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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....
Highlights
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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101 - 125 of 7,919 Reviews for Using Python to Access Web Data

By Zong Y N

Jun 28, 2021

We are encouraged at the start of the course that we can read up external materials to understand the context better. But during the assignment, when we wrote codes not exactly taught in the course - it was considered as "copying from the internet". Moreover, one assignment was believed to have incorrect content that render my assignment failed. After raising it in the discussion forum, my assignment been accepted suddenly, I have yet to receive any conclusion on what went wrong that render my assignment failed initially. Took up alot of my time to relook on my assignments that are fundamentally correct, the so called "copy from internet" and the last assignment that failed because of wrong content.

By Kevin P

Mar 18, 2016

The pedagogy of this course is disappointing because of a lack of sequential instruction. Large gaps exist: explanations of syntax and conceptualization of how the data flows seem incomplete. I have looked at all kinds of documentation as well as the book, but I cannot find what I need to know, and this a barrier to completing the assignments. The instructor's videos have shown me very little of what I need to understand the concepts. The examples show at most 20% (that is just a guess, it is probably less) of the knowledge that I need to complete the assignments. When I ask questions on the forums, the first word I think when I read mentors' explanations is "cryptic."

By Rick M

Jan 29, 2017

This course is garbage. The instruction videos are fine, but the assignments are imprecise in their language at times, and there are certain key points needed to complete them that aren't covered in the videos. The mentor in the forums is lousy, and his responses are worded as if he's talking with a peer and not a beginner/student.

I may or may not try another coursera course after this. But if this experience is any indication, Coursera isn't very good. The same UofM course appears over on Udemy, and I wonder if it is just being repurposed on as many platforms as possible without the care needed to make sure it works.

By Hua R Q

Jun 24, 2020

The rule of not allowing TAs to explain to students the answers to the quiz in the discussion area doesn't make sense at all, because the assignment itself does not give an explanation for the answers. Many students seek help after completing the quiz. If they intended to cheat, they don’t need to bother asking questions in the discussion area, because the test itself is unlimited, and they can repeat the test multiple times to get the correct answer. If there is no chance to ask questions about the quiz, how can the problems aroused in the quiz be solved?

By Matthew B

Mar 2, 2016

No teaching. Just a guy talking and sometimes complaining about imaginary students' hypothetical thoughts. Do the problem sets for practice. If you need help, pause the videos and try the code out yourself.

Seriously though, a programming course where the teacher is not actively type out the code but just scribbling around it. He doesn't work through code but talks around the concepts.

By Tyrel B

Jun 28, 2017

Course started out with python 2.7 and then moved to python 3.x after the second week. Felt like I was paying for a Beta course. Assignment samples didn't match up for the xml parsing section... json code was provided.... spend hours getting beautiful soup to work then figured out they had switched the python version on me.... course forum was worthless

By Harshita C

Aug 30, 2020

Course 1 and 2 of this specialization were much more effective and easy to understand. The assignments were really hard. Somehow completed them but didn't get enough knowledge. Many of the topics were not properly explained so became much difficult to pass the assignments. The difficulty level was really high this time.

By Juan M B G

Mar 11, 2021

I was unfairly accused of plagiarism just for post a code that was posted on an instructor because I had question about this code, now I have an average for 89.9 without this assestment and I cannot get the certificate just for this.

By Aditi G

Jun 11, 2020

I am really disappointed by the teaching staff , I did not copy/paste any of the codes yet they have given me zero grades. This is how you examine student's code ? Because of this I feel so disappointed after all these efforts.

By LISA S

Aug 16, 2020

You can't get help. I got stuck on this one assignment. but the only place to get help is a forum which is not helpful. I was asking for extra help and that doesn't happen. This is strictly you get what you pay for.

By Arka S

Apr 26, 2023

This course is outdated. Nobody uses urllib now. People use requests. It's high time for it to get an update else it's irrelevant now.

By Chandrasekhar G

May 19, 2020

Very hard course all of a sudden. I have completed many specializations and I can say that this has too steep a learning curve.

By yan m

Sep 22, 2020

this course does not go deep enough to actuulay understand somting and most of the code are gicen without any explnation

By Deleted A

Apr 2, 2019

What comes in the videos has pretty much no correlation to the elements of each assignment

By Anastasiia L

Nov 18, 2016

Very poor course... You can pass it in a one day even if you never program Python.

By Jaideep G

May 26, 2020

difficult assignments and not so understandable content

By Peter J J

Nov 8, 2015

Confusing. No help. Poorly presented.

By Wenhan X

Aug 16, 2020

Poor course. not recommended

By Matthew D

Apr 22, 2022

I never signed up for this.

By Shagal A S

Jun 7, 2017

very poor course

By furkan e

Jul 27, 2018

Not useful

By Erfan H R

Jun 27, 2020

Stupid!

By Victor D

Aug 5, 2021

I often skip reading reviews of a course before enrolling as I often find "most useful reviews" being a bit harsh even if the average rate is near 5-stars. After I completed this course, I looked up the reviews and I was right about what I thought I was going to find. So the first thing that has to be addressed is that it's indeed true that this course feels a lot different from the previous two ones. But that's to be expected. The first two ones are too simple and too easy, so it doesn't come as a surprise that you get the feeling that they were better courses overall (as if the explanations were better and the assignments were more reasonable), because they were about simple things that were kept inside Python just to get used to this programming language, but this course is about interacting with other applications and languages without really explaining how they work. But explaining what exactly XML, JSON, API's. etc. are and how they work would take at least 1 course more for each one of them. So what can you expect when just 1 course covers all of these while still teaching you the basics of Python? It makes it feel rushed but that doesn't mean that it's bad. As Dr. Chuck has explained before, this specialization is about getting used to Python, getting to know what you can do with it rather than becoming a professional, so that then you can enroll in more courses about Python or other languages and not feel like you're completely lost and this course does that job perfectly. You still get a good idea about what those things are without deeply studying those subjects. Finall, the assignments are not just tweaking code but you also have to understand how they work, otherwise you would struggle even is most of the code is already written in the examples. You have to figure out a lot of things by yourself but it's not very difficult. You don't have to look up things on Youtube or Stackoverflow as others have stated, that's just exaggerating. Everything you need is in this course or in the provided book.

By kalu M

May 2, 2019

I just finished Using Python to Access Web Data, which is the third (3rd) course in the Python for Everybody specialization. The course wasn't so easy as the previous courses in the specialization as I had to spend more time debugging and practicing, nevertheless, it was lot more fun.

Completing and learning the coursework in this course would definitely have been impossible without the Python for Everybody team which includes the good Dr.Chuck and the mentors. There are many things I liked in this course. The discussion forums were great, the videos and slides were really cool and the mentors did great stuff like checking your code for you and other good stuffs. Becoming a programmer is subject to many constraints and the chiefest of this is the need for mentor-ship and the Python for Everybody team understands this so well.

There is just one flaw. I recommend more sample projects, more course work , more content, and more work files but this would make the course boring, last much more longer and nobody wants to grow grey hair learning python. The best way to take care of this might be to introduce an additional course. Notwithstanding,I give this course a 5-star rating and recommend it to anyone who has a thing for python and who has a good understanding of its syntax and data structures covered in the previous courses of the specialization.

By ashok m

Aug 13, 2020

This was a great learning experience. It was tough but in the end, you feel satisfied that you worked hard and your efforts paid off. Dr. Chuck is a great teacher, content creator and an inspiring technologist. I really enjoyed, apart from the core course content, his interviews of original creators such as the WWW, JSON, at the CERN centre etc. It helped me understand and empathise with myself when I found it difficult to grasp certain concepts.

I have one complaint though. The teaching staff (especially one Ms Tamara Brunnock) are nasty, rude towards beginner students like me and others. The discussion forums should be a courteous place to exchange thoughts and reveal your ignorances. However these teaching staff bully students with rhetorical questions. I don't know why they are teaching staff if they don't love the subject, love teaching and love interacting with students. I got zero value addition through these discussion forums. In some of these forums, there are external freelancers who help you out and that is the only help you get.

Beyond all this quibbling, Dr. Chuck is a great instructor and my computer knowledge is solely thanks to him.