great

bien

Good

good

Good

good

Good

good

GOOd

GOOD

good

nice

GOOD

Good

GOOD

Good

Best

Good

Gud

...

ok

.

.

It's a nice course to get started on project management. However, it is wordy and full of fluff. I wish it would get straight to the point and shorten the whole learning curve. PROS: 1. It's designed to ease you into learning a bit each day. With a focus on not overwhelming you with too much information 2. The experience / story sharing of real project managers is useful. I would like to see more case studies in which the concepts were more practiced in real life. Say for example, a project manager talked about "building a community of engineers". How did it happen? What were the obstacles? More often than not, buzzwords were being thrown around with the sole purpose of mentioning it. Without a concrete example, I believe these fluff parts could be cut out of the course, making it overall a more efficient experience. CONS: 1. Going at it at nearly full time. It was almost infuriating how slow some of the concepts were rolling in. It was "we'll get into X" later, and when later the concept shows up it's only briefly talked about. 2. The quizzes are somewhat more about memorizing and categorizing each scenario to a concept. I believe real life is a bit different than this. Remembering that "X equals Y" and that S means specific in SMART goals, but what about the deeper question of how do you WANT to set a goal in a project? Do you set it lower (making it easier to reach, and therefore, explain to the stakeholders at the end)? Or do you set it a bit higher to be "Inspirational"? What happens when key resources are being taken out of your project to work on another? What happens when a client expects a deliverable that wasn't exactly spelled out in the signed project charter (vague wording, go figure!), but refuses to give more time or budget for this? How do you get stakeholder buy-in when there are conflicts of interests, and not everybody who sits on the meetings are on the same page? Real life PM-ing is a lot more challenging and I would like to learn something handy quick, when my back is being held to the flames.

My rating is more like 3.5 stars, and my concerns are (also) around the peer review portion of this course. I personally "reviewed" several submissions that were clearly plagarized, and in one instance they were given to me back-to-back. Since these same people are responsible for reviewing my work, I am left not entirely sure if I am understanding the course material or just the recipient of a passing grade from someone who is trying to cut as many corners as possible to get to their certificate.

As a whole, I walked away from the course feeling relatively confident that I understood the material presented but if someone asked me whether or not they should take this course, it would come with several caveats.