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Learner Reviews & Feedback for What is Social? by Northwestern University

4.6
stars
4,157 ratings

About the Course

The “What Is Social?" MOOC is for business owners, executives, and marketing professionals who want to significantly improve their abilities to grow their social strategy using effective, proven methodologies. This hands on, "how to" program won’t just tell you how to grow your professional persona using social – you will actually do it! This course is the first in the six-course specialization, Social Media Marketing: How to Profit in a Digital World. While the course can be audited for free, paid learners will receive additional content beyond the course basics. For MOOC 1, the toolkit includes a special video from Alessandro Acquisti on Big Data and a set of studies done by IBM on engagement and social marketing strategies with bottom-line profits. This course has been designed to give you the tools, insights, knowledge, and skills to immediately impact your organization. In addition, we will help you network with thought leaders in social. After completing this course, you and your organization’s staff will be able to position, engage, and grow relationships with the consumers of highest value to you. Today, we are living in a period of massive disruption. New technologies are changing the way people engage with each other and with the organizations that interest them. This course will start you on the path to growing your own social strategy using effective, proven methodologies. Additional MOOC 1 faculty include: * Judy Ungar Franks (President, The Marketing Democracy, Ltd. & Lecturer, Medill Integrated Marketing Communications, Northwestern)...

Top reviews

FF

Oct 6, 2016

Great course. Looking forward completing whole specialization.

Additionally, the course shares and recommends tools which are helpful if you are doing social media marketing or eager to become one.

CC

May 12, 2016

A really great introduction to Social Media Marketing and an opportunity to gain access to really useful tools that make me competitive in the job market. Very excited to begin MOOC 2 of this program.

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801 - 825 of 1,077 Reviews for What is Social?

By Mohd A

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Aug 10, 2020

good

By Mona A A

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Jun 17, 2020

good

By Darsh_Segal_A036

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May 7, 2020

GOOD

By Mariam R A

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May 6, 2020

Good

By Meshal F A

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Oct 5, 2019

رائع

By Mehmet U

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Dec 17, 2020

Yes

By Randy M

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Nov 10, 2020

a++

By Sax D

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Aug 3, 2018

!!!

By ERNAZAROV U K o

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Oct 6, 2020

ok

By Nguye??n T T V ( Q

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Jun 7, 2024

g

By Muhammad A

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Jun 4, 2021

t

By Hanan M S A

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May 6, 2020

-

By Amgad K

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May 6, 2020

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By KingFanfan F

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Feb 18, 2018

E

By Nicola H

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Dec 5, 2017

I'm strung between 3 and 4 stars for this course. I'm biased because I did this first MOOC for free. I then signed up with a monthly subscription because I think I understood that means I gain certification in the realm of social media management, if I pay for it. I'm having a hard time finding out exactly the benefits of paying vs not paying and I did not make a note of it at the time.

The Pros of this course (I've completed the first MOOC) are that you can do it on your own time, that it's very easy to do until it isn't. I sailed through the first few sections in a manner that was almost too easy. Then we hit the 'set your goal and go for it' which felt like a giant step that was not supported sufficiently by the steps leading up to it. But that should be under Cons. So .. pros are time management, ease of presentation and I found myself wanting to peer-review a lot of my peers out of a sense of camraderie.

Cons - I sailed through the first few sections in a manner that was almost too easy. Then we hit the 'set your goal and go for it' which felt like a giant step that was not supported sufficiently by the steps leading up to it. It's hard to tell when you are studying alone whether or not it is the structure of the course or you, who has dropped something out, to make certain steps seem disproportionately difficult compared to the others. But I have found this first MOOC to be ridiculously easy and then remarkably difficult within a breath of each other in terms of transition from one to t'other. Peer review can make it really difficult too. I haven't seen any evidence that my piece was peer reviewed, and no notifications of such. Doesn't mean there haven't been, but this is an example of where what I don't know, I can't seem to discover.

Overall I think this is a good course and I am continuing with it, but I do feel that there are some leaps, developmentally, that are not sufficiently prepared for in the lead-up.

By Carter L K

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Oct 9, 2020

I learned a lot and the course seemed to be designed to make learning interesting and enjoyable again. I was really looking forward to completing the rest of the specialization but my financial aide that I thought covered all of the courses in the specialization was only applied to the first of 6 courses. Unfortunately my position hasn't changed and I still can't afford to pay for the courses. I was hoping to finish the entire specialization and use my newly acquired knowledge to create some opportunities as a social marketing consultant and earn enough money to continue to learn and earn as many different certifications in the social/digital marketing world as I am able. It will only add to the professional persona I've been actively creating for some time now. I hope it will create the pillars of the well respected, profitable firm I hope to create that will be praised by my peers. This course has made me even more confident and motivated to excel and eventually even surpass the professional persona that I will have positioned at the highest level. I hate my fate being placed in the hands of anyone other than my own. Unfortunately the affects of Covid-19 has done that to many people. I am putting my faith in the hands of the folks controlling the financial aide and pray that they feel the drive and passion radiating from me and give me enough to totally drown myself in knowledge that I'll share with the people and companies that make up the market and industry I hope to serve well. I strongly believe that the people who created the criteria and crafted the lessons for these courses have delivered something so special for their students that it commands attention and motivates them to want to learn, but what they will do when the course is finished is anyones guess. I hope they give it back to the people writing the checks...

By Deleted A

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Feb 15, 2016

This section is great for absolute beginners, and I would highly recommend it to anyone new to social media and social marketing. It seems necessary for it to be this straightforward to set everyone up for the more advanced material. Most of this was review for me, but I learned some interesting, fun facts about social media usage and data.

The project was peer graded, which normally I enjoy, however, one of my peer assessments said my assignment was missing elements that I specifically made sure to include and address. There was no way to really dispute this, so I feel like my grade on the assignment wasn't fair. That said, I didn't have a bad grade, but I put a great deal of effort into my proposal and making sure it addressed all of the necessary points.

Otherwise, very informative and enjoyable, and the class participation in social media is great.

By Alysia B

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Sep 21, 2016

The content in this course was invaluable and I learned a lot from the instructor videos, guest lectures and assignments. It's already changed the way I am doing business.

My one complaint is with the grading system - and this is on Coursera and not on the course. I can't understand first why a peer graded assignment is considered late when I submitted it on time, and it's not my fault that others hadn't reviewed it yet. Similarly on a quiz, there were points given for answers that were supposed to be skipped if you had done the assignment. Therefore, the highest grade you could get on that quiz was a 57%. While passing was a 1%, it's still averaged into my final grade as a 57%. That doesn't make any sense at all.

By Angela M H

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Feb 25, 2017

The content of this course was pitched well for a beginner in social media and marketing and provided a great overview of what to expect from the rest of the specialisation. The resources were varied and interesting, and came in a variety of formats to be accessible to as many students as possible. The quizzes were well-set-up. Some of the wording of the assignment was difficult to understand (and this from a native English speaker), and the range of answers I reviewed for my peers reflected that this was not just the case for me. It was fascinating reading what others were using social media and digital marketing strategies to leverage - the variety of industries and subsectors represented in the cohort was amazing!

By Lisa L

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Jun 20, 2017

Compared to other Coursera classes I've experienced, this one was very thinly moderated. I sensed a lot of frustration from participants who didn't understand or were uncertain about the peer reviewed assignment. From reviewing 6 classmates' assignments, I feel the confusion was genuine in some cases (others simply didn't put in much effort). For those trying to achieve and understand, the lack of support is disheartening. Keep in mind that for many of us this is completely new territory.

By Laura S

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Jan 22, 2018

This is a brief intro course where it basically tells what you *will* learn in future classes in this series. There's not much learning in this class itself, but I found value in that one assignment encouraged you to specifically define your professional target markets - who, in which digital communities, consuming what type of media, concerned with which topics, etc. The course also makes you sign up for some useful social medial tools (to be used in later classes).

By Amanda P

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May 7, 2020

Good, however I felt that a lot of information was repeated a little too much throughout the four weeks. I think for companies looking to update the way they market towards their customers/audience this is a good course to take. For individuals wanting to learn how to market themselves on Social Media this really isn't catered towards that. All in all, good course to take and really interesting to see how companies can grow into Social Media influencers.

By Stephanie C

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Feb 4, 2021

Overall a solid course, although some of the information felt a tad outdated - I realize that the course is constantly evolving and being amended though and with that in mind, overall it was good. The one other thing that I would note is that the assignments here and the focus feels put on entrepreneurs, and as someone trying to learn more for my day job, I didn't feel like there was a lot that I could do that was hands-on and bring over to that.

By Sabrina K

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Jun 16, 2022

obviously social media is a fast changing area. Therefor i was quite impressed how they kept the course docs and infos up to date. I am quite experienced in this field, but i have chosen this course because i want to to the whole package and to get into the mood of online learning and courses (first timer here). The content wasnt challenging but if you are new in this field i think it covers certain basics and understandings.

By Polina A

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Oct 5, 2020

This course contains a lot of great information and insights regarding social media and marketing on an introductory level, but it does sometimes feel very stiff in a way one might not expect when discussing the fluid and ever-changing world of social media. Because much of the information is conceptual, rather than specific to current platforms, it doesn't seem entirely outdated, but could use some freshening up.