- Unbelievable repetitiveness of the same concepts. Open discourse, collaboration, continuous improvement, agile, review
- Very little focus on actual hard skills, very vague references
- Exams have the same questions as the practice tests!
- The descriptions are so vague. "By using AI to improve user analytics, Jim was able to increase revenue by 15%!" is a similar mantra that has been repeated so many times. Ok what did Jim connect to? What tools did he use? What is a RAG pipeline? What is a guardrail and how do you properly define it? How do you connect AI to data that exists in your product management suite so that an AI can reference your own data? The extent of the AI integration in the course is basically videos showing basic prompts being put into copilot that helps absolutely no one.
- Repeated themes. The first module was basically the entire course. This was then repeated 6 more times albeit more bloated across 7 modules. There is some valuable information in there, such as specificities about testing or AI KPIs, but those are like 1 chapter in an entire course! not even a whole module. I don't know how many more times I can hear "by keeping stakeholders involved" and "open collaboration" and "continuous improvement" before I absolutely lose it.
- The tests, while largely headed in the right direction, are poorly designed because I have only 30 minutes to complete massive amounts of work, it took me about 15 minutes to read and analyze the entire test material, as well as 10 minutes to write out the answer to the first question in a way the AI would give a full grade to. This just encourages me to skip the analysis part and just type away for the AI answers. Furthermore, while I appreciate the scenario approach to the assessments, the scenarios are woefully cartoonish and unrealistic. I wish I had a module where I had an absolute mess of a powerBI dashboard and I had to configure it myself to make sense of the data and be able to do my own analytics rather than watching a manicured 5 minute video that covers the most absolute basics of powerBI. Wow, sure glad you taught me how to save.
- The multiple choice assessments were also so painfully obvious to answer, I barely had to read the question or use my brain. The question is something along the lines of "A product manager has found that users churn on a feature, what should he do?" and the answers would be lie "A) set the servers on fire B) ignore it C) review and test and collaborate with the development team or D) make a marketing brochure about it". I mean, wow.
- The multiple choice questions (i think around 10% of the time) just made no sense. The latest that I remember is a question about "what is the most important thing to add for an AI powered chatbot to improve transparency" when the answers are "list data used for training", "inform user that they are talking to a chatbot", "have the names of the developers that worked on this chatbot", and "mention the version of the chatbot", apparently informing the user that they are talking to a chatbot is NOT the right answer. This question was repeated in a test assessment and a graded assessment, but had different answers each time! Such obvious negligence when this course was designed.
- The "AI" part of this is just such an afterthought. Just a whole module tacked on to the course with repeated "you can use copilot to generate x by asking it y" for the most absolute basic prompts. I really don't need a professional course to be telling me to go to copilot and ask it the most basic questions.
- I'm glad I have existing experience as a product manager, because if any student asked me if this was a good start to pivot to a product manager role I would say this absolutely does not cover what you need in order to do so
- Can't believe I spent 5 weeks on this. That is about 3 weeks more than I should have. I took it way too seriously at the start. I want my time back. I just hope this fools enough recruiters that I have some AI cert on my linkedin profile otherwise I have 100% completely wasted my time. I may never forgive myself for the time I wasted and the ensuing sunk cost fallacy I went through of continuing this course while I was unemployed, really should have spent that time on something that is more useful for getting hired. I am still going to be just as unemployed with the completion of this course if anyone knows just how useless this course has been.
- I understand that this is a beginner course, but it is completely bonkers that this is a beginner course that gives you a "MICROSOFT AI PRODUCT MANAGER" certificate at THIS basic a level. I would hope there is some gradation like a more advanced version of this certificate, but no, this does not exist within Microsoft's coursera offerings.
I have more to say, but honestly have run out of words. Who are these people who have been completely duped into giving this a 4.6 average rating?
I'm going to need to talk to my therapist about the deep feeling of regret that is hollowing out my soul for having spent money and time on this.