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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Using Python to Access Web Data by University of Michigan

4.8
stars
43,891 ratings

About the Course

This course will show how one can treat the Internet as a source of data. We will scrape, parse, and read web data as well as access data using web APIs. We will work with HTML, XML, and JSON data formats in Python. This course will cover Chapters 11-13 of the textbook “Python for Everybody”. To succeed in this course, you should be familiar with the material covered in Chapters 1-10 of the textbook and the first two courses in this specialization. These topics include variables and expressions, conditional execution (loops, branching, and try/except), functions, Python data structures (strings, lists, dictionaries, and tuples), and manipulating files. This course covers Python 3....
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High quality content

(256 Reviews)

Practical assignments

(217 Reviews)

Top reviews

SM

Jun 18, 2020

This course was really interesting and did a good job introducing complicated topics in usefully simplified form. It was a pleasure to listen to the instructor and I got everything I wanted out of it.

AB

Jun 6, 2019

Getting a bit more challenging than the earlier courses in the specialization. The exercises require more struggle, but all the information is there. Another step along the way. Thank you, Dr. Chuck!

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76 - 100 of 7,919 Reviews for Using Python to Access Web Data

By Sauhard S

Apr 6, 2022

it is a good course

By Alan B

Apr 25, 2022

learning a lot

By Juan D L L

Aug 28, 2020

I think the integration between extracting data from local documents (2nd course) to extracting data from web documents (this course) was awesome. I have some experience managing JSON and HTML syntax, and I had no problems on the assignments. However, the course's covering REST and APIs were rushed, and I think the assignments were not that challenging, because they could be done by modifying the last lines of the provided sample code (I recommend writing all the code by yourself).

If you want to have full understanding of the concepts involved in this course, you have to research A LOT. But, as Dr. Chuck said, the goal here is to at least tell you that that stuff exists.

By Ognjen G

Aug 6, 2022

Much weaker than its predecesors just cause its somewhat fast and basic about themes that seem very complex. Some code needs deeper explanation, but hey we are here for the whole ride.

By HAMZA B

Mar 26, 2023

j'ai pas réussit un asignement et j'ai pas obtenu une nouvelle chance pour le refair

By Alexander C

Nov 18, 2015

Compared to other Python Courses I have taken this is course has no meat on them bones and is NOT worth $80 at all even for a certificate. However for FREE? ok. Worth the introduction to some useful tools. Spend your time and money on a more valuable course like Fundamentals of Computing Specialization, which is awesome, and is about the same price as of this writing.

This course offers no challenge, little content, and the assignments let me down. Assignments are basically handed to you where you only need to alter one line of text to get the right answer on what is supposed to take an hour.

Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python thru Rice U has content and weekly mini projects that really push your learning ability and after taking the courses, I felt like I really got something out of it.

This course barely scratches the surface of "Accessing Web Data" and does nothing to challenge your coding skills. The positive side, it introduces you to Web API's, the basics of Beautiful Soup, and other BUZZWORDS. At least structure assignments to combine all of the efforts learned in previous chapters onto one another.

Side note... what is the professor doing filming lectures on vacation or at lunch? This does nothing to add to the content of the course and is distracting and unprofesh.

The meaningless assignments let me down.

By Alexandre N M P

Nov 7, 2019

After finishing this last part of this Specialisation I fell completely frustrated and agree with other feedbacks in this list. The first part of this Specialisation was really inspiring and I feel that learned a lot. In parallel to those courses, I was able to apply the knowledge acquired in the Py4e to learn Matplotlib, Pandas and Numpy and I was very excited applying that learning in my own research.However, this last course, ‘Using Python to Access Web Data’ was ridicule difficult. The exercises were impossible to my knowledge and understanding. There must be something wrong, since I was able to complete the first courses. The exercises were always challenging, but I was able to accomplish them. While the first courses I was able to understand and find the sources on the readings; this last one was awfully dispersed. I simply didn’t understand the codes, the structures and how to parse the information.While I was exciting discussing and suggesting those first courses to my colleagues. Sorry, this last one I cannot recommend, since I did not understand the codes. I am really sorry for this feedback; but I know that I gave my best and I was unable to enjoy this course. Now I feel that I need to search for another course to learn how to access the web with Python.

By Imran H

Nov 8, 2020

This assignments in this course was very difficult. It was extremely frustrating because the course content is structured in such a way that you don't get a clear idea of all the functions and we are just told to "Do it" because it works. There should have been much more smaller lessons or assignments to make us understand how the urllib line functions. Getting stuck at the assignments was very demoralizing. In some of the assignments I had to read codes from stackoverflow to figure out if what I was doing was right or wrong. The lessons didn't give us any clear clue on how we should approach these problems. One of the biggest obstacles we face is knowing how to look at a problem and figure out what steps we have to take. This course didn't teach us the methods to figure it out on our own. It was more of a copy/paste and modify.

By Josh H

Jul 18, 2020

Dr. Chuck seems like a great professor and I would love to take a course with him in person if I attended the University of Michigan, but I felt I didn't really learn much due to the extremely low difficulty of assignments. Most involved literally just taking the sample code provided and modifying a few lines slightly. I guess it's somewhat forgivable given the difficulty inherent in packaging so many deep, nuanced concepts into a digestible course for the masses, but it still doesn't change the fact that I don't feel like I really learned much of anything. While in the course, I stressed out a bit over the assignments, thinking I was expected to understand all example code provided, until I realized the assignment involves changing like two lines and that's it.

By Yixin W

May 29, 2018

This course is really really challenging if you only took the first two courses before this. The tests are quite hard to get. there are many moving pieces and it is hard to know where to begin with. I tried very hard to understand the lectures but i would say it just doesn't help with the tests.

I wouldn't recommend to beginners like me. but if you know python for a while maybe that's another story.

By Sehan P

Jun 12, 2018

Course is not organized properly. Enough detail is not discussed for some parts. Especially for the parts on Beautifulsoup. Some information is just provided in the links in slide with no reference to whether it is optional to check or not. This course would be good for someone with prior knowledge about JSON, XML and HTML.

By Mert E

Jan 20, 2021

Course 1 and 2 really perfect and amazing. They taught me how to write my own program But this course 3 was really bad. It didn't taught me how to write code my ownself but it taught me how to copy and paste worked example codes and change them a little bit !

By Martin N

Oct 18, 2022

Despite the course is very interesting, I hate it.

The reason for this is that a lot of arguments used in the Scripts are not really god explained. Also the documentation to the programs is incomplete. For me it was really confusing.

By Hosam M

May 18, 2020

need more clarification, the instructor suppoised that we have a solid background in this area (access web data).

I am very disappointed from this course.

By Deleted A

Apr 28, 2018

Average at best. The quiz for networking may be the worst I have ever seen.

I was expecting them to ask me if you could be an animal what would you be?

By Kristin C

Aug 20, 2018

The reading materials and lectures were straight-forward and easy to understand, but the assignments were very difficult and caused me to dislike

By Shilpa S T

May 29, 2018

Not enough relevant material was covered for completing the assignments

By Rohit Y

May 25, 2020

REST APIs and week 6 lectures are extremely hard to comprehend.

By James H

Aug 24, 2022

lack of practice

By 刘嘉禧

Feb 27, 2020

too hard

By Abitofeva

Oct 14, 2021

1. The violation code is not set and guaranteed with clear or fair instructions. Basically if your coding does not meet their answer, they just make the judgement that you are CHEATING and COPYING while unable to figure out which part is a violation. Frustrating and not understandable at all.

2. Tamara Brunnock is not a good fit for this TA position, suggested from a student perspective. when my homework is flagged by violation, he is totally rude, doing nothing helpful but keeps denouncing my inappropriate cheating behaviours. Literally ruined my experience. I’ve reviewed Tamara’s comments on others, how come that a TA describes someone’s homework as a JOKE while they just made a simple mistake of uploading wrong images? The rudeness and ignorance are totally unacceptable. Get someone qualified with basic manners to assist with the course please!

3. Content: not going into depth and lack of clear explanation of key definition and use of specific codes. Instead of teaching you how to write code, they teach you how to copy and paste. Like what have been said, seems the lecturer has something more important to do so he needs to rush over it.

By Stephen I

Nov 27, 2016

I thought the content layout for Courses 1 and 2 were okay. However, when I got to Course 3: Using Python to Access Web Data, I was extremely disappointed. This specialization is advertised as one does not require programming experience. Course 3, however, introduces a variety of computer science topics that I believe cause information overload for a beginner. A student is bombarded with information about regular expressions, the HTTP protocol, web sockets, URLs, HTML, XML, JSON, and APIs. In fact, the video lectures spend the majority of the time explaining these concepts, while spending very little time explaining how to use Python to access web data. The corresponding book, Python for Informatics, was of little help understanding the assignments. Like the videos, the book lacks sufficient numbers of examples. The few examples that are given lack adequate explanations of the code they contain. I found myself on many occasions asking, "What exactly does this line or block of code do?", and could not locate the answer. If not for the forum, I would not have been able to complete th

By Smit P

Nov 22, 2019

Not as good as the previous courses in this specialization. There are many aspects that one needs to know before applying for the course.

1. If this is the first course you are taking before taking any of the previous courses in this spealization then you should probably think and might take the previous ones. Since this course consists of some topics that are discussed in the previous course.

2. The explanation Is too short and I felt it is rushed and not proper explanation is given in some of the topics.

3. There are some good assignments , I was able to do some of them on my own without taking any help based on the explanation and videos . While most of the assignments are difficult since proper explanation is not given .

4. In most of the examples of solved programs instructor does not show the full detailed solution and explanation since the topics is been covered in the previous course. (The typical "You have learnt this in your school " so I m not repeating types)

At the end I felt that I have not gained much knowledge from this course and just completed the assignments.

By Armen A

May 2, 2023

I have no other words than leftover. And ChatGpt Suggested this course for revising bs4, requests. They've got grade assignments that you need to take a screenshot how you installed Python, a random IDE and send to other students to "judge". LMAO, to 'judge' a screenshot of installation, and the screenshots I've attached of Steam logo, were judges as "UNCLASSIFIED". I literally laughed so hard. So, future 'programmers' sit with serious faces and judge how others installed a sofware on your PC xD It's a joke! Btw, nice course about web scrapping, urllib is the best scrapper ever! Don't tell them that you can do the same with os, even with shutil. No comments. Take this course, waste your time and money. And send screenshots to judge and be judged. And the best part is that it's not Udemy, you can't skip the topics you know, you have upload a screenshot of your installation. What a joke!

By Ahmet K

Jul 22, 2020

1) In the video lectures, instructor assumes that you are familiar with the subject. Even though i have completed previous courses in the specialization, most of the time i was very unfamiliar with the subjects that i have been assumed to know.

2) Most of the time instructor is going out of subject and it is being very distracting for not native speakers. I am having hard time understanding the content and then realize that he is speaking about sth. irrelevant.

3) since video lectures are not covering all, you will have hard time understanding the content if your background is not CS. So when you are having hard time to understand the content Instructor trying to make unfunny jokes will annoy you.

I liked first two courses of specialization and hopeful about last two... but this one is below average.