As a complete and utter beginner to IT, I feel like all of the information presented in this course is in a backward and awkward way. Everything feels so segmented that I'm having a lot of trouble putting it all together in the correct way. There doesn't seem to be a natural flow to any of the lessons and it feels more like a professional stating something than actually teaching it. I've had to completely use outside sources for how to actually do the Peer Review assignment. I feel like all the learning I've done is from hearing about it here and researching it elsewhere.

Poor designed course with lots of meaningless talk, lack of example and practice, key to pass the test is memorize terms.

The delivery format needs dire quality control. I don't want to see some random guy talking and would rather see some actual slide to show calculations and step by step guide

The course videos are so awkwardly robotic. Maybe if the instructors were not made to read it like that and say it in a more relaxed manner it would be better.

Too much detailed a topic to just have some body narrate the entire course. A few visual displays with audio and activities helps make the course more enjoyable and easy to absorb and understand material

Not explained well and could use more visual aids to help explain.

Reading a teleprompter is not exactly teaching.

I find myself using other sources since everything is so badly explained.

The quizzes have questions about things we are told about in passing.

Many of the workshops do not work at all or require a special work around to get working at all.

Very disappointed in this course.

Do not pay for this.

I can just say that at the beginner level this is really hard material to comprehend, they assume some parts of the network bits that you understand, which as you will notice that is not the case, now for someone who has some network background this might come off more familiar. Very often I would refer to other sources in order to understand the lesson better, which is always welcomed, but here I couldnt understand nothing on the first try.

Suffice to say it will give you good knowledge and fundamentals about how network/networks work but be prepared to review same lessons multiple times and to use google on certain occasions to make things easier to understand.

While I think that I have learnt a great deal of acronyms in this course, I feel that it has in NO WAY prepared me to be able to troubleshoot network issues. There is absolutely no practical knowledge & no virtual hands-on troubleshooting. There is no "steps" on how to do anything. For example: a section on Host Files. I spent 10 minutes trying to find host files on my home computer. nothing! All these tools were are told about, but the information on how to use them is sorely lacking. I was hoping after the vague knowledge that was given to us in the first course, that the second would be more in depth. Not. This has been a big disappointment thus far.

I understand that the material was dense and so they tried to break it down into smaller chunks, but everything was so poorly explained that fitting the parts together was next to impossible. There were not enough good examples given and almost no tie in to how we actually experience the internet, just an endless wave of acronyms, numbers, and technical terms that may or may not have been relevant to the quizzes. I hope the other courses in this program are not as scatterbrained as this one.

This was a very fun course! I really enjoyed the style and pace of the information given. A lot of technical information was given while the course made it easy to take in and comprehend the material!

I loved this course. When I had issues support was awesome sauce. I really enjoyed the puns this instructor used to keep you from going off in a daze. I really wish I would have found Coursera sooner.

Definitely teaches you the basic of networking that are needed to understand how it works as a whole. Would recommend anyone who is interested in learning about networking to enroll in this course.

Information overload that wasn't explained the best. There were points that made complete sense and then their were points that left me wondering if my IQ went down 10 points. Overall, I thought it was a good learning experience. The weakest part of the learning material was the binary conversation section. This was explained so bad that I don't even think Cisco would understand. Definitely use a different source for information outside of this course.

The first course on IT Fundamentals felt way to easy, but at least had some hands-on labs. This second course had way more challenging information, but zero hands-on. I would like the courses to be balanced more between the two, but all-in-all this was a really good, informative course.

For me, it was difficult to understand and grasp the technical aspects of the content. I wish there were more metaphors or infographics to better explain the heavy technical content.

A lot of information, but i feel like i fully understand core networking concepts. A lot of this info has helped me comprehend what will be required for me when I take my Network + certification exam.

i learned a lot of things about this course , how computers are connecting to each other, and the real mechanism which happen inside the computers when two or more nodes is interconnectes

This course is exceptional, so much modern day knowledge in IT.

A lot of new and useful information!

SUPER dense material, compressed down into bite sized videos make this a very tough course to pass. There was a lot of explanations with very few examples and visual aid. To pass, i did A LOT of research on my own because what was being taught to me didn't make sense or it wasn't sinking in. The concepts they present to you are very poorly explained. While the topic as a whole has gotten me very intrigued, this class could have been constructed and presented better.

Quiz in subset is very confusing, not clear how to perform quiz.

Some of the interactive quizzes could have been better explained and administered in a more efficient way. For example, the final quiz converting IPv6 to IPv4 shortened address - you should not have to continually redo answers that you already had correct. The way the quiz is administered is 10 random IPv6 numbers. It should have been done in such a way that once you get one correct, it won't generate again. A lot of the interactive quizzes were given this way and it just made them more time consuming. Imagine getting 9/10 right and you make a small error on the 10th. You then have to redo all 10 again despite having gotten 9 right previously. It's just inefficient. Other than that everything else was great. I'd like to see a mix of multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank on the quizzes instead of just one way or the other but that's not that big of a deal because there are flaws with both types of questions. I'd also consider doing away with the peer graded essays. I get the purpose for them, but I also don't think people were grading them fairly or thoroughly. I know for a fact that I did not include one of the items that was asked and 2/3 people gave me a passing mark on that particular item which shows flat out that they did not take the time to read through my submission. Overall great job, I'm enjoying the courses so far.

If, like me, you don't have much of a tech background, there is a very steep learning curve between the first and second course of the specialization. This covers a lot of information, but breaks it down in what I found to be a manageable format. Not easy by any stretch of the imagination (if you take notes and study them, you will easily hit 8-10 hours of work per week), but manageable. I found the material interesting and the instructor clear and engaging (albeit corny at times). I picked up a CompTIA Network+ book on a whim about halfway through the course and already knew quite a bit of the material, which was a nice little confidence boost.

The only thing that bothered me a bit was the grading--almost everything is 100% or failure. Honestly, I probably would have retaken things until I got 100% anyway, but when you're doing a module mid-quiz and have to start from scratch 10 problems in for one mis-click, it's a little annoying. The grading rubric for the peer graded assessment also really doesn't address the prompt at all. Very few of the papers that I read were anything more than a list of definitions with no attempt at explaining how the layers interact with each other.

Great course and a great instructor! One of the tests didn't want to load on Firefox, but loaded properly on Chrome. There have been a few technical difficulties in this and the first course with some loading of material, but if you're having trouble there is a solution to be found on the message boards. I haven't found the issues to be too troubling when I refer to the boards to work them out.

The course instructor is very engaging and the delivery of material is excellent. Some have mentioned the material moves quickly. A tip I would offer is to not just watch the videos straight through and expect to get it. Transcripts are available to read through, or I've found pausing and replaying to take notes while I watch to be considerably helpful. The tests are finicky in that minor spelling errors will give you a wrong answer. Since testing yourself is one of the best ways to solidify material, I didn't find taking retakes for this reason too frustrating, it was just an opportunity to get the material better ingrained.