Dont recommend it for beginners

The presentation and speaker

Not the best for beginners

Didn't like the teacher.

Not enough Examples

Too hard

Average

It’s not a course of SQL for Data Science as it skips advanced SQL features like triggers or window functions and focus on the basics. I don't know if the other courses in the specialization go more in depth, but this first one only covers the basics of using SQL.

The course is for the most part composed by videos in which the instructor explains a certain topic with slides and provides some examples of already written queries. This is a teaching method I’ve seen in other courses in this platform and I think is one of the worst ways to teach a subject like programming in which the best way a person can learn about it is by practice and more practice. It’s not like the theory isn’t important; it is and if you’re new to a subject, you may need some introductory lessons, but after that, a course needs to keep engaging students and encourage them to practice in every possible manner what they’ve learnt. This course focuses heavily on theory, with little practice to do. Also, this practice is far more difficult in some cases than the explanations shown in the videos.

Scripts for videos are written in a poor manner, and at times it’s evident the instructor is reading a prompter. She is a knowledgeable person but it seems that is hindered by the script she needs to read and that leads to some misspellings and confusing explanations.

The peer-graded assignment is confusing as well because there is an environment for VS Code which doesn’t need to be used in the assignment. I don’t know why is still there if it doesn’t have a function. Also, to answer and write the queries for the assignment, you will need to search in Google or Stack Overflow because, again, the difficulty level is far greater than the explanations provided in the videos.

Breaking down the course, my rating would be:

Instructor: 2/5

Lessons & Materials: 1/5

Learning by doing: 1/5

Virtual Environment: 1/5

Conclusion: Take the course at your own risk, there is much better material online.

There are so many issues with this course. The lectures, while generally clear, are obviously read from a teleprompter, with no slides or real exercises provided. They lack a lot of substance and examples to fully illustrate the content, and have no interactive components. The instructor is clearly extremely capable and knowledgeable, but is unable to convey any of that information due to the structure of the lectures.

The assignments meanwhile are way too difficult compared to the lecture material and severely lacking in feedback, explanation, or clarity. Half of the questions either have blatant errors, confusing wording, or requirements impossible for SQLite. Maybe this was partially my error, but it's not like the course was very helpful. In one of the lectures, on using DATE, the example in the lecture is formatted incorrectly, leading to a lot of trouble when doing the Quiz.

Some questions will ask you about "correlation" or "predicting", which is fine and all, except for the part where SQLite doesn't support many of the fuctions neccessary for such analysis.

I cannot recommend anyone take this course. There are maybe 4 hours of actual content in the entire course (including quizzes and assingments), except it'll take you significantly longer to complete as you sit there confused by the questions. Yes, you'll learn something, but you also could've done the same with a free tutorial somewhere else.

The forums are filled with people confused by the formatting, phrasing, or structure of assessments. Meanwhile, no effort is made by the instructors or UC Davis to correct the many issues here nor answer any of these posts. It's frankly an embarassment for a school like UC Davis to be putting out such low-quality content, even if it is from their extension program.

The course is overall very high in quality and I found it really useful. The teacher explains the concepts really well and the exercises are very good. I really found joy doing the final course assignment. However, I feel that I got tricked into paying one more month of subscription, seconds after I paid for another month, I did receive the course certificate. I submitted the peer graded assignment one week ago. My plan was to continue with the other courses in this specialisation but after my experience with this subscription/payment philosophy, I will not discontinue and look for other online platforms with a better customer experience for me. Thank you nonetheless for the high quality of this course, I am certain many learners find the material extremely helpful, as did I.

I did not care for the presenter, Sadie. She needs to work on her presentation skills. Additionally it seemed that some of the slides had errors. I didn't keep track but I remember thinking it was an issue. The class needed a way to practice along with the lessons. I ended up buying a book to learn sql that, luckily, was excellent. I also felt that the Yelp dataset was very difficult to use. It would have been nice if it had been accompanied by some description. I felt like I knew what I was doing (and I did) before I started working with it but it was very frustrating to work with the yelp dataset. I would not recommend this class which is a shame as I really liked the Python for Everybody class and python is much more complicated than sql.

This course covers topics in passing and expects you to internalize that topic. If this is going to be the pace, there really should be slides to review.

Also, if you're going to have someone just read off a teleprompter, hire an actor. The jarring cadence of this lecturer, the frequent tripping over words, or finishing a sentence only to realize there are three more words, it's brutal.

There are a ton of mini-quizzes which is fine, but it also has a "check all the right answers" which is both wildly pedantic and in many instances neither provable nor educational. Most courses I take through Coursera offer the "10 questions at the end" feature which is less disruptive and the questions feel more substantive.

This course in my opinion was not beginner level. I was expecting basic sql coding, and it quickly took a deep dive into more advanced and in depth coding. The video lectures had a lot of information, but not enough practical examples, and then when getting to quizes I felt like the quiz material did not match up to what was talked about in the videos. The run windows for the coding quizes were also glitchy . It took way longer than approximately 14 hours to complete this course. I also did not appreciate the final assignment needing to be peer reviewed to get the certificate for the course. It should just be self checked like the rest of the assignments. I won't be recommending this course to anyone.

The first two weeks were easy to follow along with. Unfortunately after that the course was severely lacking. There were not good explanations of things and new things would be added in that hadn’t been covered. When you post questions the mentors aren’t much help and the students will try to answer if they can. There’s also no way to practice. I also would’ve found it nice to see the tables they were pulling their “examples” from. I had to use other resources to actually study and learn SQLite. I’m assuming the people who gave this course a high score are already familiar with SQLite and just wanted the certificate.

First thing the instructor said was this course is for beginners. I am a beginner so I signed up. There are so many references I did not understand, no step by step explanation of how to find the data required to pass the exams so ended up looking for answers on the forum. Only way I managed to get through the third week was because my husband new how to use python and he helped me find correct answers - which were different to the ones we were given.

New steps were brought in without any basic explanation, again an indication that prior knowledge is needed.

Awful and disheartening

Pretty useless course, especially for someone looking to audit (learn for free). Well I would be livid if I actually paid for this.

Without a text editor in the course, you are trying to learn SQL via slideshow basically. There is no way to learn SQL without practicing. I switched to Codecademy's SQL course as it's much better because of the the text editor. They teach you and you practice with actual syntax and commands rather than stupid quiz questions. I still use some of the videos to better understand some concepts but only after I practice/learn them in Codecademy.

This course really stinks. If you already know SQL and just need a certification, a course like this would be fine. But for complex subject matter like SQL, it needs to go Concept->Practice, rinse & repeat. Instead, it's Concept->Concept->Concept->Concept->Concept->Concept->Practice. Sadie, it's real shame. She lures you in week one thinking this is going to be doable, and by the end of week 2, the writing is on the wall. It's too bad because a good SQL course could do a lot of good in this environment and they clearly have the infrastructure to do it.

The content covered on this course is helpful but this is getting one star for the instructor. Very clearly she is reading a script and 1/3 of her sentences make no sense. On top of that, she often says variable names that are different from the written example she is referring to. These three factors make this course extremely difficult to follow and stick to. I find myself having to use YouTube videos on the same topics to try to get an understanding of what I just watched. At that point, it's not worth having paid the $399 annual membership.

I don't have much to add to the other negative reviews, but to summarize - the presentation is awkward, the curriculum moves through very complicated concepts with no practice, and the final project is a HOT MESS. You will learn a lot about bad data, at least, but the combination of old data and the limitations of the online SQLite editor make it impossible to complete the last section of the assignment.

This wasn't my first introduction to SQL, and I didn't pay for it, thankfully, but if you are a true beginner, find a different course.

These static slides are only helpful for live interactive classes. It's not easy to follow the instructor along with the code snippets. This could've been easily solved had the instructor(or UCD actually) had used a pointing device to show which part of the code they were referring to. And the final exam is not even worth it- questions are not clear and the submission mechanism could be improved. Not worth the money/enrollment/time. Better look for an alternative for this particular course(and for free!).

The quizzes are fine, but the copy is terrible. The instructor isn't very clear in explaining what the steps she describes are used for, and often just repeats the first half of her sentence. It feels like the writing for the class was rushed. Also, the instructions for the final assignment and lab aren't very clear. I was able to learn the basics of SQL thanks to this class, but I relied on multiple outside sources and tutorials to do so.

Didn't like it. Too simple content (could only bear it with speed>1.5). Too many errors in the videos. Peer review is stupid b/c the tasks were simple but time consuming. Some of the works I had to review were simply copies from the internet (I can tell b/c some solutions you can find on the web contain answers to questions which have been removed). Teacher, however, did a good job. Clear, easy to understand explanations.

This has been a very frustrating experience with Coursera and with this course specifically. I have been unable to access any repositories associated with the course so I can learn from either through the terminal (lab) or through visual studio. I am restricted from contacting the professor and none of the limited documents give any instruction for the assignments. I am very disappointed at Coursera.

The course does go through the relevant topics. But the assignments and moderator attention (and quality of responses) are well below standards compared to other coursera courses. I would not recommend paying for this course, but rather just audit it. This way you will still get the material, but you won't have to go through the really bad and frustrating assignments (unclear/ambiguous/wrong wording).

Videos are not helpful. Going over the concepts with some codes and hypothetical examples are not useful. It would be great if we see the codes run and some of the results. Also, explanations are inadequate. The notions are oversimplified and rushed through. I learned the topics by doing the assignments which are very good for self-learning but mostly not covered in the videos.