I would rate 4.5 for this course. -0.5 is for below CONS about the course:
PROS:
This was great follow up course after the first course "Understanding Financial Statements: Company Position".
Course was concise and easy to understand for folks like me who want to understand accounting and financial statements but do not want to get to specialize in it.
Weekly graded quizzes with 20 questions had a good mix of all the concepts discussed during the week.
CONS:
Discussion forums seem to be quiet and not engaging. I think unless the course staff plays a very active role, we will not see much learning from the discussion forums.
I have heartburn with Peer Graded Assignments. This is a bad choice of evaluation on Coursera. My fellow students who are learning along with me might not be the right choice to review the assignments. Feedback can be none, or vague, or judgmental, or might even lack the knowledge to provide the feedback since we are all still learning. Having to wait for someone to grade our assignment and also wait very long to grade other students assignments is not a good use of time. We should not be wasting our time posting links to our assignment in the discussion forum. Discussion forms are getting spammed with links to assignments and the students requesting someone to pick their assignment for grading. Week 4 discussion forum and General Discussion forums are spammed and are a mess because of this activity.
For the final peer graded assignment, instructions could have been better.
One additional video from professor which demonstrates analysis using the income statment would have been great for learning.