Java before diving into the vastly more complex world of the Android environment. I am not qualified to evaluate the course from the perspective of an experienced programmer, but I have noted that they are frustrated by clutter caused by token attempts to make this a beginner course.

My recommendation to the faculty is to completely re-engineer this whole specialization. They should have a separate set of courses truly designed for beginners, and they should get help from qualified instructional designers who specialize in online adult education. (Might not be a bad idea to get the VU English department to review the lecture text as well.)

My recommendation to anyone is to never believe anything Coursera tells you about a course. Audit the course BEFORE you pay any money! This is especially important if the course has not actually started. This course started two months late, and I could not get a refund before the course even got under way!

After taking nearly 6 months to wade through a little over half the course requirements, I decided to look at the rest of the assignments and project. This removed all doubt that to continue was a hopeless waste of time. So, I decided to end the nightmare, and I'm glad it's over!

By Christine B

Mar 6, 2017

If you do not already know java (or at least have some experience with it) I would NOT recommend this class. They say all you need to have is very basic computer knowledge (sending emails, opening a browser), but the lectures are taught using acronyms and terms that are not at the beginner level. Even the basic concepts are explained using advanced terms or examples that contain code far beyond a beginners level.

They also do not really spend any time going over the programming basics. They discuss them a bit, but they never really give you a bigger picture or really how all the concepts you've learned fit together. There is no real consistency throughout the course, it just seems like they are throwing random concepts at you and hoping you understand. Then they throw you an assignment that requires you to do rather complicated coding (for a true beginner) without any other form of practice before hand.

The assignments are also a bit of a mess. All you are really doing is 'filling in the blank'. They give you all this code that has already been written without actually tell you how do to that yourself or what a vast majority of it does and you have to fill in code in a couple places to make it work. But since everything else is written, you can not run the code as you write it to check your work. It will fail because the code is looking for things you haven't written yet. You must write the entire assignment before you can see if the first line of code you wrote works. I find this to be a very poor teaching method. You should be able to check your work as you go, or experiment with different ways of writing things. Instead you are forced to write exactly what they expect.

By Murali K

Jan 11, 2022

Nobody reviewed my assignment and felt like i wasted lot of time

By KARNENA S S

Mar 4, 2022

want to uneroll

By Sarthak S

Dec 1, 2022

I loved the course! It was so much informative, and the learning experience was fun. Illustrative examples used in the course set up a good background and their flow and organizing the course is absolutely remarkable. I thank all the course instructors along with Coursera for making this great course accessible to all the android aspirants.

By Asia M

Mar 1, 2023

I feel like I'm learning a lot so far. I was not entirely new to Java when I started, but I wanted to get some more practical experience with areas I struggle with.

The explanations were done well, and helped with better understanding those problem areas. I look forward to working on the other four courses in this specialization.

By Tomas N J G

Jul 26, 2024

Amazing videos, really good teachers, focused material that helped whit the understanding of the concepts and more, i would absolutely recommend it for those looking to start on java development for android and also java delevolpment in general if you stick to this course only