excellent

Very good

great

good

A+

Overall, this course was very informative. It challenges you to write outside of your comfort zone. The assignment criteria force you to revise your writing in order to meet the criteria. Like any online course, this is designed for the individual to learn from the supplemental materials suggested by the instructors. With over 40,000 people taking the courses, there is no way that you can expect any one-on-one feedback, so it's up to the individual! One major criticism is that since this is a 'peer' review process, there is no criteria for your 'peers' to provide meaningful feedback! The major criteria for reviewing others' work is that you be considerate! Unfortunately, if you are a serious writer-to-be, this doesn't cut it! If you are paying for these courses, you need to take into consideration the pound of salt you're going to need! You take these courses to learn on your own and not be spoon-fed to become a writer; your own research capabilities will be well honed if you want to get true value from them.

The instruction and exercises are excellent. The instructor, who's an accomplished author, clearly cares about teaching. The only reason that I don't give a 5 is that the peer feedback process is broken. Most "feedback" consists of "y" or "." or "good." Allowing thoughtless feedback in a creative writing course damages students in two ways. First, you can only improve at anything through the right practice (the instructor designed excellent exercises, so that's covered) and clear coaching. The coaching's completely absent, thus improvement is stunted. Second, one of the best ways to improve as a writer is to put in the hard work of giving thoughtful feedback! Check out the detail that I put into my feedback: I do it for my peers and for myself. By this time there has to be an AI that can run a basic check on what's entered as feedback to ensure that it meets basic criteria.

I am really enjoying the Creative Writing course, having completed 4 sections, which has helped me tremendously in developing my awareness and writing technique and skills. Now, when I'm reading a book or watching a movie/series, I find myself analyzing the character development, plot structure, etc.

My only criticism of this course is the lack of adherence to instructions by peers when reviewing the work of others. Too often, they simply reply to the review questions with one-word answers. This should somehow be monitored by the course administrators, and they should not receive credit for completing the 3 mandatory reviews in order to proceed with the course, since we as learners rely on constructive feedback.

I really liked the contents and assignments of the course. It helped me improve my writing. Nevertheless, I think the way peer review is applied in this course needs to be reconsidered. Some people don't seem to take this very seriously or would need more examples of what helpful critiquing is supposed to look like. Unfortunately, this means one doesn't learn much from peer's feedback as quite a few people write just “good” instead of giving real feedback. It's not okay to be able to get a certificate if people don't really do the work that is necessary getting it. Also, it's quite a bummer if you have invested time to write a detailed feedback for someone and get “good” back.

I didn't love the videos in this course very much – they just weren't very helpful. They had some interesting thoughts, but for the most part they felt repetitive and for someone who hasn't written much creative writing.

However, I really liked the assignments and peer editing. This course challenged me to think about descriptions I wouldn't have otherwise, and made me think more about how the heart of a story is really in the description and setting. I got a lot more out of challenging myself with the assignments and getting surprising feedback than watching the videos.

I joined late, much too late to participate in many of the assignments with my busy schedule, but I took notes and read all the required reading. From this course I will take into my writing new, helpful skills. My favorite lesson was setting and description where I learned that the environment should not be described frivolously, but through the emotions and opinions of the character(s) who observe them. Thank you very much for your lessons, Amity Gaige, I'm now not as terrible as I was when I first started.

I really liked this course. Amity Gaige has a really engaging teaching style and I really enjoyed the variety of the assignments provided. My only frustration is with the feedback system used with this and the other creating writing courses in this series; I usually only received one helpful bit of feedback per assignment. Others will often type simply "yes, okay" or add a few letters to show that they filled in the box. Not helpful!!

This was a great course and Amity did a lot to make it as engaging as possible. It stands above most of the other courses in this specialisation due to the fact that there's actually required reading. For some reason 2 of the other courses didn't have this requirement, which seems little absurd to me. It would have been a 5 star review if not for the pitiful peer review system, which plagues every course in this specialisation.

Course content and exercises are so good = they are worth 5 stars. However, the peer reviews on exercises are failing miserably in that most people don't even bother filling in the answers to the questions with any real content, just a few nonsensible characters to get past the required field system checks. Thus, I down graded overall to 4 star. Disappointing peer but I will pursue genuine feedback in writing groups. Recommend.

The course was inspiring and made me focus on the small details in the environments I create. I think that the professor leans too hard on the quotes and the work of other authors as a core part of the curriculum. It would have been useful to have a breakdown in charts or a checklist to help push our descriptions along. Having said that, the professor seems to care a great deal for her students and that came through clearly.

I liked this course and I learned much. The reason I gave 4 stars is that often it is not clearly explained what exactly was requested in an assignment. I saw that its not only me but many other students had a problem to find out the exact assignment. This problem has obviously existed for the last 3 years and was never corrected. I encourage the students to find their answers - at least partly - in the discussion forums.

There was great (and abundant) information in this course! I really liked all the quotes, videos, reading material, and assignments that Amity Gaige offered. This was my favorite course so far!

I didn’t give this a five star of course because of the peer-graded assignments. This was the majority of my feedback- and I quote, “sgsgsgsgs”. Very frustrating to work really hard on an assignment and get feedback like that.

Ms. Gaige very thoughtfully made it really practical rather than theoretical by bringing in examples of various writings from the past writers, adding in some videos as well for the learners to see it exactly for what something is, while making the points about what should you put into your writing and what you shouldn't. Would have liked a short goodbye video from her at the end though!!

Excellent course that both informs and inspires. There is a good deal of content as well as advice. The student writer is encouraged to explore and be unafraid. The only draw back is that the online classroom does not allow the auditing students to post and get feedback on their assignments and it must be done externally to fully get the benefit of our fellow students.

The course, The Craft of Setting and Description, allows students to delve into the skills needed for polished creative writing. Amity Gaige was a great instructor who provided exercises and lectures that stretched my imagination. I really enjoyed this course.

The exercised were the most fun and challenging part of the course and I learnt a lot but the feedback was a constant issue throughout. A few students do not really review but rush through it. Please get that fixed, the exercises deserve a good response.

This is one of the strongest courses in the Wesleyan Creative Writing specialization. Amity is articulate, well-organized, and an effective teacher. I appreciated that she actually had students READ examples of effective writing by published authors.

Until now I was hasty, wanting to tell the story - Now I want to show the story through character and setting. I realise the reader is disinterested unless they can walk in the shoes of my characters seeing the landscape as I see it.

I thought this course was very well done. The video lectures were very interesting, and the links to additional readings and videos was very welcome. Definitely one of the strongest segments of the creative writing specializations.

This class was pretty good. I liked the reading assignments, and there was some helpful instruction as well. I liked learning about the second person perspective, and the section on credibility and research was also really helpful.