I was disappointed by the lack of interaction in this course and by the transcipts for videos. Transcipts were not written using paragraphs or any text features.

In general, I believe the course was very good and helpful to understanding instructional design. I appreciate the short and reasonable assignments and class length. The content was very interesting and encouraged me so much that I had considered more course work with Coursera and even with the University of Illinois Master Track program. Until week four! The final week culminated in fifteen retakes of the quiz and bought me to a significant level of frustration. I will use question two as an example; “Learning goals should…(Please check all that apply): 1) Focus on the big picture of knowledge gain, skill development and ability/attitude change, 2) Address a performance/learning problem directly, 3) Describe the problem and gap broadly so it can be flexible depending on strategy and the types of learning environment, 4) Describe what the learners will be able to do after instruction.” The detailed notes and my previous training background gave a level of confidence I would be able to answer correctly. I chose the first two responses: “Focus on the big picture of knowledge gain, skill development and ability/attitude change” and “address a performance/learning problem directly.” These two answers were clearly defined in part one video of week four. However, the question was marked wrong! I began to work all the options of answers to get the question correct and for fourteen tries I was still wrong. I did not ever select the last of the four answers since I knew that answer referred to learning objectives and not learning goals. In week four, part three beginning at the twentieth sentence of the video lecture, Professor states, “Learning objectives are the statements describing what learners will be able to do after the instruction.” However, the only way for me to receive a correct answer for this question was to include the fourth answer which is CLEARLY WRONG!! It is not part of the definition of learning goals as outlined in the course. SO FRUSTRATING. Not only would I continue taking the quiz every eight hours for the rest of my life, there is no way to resolve such an issue or opportunity to debate. Part of instructional design is to understand the end user experience and it would do the staff good to see things from the student perspective. My constructive criticism of the course continues with:

1. The above mentioned issue with quizzes having incorrect content, specifically week 4, question 2.

2. The quiz feedback is inaccurate and inadequate.

3. No resolution or ability to resolve questions of content. My effort to highlight this issue in the discussion help form went to never-never land.

4. Only peer feedback and no instruction participation. I had a peer review that accused me of plagiarism with no proof or specific feedback. She simply stated it looked like “it was copy and paste.” Absolutely false and infuriating. The course relies too heavily on peer feedback. There should be other forms of feedback.

5. The course does not complete the ADDIE design model. There could have been one module to summarize the remaining parts of the model after Analysis.

As some of the other negative reviewers have noted, there is some serious irony to a poorly-designed course on Instructional Design (ID) that does not meet accepted best-practices standards for online education. I have ten years of teaching experience (including online) in higher education, so this critique is not completely unfounded.

Content is delivered by individuals who seem to lack any passion for the topic, and the majority of video modules are in the 15+ minutes range, which only adds to the drudgery. By about halfway through the second module, I resorted to simply muting the audio and reading the transcript: a strategy that I found to be far more efficient and pleasant than actually watching the lectures. In addition, there is a totally useless first "assignment" where you are told to find a posting for a job in ID, and then say why you chose it. Not sure what learning objective that was intended to accomplish, but I'm fairly certain it fell short.

So, is there any redeeming value to this course? Yes. The readings are useful, and some of the video content is fundamentally interesting, even when delivered with a complete lack of enthusiasm. In short, I learned a little bit more about the history, terminology, and principles of Instructional Design, but I will definitely not be taking any more courses on the topic from this institution.

The readings were the most useful part of this course. The videos were difficult to follow, and quite frankly, very boring, due to poor delivery. I felt that the essential learning points could have been taught in much more concise and more structured video lectures. It would have been easier for me to work through the content with slides using text only, with no speech. The video transcripts were not accurate.

The quizzes often contained elements that were not covered in either the lectures or the readings. Sometimes the wording of the quizzes was ambiguous, so it was not clear why the correct answer was the correct answer. For the final week 4 quiz, I had to retake the quiz about 8 times due to being unable to work out the correct answer for 2 out of the 8 questions. In the end, I just guessed until I got the right answer. I have no idea why the guess was correct.

While I learnt a lot, this learning came from the readings and not from the video content.

The videos in this course were difficult to follow and not very engaging. Many of the videos were largely filled with technical vocabulary and jargon, but not very well clarified or explained. As an introductory course, this was very challenging and difficult to get through. I felt as though this course could have been more interesting and had more real life application examples.

The instructional design of this course is so Bad. It made me feel frustrated.

The course present good theoretical content, however most of it lacks practical tools for the aspiring Instructional Designer. For all the cognitive and learning styles presented, the course is more a constant lecturing, in many cases without a break, an example or dynamic to it.

The Required Reading material, while good, takes several hours to get through — I spent at least 20 hours reading external content marked as Required Reading, with little to no direction.

Regarding the assessments, they are VERY difficult to complete, as there is a lot of questions of the type "Select all that apply" and, in some cases, those are not part of the content, but deductive questions, leading to a lot of trial and error, and failed attempts.

Even taking notes during the course (downloading all the transcripts and required reading material), finding the right answer among 150+ pages of content is a demanding feat. On this note, the course advises we can download the slides, which I was not able to find; and downloading the transcript of the lectures to study from gives you a plain text document that quickly becomes useless due to the lack of formatting it provides. It'd be a welcome addition if the university prepared the transcript as a formatted document, so it can be used for study/assessment purposes.

Overall, I learned a few things, but I wouldn't recommend this course unless you want some overall ID concepts.

I don't recommend this course. To be honest, I haven't yet finished the course and I don't think I will. I've just started module 3, and in general I've just found the course so far to be a slog. The course is not engaging, the lecture videos are very boring and tedious. Having paid for the course, I'm disappointed that the only "grades" so far are from multiple choice quizzes and peer-reviewed assignments. I also found the quizzes were not very well-designed.

I hated everything about the course except for the few guest lectures which were the most engaging. For this being a course about ID, it was a pretty crappy example of how to do it well. I HATED the tests and that when you got a question wrong, there was no feedback to what the right answers were. The writing assignments also felt disconnected from the learning content. I would not recommend.

The instructors were very hard to follow. I had to read the transcript numerous times to understand the content. They did not emphasize important or key information making the tests extremely difficult. Many of the test questions were select all that apply. This does not seem like good practice. I have taken other curriculum development courses and I do not recommend this course.

not the course I wanted

**Did the free course so I only had access to readings, videos, and in-video questions**

This was a great course that provided a LOT of resources to do further research on my own. I especially appreciated the pre-readings because they were so in depth and well written.

The videos didn't go into major depth but I think that was because, just like most in-person university classes, you are supposed to go into them having gained some prior knowledge through the pre-readings. It was a little fast sometimes but I would just pause and rewind the video.

I have also seen a few reviews that said the course should be taught by "native english speakers" and those people will be very limited in their instructional design scope if they are only focused on "native english speakers." Go and rewatch the Diversity & Inclusion video in module 3. Also, to the lady who said in her review that the women's voices were "shrill": these women actually have pleasant tones to their voices and are usually lower-pitched than most women I talk to (myself included).

Anyways, if you are brand-spanking new to Instructional Design, I would HIGHLY recommend this course. My Mom is a retired teacher and I basically know most of the learning theory foundational knowledge that took her years and thousands of dollars to learn.

If you are a deep and strategic learner you will find this "practically-free" course will be a great starting place down your path of ID.

<3

This course gave me very useful insights into the world of instructional design. Although I am not an Instructional Designer, I am involved extensively in the activities of the Analysis phase to plan training programs in the organization I work with. In other terms I am a general L&D professional, and was at a career crossroad. I am now very sure that I would like to specialize in the field of Instructional Design and this course is an absolute first step in my journey.

A huge thanks to University of Illinois and Coursera for designing such insightful programs. I particularly loved the options for scholarships. Please keep doing the good work! Look forward to my next course.

All the best!

This course met my expectations in providing the foundational knowledge that I needed. I am used to taking traditional in-person college classes and was unsure how this course would operate online. However, I was very satisfied with this course and the various professors that led the instruction. I would suggest this course to anyone seeking a professional and structured course providing the foundational knowledge about Instructional Design. They provided several resources for learners to follow up on after the modules. As well, the quizzes and activities helped to reinforce the knowledge. Thank you for helping me to take my first step towards my career as an Instructional Designer.

This is a really good foundational course as it provides good theoretical knowledge about instructional design theories, models, learning theories, learning types etc. Such a theoretical knowledge helps in setting up a concrete base. I particularly liked the course for the additional reading material it provides at the end of each module. I would appreciate it if I can get a downloadable pdf list of the additional readings and the professional websites provided in this course. The assessments are very well developed and they particularly assess if the learner was keen on listening and following the videos or not. This course gives a good head start for an aspiring ISD

Very comprehensive. Challenging and very informative. Although I have been involved in Instructional Design for the past 6 years, this was the first time I had taken a course on the technical fundamentals of the process. I am confident I will be able to design better course content as a result of completing this course.

I would also like to express appreciation for the expertise and mastery of this material presented by the course instructors. Their passion and dedication to Instructional Design was very evident throughout the entire series of lectures and I have a renewed appreciation for everything the process of creating quality content requires.

As a former secondary English teacher, I found this information highly practical, and I wish I had taken this course prior to entering the teaching profession! It makes instructional foundations accessible and engaging. The content was so seamless and well designed, I found myself having "aha moments" about concepts that years of professional development and teacher training had not given me! After taking this course, I feel empowered as an educator, and more equipped as an aspiring instructional designer. I am so grateful for this course, and I appreciate the personable instructors! Thank you to the Coursera team, and all who made it accessible!

I really enjoyed this course! It provided me with a comprehensive understanding of the instructional designer role and more. I appreciated the practical examples that were both simple and effective in enhancing comprehension. Also, the detailed coverage of the Analysis phase in the ADDIE model proved to be particularly valuable. The insights into project management were also beneficial!! I am confident that this course will significantly contribute to my professional growth. I want to express my gratitude to the University of Illinois and Coursera for offering this course. Thank you!

I thank Coursera and the professors for providing me with a great learning experience. the course was well organized with insightful questions and learning activities. Although the peer review part was something new to me, my second attempt made me do well and learned to do better in it now. thanks for such a wonderful presentation and training. thank you for the valuable certificate which is motivating me a lot and feeling enthusiastic. I also thank my classmates for their peer reviews.

This course is very comprehensive and gave me great knowledge of instructional design. Course is well designed and really helped me understand many concepts with a very well managed way. All the quizzes, study material and lectures are very well designed and really helped he novice learners like me a solid foundation of the course. The structure of the course and breaking up of concepts into smaller modules was really helpful. Overall, I had a great time.

This course teaches the basic instructional design process and provide an overview of Instructional Design Field. It focuses on the initial step necessary for the instructional design strategy. By the end of this course, I am able to have a vision to continue my learning pursuit of effective online and cohort teaching goals and to make useful decisions on the upcoming skill set required in the application of Instructional Design.

This course covers the important aspects of Instructional Design and is good for beginners to understand concepts and gain a clear insight on what the profession is all about. However, in terms of the assignments and examples it would help if a short course is prepared by learners, through examples and/or actual courses prepared by professionals to better relate with the theoretical content.

I loved the course because it reinforces the understanding of the background of instructional design, explain concepts and theories to improve how we create training and improve adult learning processes. Now I'm able to develop a better analysis including Needs assessments, learning analysis and super important task analysis which involves the creation of learning objectives.

A very interesting course that facilitates many students to know the most important foundation of the instructional design world. The material presentation is very interesting, the instructor presents the material in a cool and easy to understand style. The task given is also very helpful in understanding the material that has been delivered. I really like this course!

This course was a great entry into the many different aspects of ID. I would definitely recommend it if you are interseted in pursuing this further whether by career or education. This course will give you a good idea if this is a good fit for you. The professors were knowledgeable and provided information in a manner accessible to those outside of the field.