This course started out very good but spiraled out of control quickly. There was no detail in the later materials (Weeks 3 and 4) in uses/applications which made it virtually impossible to finish the course without spending an incredible amount of time outside of the class attempting to learn material. The early quizzes were not bioinformatics focused and required a fairly sophisticated level of machine learning to answer some of the questions. In regards to the later material, there should be much more detail. For example on learning how to create dictionaries. That was AWESOME! But nothing beyond how to create them and how to use them. This is NOT a beginner course. Also, the female instructor was awful, she read from a que so much that it was easier to just download the PDF and read it myself.

Class videos provide good information for a beginning programmer, but quizzes are certainly beyond beginner level and cover material not covered in lectures. Potential for a great set of courses, but needs work.

The Final Exam was way too difficult compared with the knowledge provided by the lessons.

If you don't already know some programming, then don't take this course. Without some idea of the concepts involved when you go in you will be setting yourself up for failure. This course is very poorly taught.

A really good class for a complete beginner. The first three weeks was great for anyone that has is a beginner in Python. Although the last week took giant steps and was a little bit unclear, especially with the introduction to Biopython. If you are new with Python, this it is a great course, but be aware of the last week being very difficult! I also hope that there can be another course that could go more in depth and explore the functions of Biopython. But besides the difficulty of the last week, this course was really great.

Compared to the lectures, the final exam was very difficult. It would be great if the professors provide more practical examples in the lectures similar to exam questions.

Os professores ficam lendo um teleprompter, o que atrapalha muito a didática e o andamento das aulas. Além disso, parece que eles não sabem o que falar se não tiverem o que ler. A dificuldade da avaliação final não condiz com a qualidade das aulas ministradas e a falta de exercícios voltados para a Ciência de Dados Genômicos faz com que o material seja de um curso de programação normal. O tópico mais importante (Biopython) foi abordado em apenas uma aula e sem muito aprofundamento. Enfim, achei o curso frustrante.

The professors keep reading a teleprompter, which greatly interferes with the didactics and the progress of the classes. Besides, it seems that they don't know what to say if they don't have what to read. The difficulty of the final exam is not compatible with the quality of the given classes, and the lack of exercises focused in Genomic Data Science makes the material a normal programming course. The key topic (Biopython) was focused only in one class and without deepening or further development. Finally, I felt this course frustrating.

Videos (Vídeos): **

Didactics (Didática): **

Available material (Material disponibilizado): **

Exercises (Exercícios): 0

Assessment (Avaliações): **

Final exam (Avaliação final): *

Final Grade (avg) (Média final): 1,5 (* 1/2)

Errors and glitches in the first two quizes that aren't fixed ('Don't worry, be happy, it's just a formating error, ignore the literal text displayed and just use your imagination to interpret what we thought we meant to say') have left me too unimpressed to spend more time wondering if I need to debug my code or debug their quizes.

There are many other resources for learning python out there, and some of them take pedagogy seriously. Not, it seems, this one.

I learned a lot. The final exam was more difficult than the course content, but I think it was critical for ensuring that I was able to apply the course content.

final project almost impossible based on lectures

Easy to understand and very powerful examples. Not just it made me familiar with python, it also made it easy for me to teach to my students and inspire them to pursue python further.

First 2 week just python basic learning which I had already learned and its advantage for me.

Got more skills from my acceptation.Looking forward advance course also

Coursera admins, DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS AWFUL EXAM!!

Students, this course is OK, but do not expect to be able to pass the final exam. It is the most terrible assessment I have ever seen in Coursera.

The problems presented in Week 4 test required a coding and knowledge level simply not covered anywhere in the course. The questions required logic/programming knowledge and imagination that is magnitudes beyond the course level. This isn't even a question of studying or working harder. I am a scientist with pretty solid Python knowledge and after slaving away at the week 4 exam for 15 hrs x 4 weeks, I was still unable to figure out completely. Part of it is learning curve (like figuring out ORFs), part is that some of the exam answers are just WRONG (like the maximum ORF length questions) and part are just questions with absolutely no basis or precedent in the course (finding repeats of n sequence). In the end I had to guess at the answers. The discussion forums were also useless with no help from teachers and no activity for many years.

This course is a embarrassment for John Hopkins which is a brilliant institution otherwise. Please fix this exam because it is just not up to scratch. Shame on the Coursera admins for letting this course continue unfixed for so long.

I just completed this course. To start, it is advertised as an introductory course, but I personally think you need prior python experience to successfully complete and understand everything. On top of that, you need to do a lot of extra research and practice that is outside the scope of the course. This means, studying how to write basic python programs and understand how exactly programs work. The beginning of the course explains the python language and the basics, but a 10 minute lecture does not give you enough knowledge to complete and understand the quizzes. For me personally, I was able to complete most of the quizzes just from being fluent in python, but for a beginner, I can see them having a hard time and struggling. The final exam is actually fairly difficult for those who have never written proper programs or taken some type of python course. In short, I think the lectures do not provide enough guidance or knowledge to complete the assignments, instead, a lot of extra work and research is needed from your end. I still think the course is good in providing an introduction BUT only if you have a strong programming or python background.

Final was hard and complicated. Not much info is given during course

I wouldn't recommend it to a beginner.

In just the first 2 weeks I found several quiz questions that are not correct. Example code in quizzes is not complete. Spacing and indentation are incorrect in quiz samples(I realize this is probably to prevent copy paste testing of code, but you cannot answer is this code correct if you don't know where they wanted indentation to line up). Lecture presentation is not very engaging, almost seems like the female instructor was forced to stand in front of a camera and read note cards. Withdrew early.

This is a very useful course. I wanted to learn some bioinformatics as well as coding and I think this course is a perfect one. After all these lessons, I obtained fundamental coding skills, and I also learnt how to use python for bioinformatics use. This course also provided me some chances to practice (I also realized learning to program is all about practicing and solving the bugs), otherwise, there is no way to pass the quiz and final exam. In my own opinions, the only thing that can be improved for this course is to have some post-quiz feedback sessions to explain the difficult questions in the quiz, because some of the questions are not fully covered in the lectures, even if I got it correct, I'm still not sure that my understanding is correct.

A very good course for its length and the amount of time it requires. It improved my python skills and knowledge of Genomics. I'm more engaged in my pursuits than before taking the course.

Pros: in general - pretty valuable course

Cons: Python-related material can be extended; I'm sure the lady on videos is a highly skilled professional, but she seems not comfortable on a video and probably needs more engagement (we know how to read from slides); some tests were WRONG and I reported it

Exam: the worst part and almost vanished my desire to proceed with the course:

1) it's way too complex compared to the material given in lectures - I have professional experience in programming (PHP, MySQL, JS) but this Python exam took me about 6-8 hours to complete. It's not only because of Python I haven't got experience with - it's  also about other stuff I should know before submitting answers. I can't even imagine how students without programming skills can fulfill this exam sucessfully. It's like they teach you 2+2, and on exam they require to compute integrals....

2) exam questions (especially 3rd task) are vague. Samples given are very basic and don't show all the variety of edge cases and how to deal with them (i.e. nested ORF, what to do if we see one more Opened Codon etc) - it took most of exam's time to find some external learning resources and to know more theory. I used this resource also as a benchmark to know if what I get is correct: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/orffinder/ and it saved me.

3) PLEASE add at least couple of correct answers for sample data (dna.example.fasta file) for students to test their data against something before going on exam. Also add some more description and proper sample cases about codones: i.e. how to trean multiple ORF sequences if inside are some open or closed codons - how to determine the longest etc.