I really like the programming exercises but many of the quiz questions are unclear.

Also, please spend some more time making longer videos. I had to resort to finding videos on youtube to understand many of these data structures.

The first two weeks of this course are as solid as the first course in this specialization, which I would rate somewhere between 4 and 5 stars. The second half of the course, particularly the lectures on B-trees and heaps, were somewhat lacking. Previous lectures included many formal definitions in the slides, with clear examples and implementations in code. The lectures in the second two weeks contained less slides, and less precise definitions/explanations. Time-complexity explanations in particular were breezed over, and I felt like more time could be dedicated to formally determining the algorithmic run times in the examples. Ultimately, I was left wanting more depth, something which I had not felt in the lectures leading up to these last two weeks. Still, I have come away with a good general grasp of the concepts discussed here.

The audio quality is bad in many of the videos. The content covered in the lectures is too easy compare to the programming assignment. The attempt to deliver knowledge through the comments in the files are not clear and efficient because many details are distracting.

If you're trying to learn data structures, I would look elsewhere. If you are reviewing data strucutres and had already learned it previously, then this course can function as a quick refresher. The course if far too rushed and lacking in actual exercises to really flesh out the learning experince for those just learning the first time.

I liked the course. But the course was not enough for the material presented.

It needs more explanations and more examples. For someone who is learning it was not complete. The course was like an overview for who knew the subject and needed a refresher.

First few lectures are gud and later professor was so fast and explanation was so repeat and confusing

hope he can updates

Quite disappointed in the course - goes from 0 to 1000 immediatly, not enough answers, descriptions aren't very clear. Could be a much better educational experience.

I learned a lot in this course. Back in the days when I was studying engineering we got up to AVL trees but we never got into coding them: the implementation was considered to much for that course. Here I finally understood how they are implemented and the course went ahead and covered more subject.

The problems were challenging but not impossible, which is great if you care about learning.

The lectures are great, but beware that you need to work on learning the data structures on your own, as the programming assignments won't have you implementing trees or heaps on your own. Code is provided that you can study, but you may want to write your own implementations to fully learn.

Really good course so far. Using VSC + git bash on a Windows 10 machine for the programming assignments, and the web-based compiler for the challenges. Really good experiences so far.

Good coverage. The lecturer and teaching stuff are knowledgeable and helpful. Would be better if the slides can have more details.

I suppose I take issue with the quizzes and the use of Cloud 9.

Although passable by doing research outside the class materials, many of the quiz questions ask the students to apply knowledge never explicitly mentioned in the lectures. For example, the code for accomplishing the heapify down algorithm was shown, but the heapify down algorithm was never explicity defined. Instead, a brief story suggesting how it generally works is provided. If the vision for this course is to provide some perspective on a data structures course that was previously taken, or a unique take on data structures to supplement the student's prior knowledge, so be it. I can recommend the "Ordered Data Structures" course as an orientation to much of the important information in the field, but that's the best I can do. It would be best to clearly orient the student at the beginning of the class, mentioning that it will require outside knowledge not provided here.

Although Cloud 9 is described as optional, it's really mandatory to complete the coding challenges, and it would be fair play to simply say so. The make file provided to prepare the assignment for submission is tailored specifically to Cloud 9, and NOT to use Cloud 9 for the assignments would require the student to understand the complex requirements (never described in any detail) for preparing the code for the testing algorithm, and write a really complex make file. Just say, "Use Cloud 9", and save the student the uncertainty and time wasted trying to cobble together a solution on VisualStudio or whatever.

I have many positive comments. I feel that the professor knows his stuff, and great care was taken to prepare the lectures and assignments to get students to engage meaningfully with data structures covered here. I had to work harder than someone who'd just finished a "Data Structures and Algorithms" course -- and that's fine, because I needed to do the work! I think the professor did well in previous course as well. Props to my C-U homies! (I'm a UofI and Urbana High School graduate.)

Looking forward to the third course.

The instructor are not particularly clear about a lot of details make it particularly hard to understand. Also, the course assumes you have previously taken some related courses in other languages and mathematics. It's nowhere close to an intro course. If you want to look for courses that is fundamental to code in C++, you need to find another one. I am giving four stars because the instructor's response in the forum is really quick.

I felt like there was a large disconnect between this course's weeks 3&4 and weeks 1 and 2. The professor jumps through higher level concepts and code at a high pace while assuming the logical thinking and maths come naturally. More time spent on how the code actually manipulates trees/heaps would help immensely, many of the essential functions of heaps were glanced over in week 4 but the logic in the code was not explored much, making it hard to conceptualize and really understand the runtime complexity that seems to be the professor's main focus.

I love how the various programming challenges and project give me the chance to practice may key concepts in data structures. I had always worried about how to correctly handle all the details of getting a double linked-list inserted correctly. Prof. Wade class definitely gives me the confidence to control the computer at this level of detail rather than deferring all the power/manipulation to library code.

I learned a lot and appreciate the quick overview of the CS concepts covered in this class.

I am very eager to take on the last class in the specialization.

Thank you so much Prof. Wade and UIUC teaching team for such a great experience. Nguyen Le

I really like this course... The teacher is excellent, he has a very good teaching style and provides excellent and in-depth explanations... The assignments are very well-thought out... They put a lot of effort into making the assignments manageable and not too intimidating while allowing us to do cool things so we can get the gist of things... The course content is also really good... The teacher covers a lot of the relevant material and in a very good way... I'm very happy with the instructor, the content and the assignments...

This course is a nice, natural progression from the introductory data structures course in the Accelerated Computer Science fundamentals track. The quizzes, challenges, and assignments are tricky and though they build off the lecture content, they require an intellectual leap of faith to consider novel scenarios not necessarily spelled out explicitly in the lecture. It's a great refresher if you haven't practiced DSA in a while, and perfect, accelerated content for a motivated student looking to learn DSA for the first time.

Everything is okay but some things are difficult to understand to be confident building own implementations. Practical assignments are demanding if you're not used to coding algorithms but eventually things looks obvious when you finish them. For each programming assignment there is a lot of boilerplate code that was difficult to understand, however - 99% of students, including myself, would give up on implementing these binary trees from scratch but I think that's not the goal of this "accelerated computer science" course.

I learned a ton in this course. Stacks, heaps, trees, more practice with C++, etc. The course is designed very well, and unlike a lot of courses on Coursera, the staff responds fairly quickly so you are not left out in the cold if you get stuck in the course. The programming assignments, problems, quizzes, etc. do a great (but challenging) job of making sure you actually learned what you were supposed to.

Huge thanks to the Professor and the instructors, this is the well structured course series that I have ever seen in this domain in Coursera. Unlike in other courses, the series of assignments are prepared and evaluated in a way that students can't cheat. I really appreciate the effort of the staff on that perspective. It would be a really great experience, if the series of projects was bit more tuff.

Another excellent course in this specialisation; well thought out quizzes that consolidate your knowledge with tricky questions, and really interesting and useful programming assignments to put the theory into practice. The fact that C++ is the main language used is a massive bonus too, given its critical importance as the major systems/large scale software engineering language of choice.

Wade is an excellent teacher who explains abstract concepts extremely well. The course material is thorough and the exercises are challenging yet enjoyable. The forums seems to be not very active now, so I advise this course for those with some CS and C++ fundamentals already, namely basic C++ syntax and some understanding of the Big-Oh time complexity and sorting algorithms.

I used to be very intimidated by Data Structures and Algorithms. Can't believe I actually finished 2 of these courses. These courses make it look pretty easy. It's probably because there the code is mostly spoon-fed. Either way, I'm happy with this course because it minimized how difficult I thought all these concepts were.

Excellent course!

As I mentioned in last in the series, the course is very clear, and there is only one thing that is different from a course project in my university, that is there are more reading than coding in the project here. You may take this as an advantage, as well as disadvantage, according to your own stands.

The video content is just right for me, and there is a whole lot of reading material inside the working file which are perfectly example for the detail implementation of the exercises. Also i found it very helpful to check out the comments in discussion forums while i got stuck. Highly recommend!