I was a bit sceptical at the beginning, but the course proved me wrong. Excellent introduction to data science and its basic concepts, and fits perfectly to the rest of specialization.
Based on my personal experience, I would advise against taking this course.
The content is OK, but the delivery leaves something to be desired. Ironically for a course talking about agile and lean start up philosophies, this is delivered in the extremely old-fashioned way of having someone talk at you (also, if I'm honest, in a quite American waffle, which isn't particularly user-friendly for those whose first language isn't American English). Oh, that said, they do give you about 3 minutes of a ridiculous 'skit' to illustrate the point... But really nothing innovative or experimental at all here..!
However, much, much worse than that is the fact that it is a hotbed for people who want to 'scam' a qualification. There appears to be no vetting of 'students' whatsoever. The majority of the submissions that I was required to review were one and the same document (that is, exactly the same, not one word changed). Because I had to report them for plagiarism, this also meant that they don't count towards the total no. of peer reviews completed, meaning it's extremely difficult to finish the course and earn the certificate, as there are really no genuine submissions at all it seems. (The few I did manage to complete were mostly just copied and pasted from the internet). Pessimal experience, and the same goes for the related courses - Hypothesis-Driven Development, Managing an Agile Team and Agile Meets Design Thinking.
Also, if you alert Coursera to this and / or ask how to complain, the 'customer help service' just repeats the same thing over and over regarding the plagiarism function and ignores the complaint request outright, every single time.
In my opinion this is disgusting for a course that is this expensive. Save yourself some time and hassle - best avoided.
