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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Introduction to Spreadsheets and Models by University of Pennsylvania

4.2
stars
3,811 ratings

About the Course

The simple spreadsheet is one of the most powerful data analysis tools that exists, and it’s available to almost anyone. Major corporations and small businesses alike use spreadsheet models to determine where key measures of their success are now, and where they are likely to be in the future. But in order to get the most out of a spreadsheet, you have the know-how to use it. This course is designed to give you an introduction to basic spreadsheet tools and formulas so that you can begin harness the power of spreadsheets to map the data you have now and to predict the data you may have in the future. Through short, easy-to-follow demonstrations, you’ll learn how to use Excel or Sheets so that you can begin to build models and decision trees in future courses in this Specialization. Basic familiarity with, and access to, Excel or Sheets is required....

Top reviews

MM

Jun 21, 2017

This course has made me understand cost accounting, has provided a fresh perspective on how to solve some of the challenges i had with management accounting and as a bonus, made me love maths again :)

RJ

Jun 11, 2020

The course is worth the time , the faculty teaches you about some complicated advance formulae with so much clarity and ease that even beginners can be pro in excel related to business and finance.

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576 - 600 of 712 Reviews for Introduction to Spreadsheets and Models

By Ryan D

•

Apr 29, 2020

Quizzes need to be updated and are very subjective sometimes. There are multiple ways to skin a cat especially in excel, but this course and its respective quizzes basically say there is only one right answer. Professor has mistakes in his excel models that he uses for class lectures, but again your expected to be perfect based on logic that isn't cover in the lectured. Good coverage of material for an intro to excel however,

By Deleted A

•

Apr 27, 2016

For what you pay for, this course is not worth it. While I was able to follow the lectures, the material is very introductory and I was hoping to learn more. The lectures are really short in duration and the quizzes aren't challenging. I feel that pricing of this Specialization is purely due to the brand name of Wharton. Please improve this Specialization to encompass more depth in the course material or lower the price.

By Matthew V d M

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Jun 7, 2017

This course left a lot up to the student, as many quiz questions were far too ambiguous or were barely covered in the materials. I'm flabbergasted that no clarity was given regarding how Excel formulas should input in the quiz answers, which naturally causes correct answers to be rejected because of arbitrary formulaic differences. A lot more work needs to be done on this course to make it useful to the student.

By Jim S

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Jun 23, 2020

The material was interesting but a challenge. As someone with little to no experience with spreadsheets, I had to refer to directions to review materials after not being successful on quizzes. The directions were not relevant to the questions and I found the overall presentation to be inconsistent and lacking in a meaningful order to follow. I wanted to understand, but I couldn't connect with the method.

By RUIZ B J

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Nov 14, 2020

Considero que se debería dar información complementaria para obtener una mejor experiencia.

Para resolver algunas actividades hay que tener cierto dominio de conceptos matemáticos que se dan por adquiridos previamente sobre todo en lo referente a teoría de probabilidades y estadística.

Las explicaciones y las presentaciones que da el tutor son escuetas.

Gracias por darme la oportunidad de ofrecer mi opinión.

By Hernando E

•

May 3, 2020

Significantly worse than any of the other 5 courses (all of which are authorized by U. of Penn. and Wharton).

The lecture slides for all modules were essentially useless.

3 of the 4 module quizzes have questions whose meanings are unclear

The screen size for the professor's demonstrations of the spreadsheet functions was too small to follow.

Worst of all, I didn't learn nearly as much as I had hoped to.

By Martin E

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Apr 28, 2022

I would have given this course 3 stars, but since it's from Wharton institutions standards should be higher. The questions on the quizzes were not always covered in the material and videos, questions where confusing and overall information could have been demonstrated better, there are many problems that have been reported by previous students of the course but yet they remain 5 years later.

By SiDdharth S

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Aug 5, 2018

I had a good background in excel and finance and that is sole reason I was able to comprehend. Moreover, the questions need to be change. They get vague sometimes. There is quite good use of jargon without even describing those terms. And for the complete SPECIALIZATION, whenever I give quiz I would be happy to know that why is this answer wrong instead of shooting in the dark.

By Kristen F

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Dec 21, 2018

Tests are not flexible with answers: for instance in week 2 or 3 (I forgot), with Ce;; X and Cell Y, =(1+X)*Y was not accepted when =Y*(1+X) was accepted.

And many quiz questions deal with topics not covered by lecture.

There is also a lack of support for the course. There is a "mentor" but he doesn't have the ability to improve the course (reword questions, etc.).

By Martin A W

•

Oct 8, 2020

Really good video for improving your excel ability but the test are fucking difficult because it depend on smallest details. In addition excel version are differen depending on your country setting. It was the most difficults assement in my coursera career so far. Only week I could solve under with three attempts or less the other needed up to 8 attempt

By David Z

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Jun 24, 2020

I am aware this is an introduction course, however, some of the concepts and information presented is too surface-level basic compared to the questions required to be answered from the quiz. In essence, it seemed the questions from the quiz did not match the information presented many times. However, there is no doubt I definitely learned many things.

By Alex Y

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Feb 2, 2021

Course really needs to be updated. Information feels dated (proffesor suggests Google Sheets Tools that are not functional any longer) and the format of the quiz questions needs to be fixed. Slides provide little to no information for studying. This class gets lost between an introduction and an interaction class due to the quiz's.

By Jonathan K

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Jun 9, 2020

The professor did not do a good job at explaining the concepts. Coming from no background experience in modeling or excel, the professor really glossed over getting from basic spreadsheet knowledge to having a completely filled out model. I wish the videos were more structured like the first course in the specialization was!

By William

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Sep 26, 2017

I think more time could have been developed on QA/QC on the quizzes. I thought the presentation of questions was not that clear. Upon becoming initially discouraged with myself on not answering questions, I found in the forums that I was not alone in being a little frustrated with the presentation of the quizzes.

By Elli L

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Aug 1, 2017

This course did not meet my expectations. Firstly, the videos are way too short in length and substance. So much more can be covered in spreadsheets/models. Nothing was covered in terms of cash flows, business cases etc. Too much focus on (in my opinion), things that not everyone will deal with in the real world.

By Blake W

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Jul 3, 2016

I've only taken 2 classes with Wharton online. This and Intro to financial accounting. Financial accounting is awesome. It taught smoothly and explained things well. This class jumped around and didn't give full explanations and had questions on one quiz that we didn't learn until the next week.

By Lacey J

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Jul 18, 2018

This course was helpful, however not particularly instructive. A lot of the specifics on how to do things in spreadsheets were quickly glossed over. The course notes were not particularly useful. The exams seemed prone to errors in grading and Coursera was unresponsive in resolving the issues.

By Luis M M d S

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Apr 29, 2018

I have expirience using montecarlo and excel statistical functions. Unfortunantly the exams were very confusing and the open questions hard to answear not because of the difficulty but to get the particular answear asked by the teacher.

This module should be developed more deeply

By Mark J F

•

Jul 9, 2022

The question on the quizes are so broad that makes it really difficult to answer the questions, some mistakes I've noticed are the indicated cells on excel on the question are wrongly selected, which makes it more diffficult to figure out what the question is trying to ask.

By Xiaohang W G

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Apr 1, 2017

Definitely could be more systematic and clear. Sample spreadsheets could be improved in many ways and any attention to detail would do this course much good. Tests and quizzes also could benefit a lot with a revise-currently plenty of confusion with phrases and wording.

By Jeosiah C

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Aug 12, 2019

The lectures were too focused on the examples that are discussed in them. There is little explanation as to why the skill is important. Improvements should also be made in explaining when and how to use the skills and functions being taught throughout the course.

By Ashwin C

•

Sep 24, 2020

Lectures were great and the professor provided very valuable and applicable examples. The quiz format was made very poorly with no feedback on why the question was marked incorrect. Often times, certain questions in the quiz were not covered during lecture.

By Kishore V R

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Feb 9, 2021

THe lecture was quite tedious, with the professor, going into too many trivial details. Week 4, could have been done within 1 video, not sure why they were spread across multiple modules. In fact the whole course could have been compressed into 2 weeks.

By Gabriel A

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Aug 14, 2020

Poorly made with very little thought gone into the making of this specific course. Youtube was a great supplementary information hub where many of the topics were discussed in more depth than in this course itself! Overall, a very unhappy experience.

By houman h

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Aug 15, 2018

The course was helpful. However, it was not organized and some questions in quizzes where not covered (briefly explained) in the course.

There were unnecessary information in the slides and there was technically no reading material for this course.