Hacker News Reader

Comment by tvanantwerp | Hacker News Reader

I'm not convinced of the quality of this course material. I thought I could try it out, see if I could fill some gaps in my knowledge. I tried out some of the quizzes and they were just bad. Course 1, week 2, for example, asks you to match items to where they go on a motherboard. This quiz is flatly wrong. It asks you to match a PSU to the rear Ethernet port, and a SATA cable to an IDE port. Being so obviously wrong about something so basic gives me serious concerns about everything else. I quickly cancelled the free trial.

View on HN

I went through the first several weeks of course 1, and you are spot on. The quiz in week 2 is absolutely wrong (did anyone audit this?). I skimmed through the first 6 weeks and even for a beginner course, this is way too dumbed down.

I checked out some of the material a bit further through the course as well, and I cannot recommend it for anyone serious about the profession. It looks good on the surface (reading the course summaries and the objectives), but the quality just isn't there.

I was also a bit surprised by the simplicity of course 1, but then remembered that the course as a whole is designed for folks with no experience. Looking through the descriptions for the other courses (the actual material isn't out yet) I'm hopeful they will have the level of depth I think we're all expecting.

Yeah you definitely want to keep in mind that this cert, and especially Course 1, has to be accessible to anyone. So it's building a foundation of common knowledge for the other courses which absolutely go into much more details.

I sent this on to the right people. We audited the course and had a private external beta, so it's surprising to see obvious errors like this. I imagine there might be something else going on with the labs.

That reminds me of the quality of the claimed "study helping" material for similar certifications that I occasionally stumble upon while looking for solutions to actual problems. It's hard to resist a physical facepalm or other expression when reading some of that stuff, since it'd otherwise make for great satire.

Personally, I don't have a high opinion of anyone whose only stated qualifications are these sorts of certifications --- all it really shows is rote memorisation, when good IT support relies on creative and insightful problem-solving skills --- including being good at... Googling.

Thank you for flagging this issue. We are extremely proud to have worked with Google on creating this certificate, which makes it possible for anyone without a technical background to gain the skills they need to start a career in IT. In our enthusiasm to launch a first-of-its-kind certificate, this error slipped through Coursera's review process. We have already removed the assessment with the error and will release a fix for it very soon. We sincerely apologize for this subpar learning experience in a certificate program that otherwise has been carefully designed and beta-tested over several months.

- The Coursera Team

Hi I wish to enroll into the google IT professional certificate program but will like to know if the program is only for US residents or for everyone out of the US like me

Reply on news.ycombinator.com