This was a real mess of a course. The format was badly organized, the reading materials and PowerPoints were poorly done, the videos were badly edited... Really, I don’t even know where to start describing how unprofessional it was. It needs MAJOR editing and revision.
The quizzes and assignments were SO BADLY written they were almost incomprehensible, as if they were written in a foreign language and then poorly translated into English. The reading materials had almost no citations, despite the fact that they are apparently created by an accredited academic organization (U of M). The occasional url was thrown in in some of the videos and reading, but those often went to 404 error messages or to embarrassingly amateur personal or small business websites. The materials were woefully out of date and were wildly inaccurate when describing current innovations, business challenges and the economic climate. (For instance, statistics from the 2016 World Economic Summit are interesting historical data, but should not be considered appropriate resource material for 2020. Or even 2019, 18, or 17).
Incongruously, a very big learning challenge comes smack at the beginning of this course. This was an assignment to create three short videos, post them online, and also create a logo or business image, and post it as well. There were absolutely no directions on how to do these things. That’s WAY beyond reasonable expectations for an entry-level student, and far more difficult than anything that followed. It was also FAR beyond the skill level of even the people who created the forms used to do the assignments... they failed to allow the student to cut and paste the URLS of the videos and images that were created.
My last criticism is that many of the “experts” cited in the course are complete cranks or at the very least, not “lean starters.” At the worst they are corrupt and exploitative. Elon Musk and Ms. Rothschild are great examples of all three categories. Many of the students who took this course with me were not native English speakers, and a good number of them are from former colonialist empires. The “out of touch”-ness of this course in general is cringeworthy, but that, to me, was the most egregious inclusion.
Apparently there were mentors for the class but no one replied to my posts in the forum, and I did not see any mentors attempt to answer other students’ questions in the forums. I doubt this will be read by anyone responsible for the course, but I would warn anyone considering this class or series to look elsewhere.