Hello,

I've completed 5 modules of the specialization successfully with excellent grades. However, the biggest challenge and disappointment was the capstone. The case given is pertaining exclusively to the North American market. Students enrolling into the course are situated globally which makes it extremely challenging to gather data to understand and substantiate our work on the project. Several hours of extensive research yields no usable data which could provide a logical direction to the project. Reading material provided explains mainly the company profile, a few links are blocked due to geographical restrictions, reports that are available are to be purchased etc. While the money invested is not refundable now, however coursera with university team needs to seriously resolve this point. All learning done through the course remains largely a theoretical knowledge if a student isn't able to apply it in his/her job.

Capstone Course totally fails on two aspects: Peer Evaluation and Technical Support.

1. There is absolutely ZERO constructive feedback. Nobody cares. How can You learn without concrete and valuable feedback? This is a course for Beginners, How can you start you academia in Digital Marketing, alone, by yourself, without any help from any Staff?

2. One word feedbacks A-L-W-A-Y-S! Which are "Perfect" "Ok" "Good" "Very Good". I even got a "-" feedback!

3. Zero technical support. I could never access the Content Issues Forum. Your link never worked. I tried to get help, nobody never replied, until someone - ANOTHER STUDENT, NOT STAFF - replied to me and helped me.

Those factors unfortunately make me wonder... How valuable is this Project? Did I really learn anything from this Course? How am i supposed to know that my projects can really be applied to real life?

When I first started this Capstone, I was very excited about it. It did not live up to the expectations. The course material is several years old and needs to be updated. I was not totally pleased with this Capstone at all. It was a lot of work and was very vague, at times. With that being said, I completed all of my assignments to the best of my ability and went out of my way to help peers even though I would receive a one word "feedback" ninety five percent of the time. I am grateful for ALL Of the courses leading up to this Capstone, as they are fantastic and I have learned so much from each of them. I gave all six previous courses in this specialization five stars. I just thought that with all the valuable information I have learned from the courses, the project would have been more relevant. Despite that, I was lucky enough to use everything I have learned to complete a Capstone Project that has so much potential to serve us better. Hopefully in the near future they update it for new learners because Coursera is. great platform to learn on. Thank you Coursera.

Capstone exercises were very ambiguous, the students were left to interpret they way they had to finish and how they rated their peers.

The peer reviews were poor with little to no feedback and the focus was on how the material was laid out vs what the content was.

I have done other coursers and capstones in Coursera this was one of the poorest. UIUC has to revamp this. More guidance to students in the instructions would be the first step.

I struggled with the capstone course and project. The awkward video hangouts at the beginning of the course should have been a red flag for how tedious it was going to be. The information provided is several years old. Aric Rindfleisch did amazing job to keep earlier course content relevant even in a pandemic, and while I realize not every module can be kept current, this one is abysmal.

The blatant idea theft and plagiarism are rampant to the point where students were adding watermarks to their pdf submissions to try to stop others from stealing their work. The peer evaluation is a joke. I felt like my final project was downgraded because I didn’t include pages and pages of rambling replies. One reviewer didn’t even bother to look for word count or sources cited, etc. It’s disappointing and I don’t want to waste my time redoing a submission and then reviewing more posts.

Some courses of the whole specialization are outdated but the capstone is the worst ! Really hard to be motivated to complete the case. It really should be updated or just delete because I think lot of people are bored about it.

I have enjoyed the 6 courses before this capstone. I have more expectation that what i got from this course. For example, the project material should be updated and client should be international based instead of US focused. The video lecturers were not one as great as the previous courses and outdated too. It was harder to understand what was said in the lecturer; some speakers were too soft/low (volume), unclear pronunciation and some was clear for sure. It was almost giving me impression that the call/ interview with clients were impromptu instead of well prepared.

There was some part of video when Mr Sachdev mentioned "Marketing in the Digital World with Dr. Eric Rindfleisch. Then the two courses on analytics with Kevin Hartman, and then two other courses on managing the channels or understanding how you manage channels in the digital age with Dr. Yannon Clifton." At one point i got confuse who is Dr. Yannon Clifton???? I didn't attend/ take any course with her/him.

The idea of capstone is essential for completion of this specialization. However, this course will really need a major update in both material (client) and video lecturers. Nonetheless, It has been a great and enjoyable 6.5months journey in learning Digital Marketing Specialization. Thank you to all the lecturers and peers!

Coursera cancelled my subscription without telling me, informed me that I passed all 7 courses and would receive my certificate for the specialization...all WHILE I was just starting my Capstone. No one to contact. No help.

Be weary of this specialization and (possibly) all others as of May 2020...

The capstone idea is clever and valid, but the peer to peer evaluation is disappointing. It is inefficient and does not fit on a payed final project.

This course is super outdated! The thought of applying our studies to a real problem is nice, but this happened 5 years ago.

I have successfully completed various courses and specializations here on coursera (I strongly recommend Wharton’s Gamification course which I found to be the most challenging and inspiring) and I can say that Digital Marketing Capstone is the only course that I didn’t enjoy attending. The project is utterly uninteresting, it requires knowledge and preparation in digital analytics not provided in the previous two courses on this subject (techniques, types of analysis etc), it limits on email and display advertising (it can hardly be called integrated marketing strategy) and it lacks completely the strucure and guidance in the task esecution as well as peer evaluation (some of the comments I received were based on personal point of view and lacked objectivity). The best part of this specialization are Aric Rindfleisch’s courses who unfortunatelly wasn’t involved in the Capstone Project.

The capstone is interesting, challenging, and give space for finding practical solutions to a real-life scenario. Great way to try implementing all the theoretical knowledge learned in other courses.

Really informative course which gives a lot of insight into digital marketing ! Highly recommend this course to anyone out there looking to gain new insights into marketing

The idea of this capstone is great, but the scope of learners' plagiarism and laziness is unprecedented. You simply come across one and the same work by different learners who copy-paste from the original source on the internet. Some learners even feel free to copy and submit the works of their peers from the ongoing week. That's unbelievable. If Praveen Sinha reads this, you should know that your 2017 work is a popular submission here. I hope Coursera does something about such a terrible scope of plagiarism, which devalues this course completely. Additionally, it seems that some learners review works without paying attention to or actually reading the submission, thus giving low grades and spoiling the weighted average for others. This system should be reconsidered for the sake of all stakeholders. Good luck everyone.

Português BR:

Digital Marketing Capstone é um curso fundamental para compreender como o ambiente digital está revolucionando a forma de comunicar, vender, persuadir e entreter os consumidores. Assim como qualquer outro curso, existem pontos que precisam ser melhorados para aumentar sua eficácia. Por isso, se faz necessário constantes atualizações da didática para acompanhar as necessidades contemporâneas. Ao concluir o curso, o aluno consegue adquirir um referencial para imergir no mundo do Marketing Digital. Não se trata de um curso completo contendo todas as metodologias de Marketing. E com certeza, não é o objetivo e nem a intenção da proposta oferecida pela Illinois/Coursera . Entretanto, Digital Marketing Capstone possibilita criar novos caminhos em busca de novos conhecimentos.

English:

Digital Marketing Capstone is a fundamental course to understand how the digital environment is revolutionizing the way you communicate, sell, persuade and entertain consumers. Like any other course, there are points that need to be improved to increase their effectiveness. Therefore, it is necessary constant updating of didactics to accompany contemporary needs. Upon completion of the course, the student can acquire a referential to immerse in the world of Digital Marketing. This is not a complete course containing all the Marketing methodologies. And of course, it's not the purpose or intent of the offer offered by Illinois / Coursera. However, Digital Marketing Capstone makes it possible to create new paths in search of new knowledge.

Far more demanding than previous courses, and thus far more interesting. Lacks clear direction compared to previous courses which can be difficult to adjust to, it leaves you to your own devices so to speak and is challenging in that regard.

A great ending to the specialization. Though I'd suggest perhaps creating a new capstone in a year or so, it's feeling a tad outdated.

I am not too happy with the Capstone in general. Specifically, the grading system with it's pre-defined grading structure and the lack of professional feedback. But also the fact that modules do not perfectly build on one another. It's solid work, but given this specialization is live and running for quite some time, I would have expected a higher level of quality.

I am not getting passing marks.

Hated the course and the content. I truly regret investing my money on this course.