Having been a journalist 15 years ago and now planning a returnI have found the Coursera /Michigan State University classes to be very informative and a great refresher. I highly recommend this course and the specialization as a great way to centralize the journalistic skills you will need and use daily. I wish I'd had access to Coursera back when I first became a journalist!

Amazing course - I learned valuable knowledge; how to craft effective interviews, avoid stereotyping, build credibility, what news literacy is and how to promote it, the importance of portraying as survivors as opposed to victims, how to use social media and crowd-sourcing and actually a lot more.

Instructors were succinct, clear, professional each with easy to follow and pleasant cadence. Slideshows during presentations were very helpful. Overall I have come away with a great understanding of how to gather and develop the news in a wide range of situations.

I have signed up for the next course in the specialization. I definitely will be taking all of them, these classes have given me extraordinary value in my skills.

Its developing is slow, but gets quite good towards the end. Some great tips and teachings, despite it could have more references to texts or books. Certain quizzes are quite unnecessary, though. I'm looking forward to complete the next course in the series. 7/10.

The quality control of the course is not very good. Some videos repeat the same take twice. Some questions are misplaced. Some of the peer review prompts are placed as questions for the student, which causes confusion.

The lecturers are very little personal. i.e I dont connect with them so I dont get too inspired and loose motivation with this particular course (not the subject).

I feel a bit like in a sausage machine, yet there are not enough students on the course to review my assignments, or for me to review assignments. I keep on having to go back to, a for me completed course, to see if there is anyone I can review to get my certificate.

This goes for all of the courses in the series, regretfully.

A highly informative, applicable& easy to follow course by absolutely knowledgeable professors. The thorough, well-organized& engaging course content reflects the the professionalism & the extensive knowledge of the professors in this field. Really looking forward to enrolling in other courses by the same professors & Michigan State University . Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to learn from you.

Until taking this course, I had no idea what goes into even the shortest news story. The gathering and developing of news in this course is fascinating, and as I watch or read news now, I realize how much work it takes to make information available to all. Loved it!

Overall the course is great, but there was one thing could be improved.

The questions asked after each week were too easy, to not say dumb. I think it could have more difficulty so learners will have to study more and dedicate more time for the course.

The video transcripts are terrible and inaccurate. Who transcribed them? The discussion and exam questions are often poorly-worded and vague at best, and grammatically incoherent at worst. The quizzes are overly simplistic at times, and others don't seem to address the content from that unit. The course is very, very general, and doesn't go into much depth. It isn't rigorous. The "peer review" assignments leave no room for evaluation. You can give 15 points or zero points, forcing you to choose whether to pass or fail your classmate for a mediocre but technically acceptable answer, or an insightful but incomplete answer. The course could be greatly improved if even one of the j-school graduate students at Michigan State simply proofread the content. I'm disappointed, but I need the capstone course to produce some writing samples for my own j-school applications, so I will continue with the specialization. tldr; the course is overly basic and poorly written.

Excellent, the instructors teach in an almost mersmerising (sorry will have to spell check that later) way. Totally fascinated by the course as I intend to write articles in the long run. I was many years ago a commercial photographer, however my pictures seem to tell a story and they are not photoshoped. So its envitable that i could not set the world on fire in that realm, but with the journalism course, I can see a way forward. Joe Grim has to have a mention just simply his saying thank you at the end of each lecture, its not something you see from people these days, then there are some very interesting personalities teaching in this course. I expect to come back and do the full specialisation at the end of this.

Gathering and developing the news has taught me very valuable information like ethics for photojournalism , Sensationalism in journalism , how to use crowd sourcing and so many interesting things for journalism. All the video and the explanation was excellent. I really enjoyed learning and I would like to thank you for making this course!

Very good module. I'm glad of being participating on this journalism program. The platform is a breeze and the instructors from the Michigan State University School of Journalism have prepared an entertaining and very informative course. I'm happy!

Great course! I learned a lot about many aspects of journalism, including how to effectively interview and collect information/opinions and ask good questions. Overall, amazing course and I hope to take the next courses of this series.

I really had a wonderful time learning from this course. The explanation was excellent in every video and it gave me a very clear understanding of the topics. Thank you so much for making this course!

This course was a great follow up to the first one. Knowing where to go to find sources is very important. I was especially intrigued by the section on crowd-sourcing content.

This was the brilliant course. Being a journalist I found so many new things that I did not know earlier. For beginners and for experienced, this is simply gem of a course.

relevant and very easy to follow for beginners. I learned a lot and have been using many new findings in my own blogging and tweeting as citizen journalist.

Muy completo e interesante!!, very complete and interesting!!

This is very educating.

A better understanding of how to use news effectively, more important, verification of the sources and materials in hand before going to the publication, and do not misuse the information unethically or it will cost dearly.

So far so good. The only thing that I see that can be improved are the assignment prompts. In both courses that I have taken, the initial prompt in the instructions is usually different than the prompt in the submissions.