KB
4.0Reviewed Aug 23, 2024
there was one section that you had to become a member to read the article. that should not be necessary and i did not read t hat article.
Since for some reason the previous courses in the specialisation hide their reviews from the public, here is the review I wrote for "IBM COBOL Software Development Practices". It is entirely applicable to this course, and almost certainly the remainder of this specialisation: ================================================== I thought the previous courses in this “specialisation” were lame. This one takes it to a whole different level. It amazes me that a course with ZERO CONTENT can be put up on Coursera. What amazes me even more is that IBM endorses this mockery. Module 1 is "say hello", module 6 is "say goodbye". The remaining modules consist of several "lessons", which in turn are made up of: - 1-2 videos which are between 15 and 50 seconds long, where a glitchy text-to-speech reads a couple of headings that are allegedly covered in the module. By the way, for module 1 it goes something like "In this module you will learn how to: - blah - Introduce yourself (sic) - blah". - A link to an external resource (the "module reading"), which, more often than not, is not found, other times is behind a paywall, and is often a commercial product’s landing page, popular science writing, or some kind of online tutorial of questionable trustworthiness and English spelling. - An ungraded quiz containing questions that are often not covered anywhere in the module (i.e., in the external reading, when it is accessible), about outdated products, or wrongly phrased, expecting inaccurate answers or not accepting the correct answer. But don't worry, an empty or supposedly wrong answer to one of the questions will get you the "right" answer in the form of a preposterous recommendation to "revisit the [...] lesson to learn that [expected answer]". Each module ends up with a graded quiz, which consists of all its lessons' ungraded quizzes merged together, and a final 10-15 seconds video where the text-to-speech reads the module's headings again. Is this really the best we can expect from IBM? Has Coursera lowered the bar to such an extent since I last took a real, top-level, demanding, specialisation?