Good

nice

good

nice

nice

Good

good

good

N/A

b

5

PROS: The course description appropriately targets beginners to the world of computational thinking and problem solving. The instructors provide a variety of universal examples to help students understand the step by step process leading to an introduction to python programming. The units are broken into very manageable lessons followed by quizzes and projects to assess understanding and provide an opportunity to apply what was incrementally learned.

CONS: There are jumps in content area knowledge when asked to move from instructional to mathematical logic. Personally, I had to do some googling to relearn basic mathematical skills to complete tasks successfully. It would have helped to have a transition or an example to refresh my math skills from over 40 years ago. Also, as an educator, I'm all for a peer review - especially, when peers are offering constructive criticism. Unfortunately, in this forum (not just UPenn Coursera courses), most students are just racing to get through the course and clicking on complete. I haven't any qualms with losing points to learn the error of my ways, but I lost a point to someone that commented, "Great Job!" without further explanation. With that said, there is also some discrepancy between the prompts and the rubrics. However, once you learn what to look for in the pattern of instruction and assessment, it's fairly easy to adjust.

The first 3 weeks were good content and testing, though i would request more questionnaires to test all concepts introduced. though i believe the content visuals & explanations could be improved, but that generally applies to most things we do anyway. Improvisation is a continuous process.

There is something humourous about the 4th week. The content and exercises appear to have been squished in with the same amount of haste like that of a student wanting to just finish the course( I was one of the students myself , so there!). The forum response rate went down as well (understandably!). In my humble opinion, the 4th week needed to be a bit more elaborate by at least 1 more week. More exercises with smoother notching up of complexity of exercises, testing out all possible concepts so that they get embedded deeper into the students' thought process irrespective of whether they take up computing later or not.

Thank you big time, Professors! :)

Overall I thought this course was very well done. It was at a basic level, so much so that you didn't need a background in computational thinking or mathematics to take the course. This was very nice!

The explanations were very helpful and the videos were well done. The instructors were overall quite engaging and the concepts were well-motivated.

I think the capstone problem (the Corpus example) could be modified to make it more engaging and interesting. I think a different problem would be more suitable, as the description of the problem was somewhat difficult to digest.

Some of the compiling and checking of the solutions was a little challenging at times. Sometimes you had the correct answer, but needed to alter the solution somewhat to fit the criteria of the test. This was not necessarily a bad thing, but it was frustrating in Module 4.

Overall nicely done!

Reece

Very interesting course for beginners. In my professional environment, I am rarely exposed to this type of problem solving through coding (I am a CPA), yet, this course took me from zero to having a better understanding about how to "think" like a computer. One recommendation I would make is to somehow show students, onscreen, for each example on the PowerPoints, how each line of code is interpreted by the computer. The latter would clearly show things like why indentation is so important or how the computer understands a loop. Lastly, although I received multiple emails from the available support, it comes a point where you need somewhat of a live chat. Again, I highly recommend this course for anyone who wants to wet his/her appetite for programming. Thank you for all the support and patience.

For the most part, the course is well paced and the content is explained clearly. However, the python module felt a bit rushed to me and the problem sets did not feel appropriate for someone with no prior python experience. I had to complete two other intro level python classes outside of this course in order to be ready to solve the final assignment in Computational Thinking. In the end, this class did challenge me quite a bit and I have learned about Python coding as a result, which was my ultimate goal in the grand scheme.

This was a great intro to algorithms. Definitely take notes and screenshots or refer back to the presentations for assistance with the quizzes and assignments. I definitely got to see how Computer Science can be applied to day to day activities and real-world problems to find solutions. I will say the only concern I had was that the examples provided in the presentations are way easier than what is asked of students in the assignments. It can be very time consuming but when you figure it out you feel amazing!

Not a bad class, but I wouldn't say that this class is for beginners. The first 2 weeks were very abstract and could turn some people off from CS, but they are not representative of how CS actually works. The flowchart and written exercises are not a good gauge of whether you can be a good programmer or not. Trust me. I wouldn't have known this if I came into this course without any CS training at all. However, the lasts 2 weeks were good and worth the time investment for beginner CS students.

This course learn you using Pillars of Computational Thinking (Decomposition, Pattern recognition, Data representation and abstraction, Algorithms ) to tackle problems and use flow-chart in case studies and write an algorithm to solve it to practice on it and this course ended by explaining computer history and architecture and teach you python but it needs more case study to work with it to enhance your this skills and some mentors to tell you what you miss and what you need to focus.

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Overall, it's a great beginners course to develop a novel mindset when people consider problems. I like it's big idea and the high level of thinking methods, the four pillars of CT, except for... the last week's lesson. I guess it would too challenging for novice learners to finish the codes by themselves if some knowledge is not taught in the lecture. But, it's still a rewarding learning experience for me!

Most of the course was helpful and understandable. Although the criteria for one of the examples remained unclear and controversial for real application.

Writing scripts in Python is not easy for beginners. Quite a lot of additional materials had to be done to really consciously complete the tasks. The support service responds for a long time, does not meet the deadlines set by them.

Really well put together course, clear audio and beneficial visuals. The earlier phases of the course didn't provide clear guidance on what was looked for in grading, so it took a while to get adjusted. Sometimes explanations on why something was done in a video were skipped over, leading to a need to read the forums to get clarity. Learned a lot, and enjoyed the exercises!

What you can learn though this course is definitely helpful whether you're interested in programming or not. However, even though instructions and tutorials came in handy in most cases, in programming part, it was so hard to grasp each concepts and implement them as codes that it took more than hours to solve an assignment. But overall, I'm fully satisfied with the course.

It's a very beginner-friendly course for computational thinking. I like that the content is structured, interesting, and easy to follow. I also like that it doesn't jump straight into coding like most other courses. I do feel like the two case studies used in the course were a little confusing. I already know Python before so the second half of the course was easy for me.

Was honestly a great course but the auto grade system was very tough for some quizzes. Where even if you had the correct answer but it displayed in a different way it would be considered a 0. Otherwise the instructors were wonderful to learn from and the one time I needed help I received it within 3 days and was able to finish the last quiz because of it.