Very good introductory course

It's a wonderful course

Very Good Course!

excellent course

Excelente curso

very helpful

great...

ok

As an introductory course, I found Fundamentals of GIS to serve me incredibly well. The material was laid out clearly and the team at UC Davis has put together very easy-to-follow video lectures and practical "lab" activities.

The video lectures were well edited and the instructor's affable and approachable nature emanates from the screen. I found the video content engaging and helpful.

The lab activities are self-directed using a PDF written up by the course instructors. The instructional step-by-step PDFs acted as excellent tutorials for using the primary software covered in this course, ArcGIS.

Though I appreciated the use of forum posts to review material at the conclusion of every section, I didn't find many meaningful discussions occurring in them. I would've appreciated seeing some early forums assignments such as "Share some examples of GIS material use in your favorite region."

Overall, I enjoyed the course and gained knowledge I didn't have previously. I have a basic understanding on the use of ArcGIS to complete basic projects as well as a broader sense of GIS in the world and its uses. Thank you UC Davis!

Nick Santos is a great teacher. I found that the first half of the course was extremely well explained. I found it very easy to follow, and was thankful for the slow yet engaging pace of learning. However, I felt that the course got a bit "rushed" towards the end. Particularly in week 4, there were a few lectures that I did not completely understand. A few things were also a bit unclear in the final assignment, which was stressful considering it was graded. I think this has given me a good range of skills for starting off with GIS. Thank you!

A good introduction to GIS focusing on the fundamental principles with a good practical element included. There is a lot to take in over four weeks so it does require plenty of time to absorb all the required learning and complete the assignment. Plenty of information and resources are provided and the lectures are clear and easily to follow. The only criticism I would have is that there is probably too much emphasis on Arc GIS, it would have been nice to learn some more about open source platforms like QGIS.

Le cours est assez intéressant et permet de commencer à se familiariser aux Systèmes d'Information Géographique. En plus grâce à ce cours, il est possible d'obtenir une licence originale de l'un des meilleurs logiciels SIG gratuitement pour une durée d'un an. Il n'y a pas de plus meilleur avantage que cela! Même si le cours est en anglais, ce n'est pas une barrière pour les francophones, alors allez-y et lancez-vous!

Great intro to GIS. Covers many basic elements of ArcGIS - enough to get you started understanding data and making maps. The only reason I give it 4 stars is that it is taught in ArcMap, which ESRI is phasing out (almost all customers are switching to ArcGIS Pro, but they are not providing student licenses yet). Nick is a great teacher.

I found this course very entertaining. I learned the basics by listening and practicing. The best part of it is the opportunity to apply concepts on real maps. Tip: don't forget to download Demo's material to follow what Nick explains during the videos.

i specifically loved the practical assignments

Very well presented. Unfortunately I think the order was a bit strange. We focused on data analysis instead of basics of data generation. In an introductory course I would have liked to see a bit more what different data looks like. Vectors, rasters, etc.

Some of us live and work in countries that don't have a lot of data (I'm a South African and I work in Malaysia... California, the Karroo, and Borneo have different amounts of information available). We're not learning GIS to analyse data because we don't have much data available. We're building the data...

We spent too much time on rivers/watersheds. I get that hydrology is Nick's field but some us will work with cities, or population, or roads, planning farmlands - a bit of variety would be nice.

The data should not be available off the Coursera page - we should have to get it off the internet so we get familiar with public data resources. The websites should have the broadest data - good regardless of what country you're in.

The assignments are very easy to cheat in. The peer review even makes it easier, upload something crappy, download a better one from someone else, edit the name and upload on your account. The man i reviewed actually forgot to change the author of the map, he uploaded it as downloaded.

The certificate is too plain, it doesn't talk of the skills gained through the course or the weight of the certificate according to the student's performance. It makes the whole thing seem like a joke. First anyone can cheat their way through and secondly even if you work hard and get straight 100%s you are no different from the the average student.

I should have never paid for this course. By the time I got into the subject the refund policy was expired. Do not take pay for this course or program at all.

not very well organized.

This is a beginners course and at the start, I had very little experience with ArcGIS. This course gives you key information to get started with ArcGIS, like how to use the spatial joint, how to manipulate the attribute table and share data etc. The course information is very clear, keeps it relevant and you learn it in a very systematic order. In each week what you learn you get hands-on experiences with the practical assessment. I have done many courses at university face to face and this course is comparable to some of those courses. This course gave me the skills and confidence to make beautiful maps in ArcGIS.

The only part of this course I would change is the final peer review assessment instead of submitting it and get a mark. They should have a 4-step process, first, the student should submit the map and map document like normal. Second, the peer reviewer should get a document/form that goes through step by step what check and leaves feedback if done incorrectly. Third, Then the document/ form gets returned the student who goes through it and makes the changes or if they feel the changes are unfair comment why. Then the student should Submit the document/form with comments on the changes, with the final map and map document for marking. This is a bit more work but when each student while peer-reviewing and making changes they are learning what the did wrong. This makes it more of a learning process because few students in the discussion were confused where they went wrong.

In general, the course allowed me to receive "knowledge and not just "information":

a. The course has valuable content, is efficient and effective, is versatile and easy for the student to manage.

b. The teaching materials are available, as well as the versatility and correct use of them. In addition, it evaluates the quality of content and strategies to motivate students.

c. The digital platform is stable and highly functional, there is a correct integration of the digital contents and the navigability, access and design are user friendly.

Finally, a highlight of the learning platform is the "Code of Conduct" that allows for the creation of a healthy learning environment, respecting the criteria of courtesy (treating peers with respect), sensitivity (being kind, considerate and understanding when discussing issues of ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation or controversial topics), publication of appropriate content (only content according to the "Code of Honor" or the "Terms of Service" is allowed) and reporting abuse.

The course is true to the coursera slogan: "Coursera provides universal access to the world’s best education, partnering with top universities and organizations to offer courses online".

I am an Architect-Planner by profession. Was looking for this course for quite sometime. I finally found it on Coursera. I had a great time learning Fundamentals of GIS. I had never before worked in Gis though I had a very little theoretical idea. But, at the end of this course, I was able to analyse and make my own map, something I had never done before with GIS. The lectures were to the point, with most of the details covered. The assignments for practice were very helpful too. This course comes with a very helpful reading materiaI and a year long licensed version of ArcGIS too. I had a great time in taking up the quizes, and the peer reviewed final assignment. I highly recommend this course. Last but not the least, thank you Nick Santos for teaching so well! got back to class almost after 8 years and had a great time! I am sure that this will help me taking up further studies in my field.

The course was well designed and could convey the information very well. I loved the way that the instructor was teaching and assessing the students and now I can tell that I have an initial idea about the GIS.

The only thing that I didn't like about the course was peer-review grading way! What I realized is that students usually review other's assignments based on their own assignment because they think they have done everything correctly. So they don't really pay attention to the review questions and what is asked to do and I believe this is a weak point of peer-reviewing!

However, I believe the course was that wonderful that is definitely worth taking and I will recommend it to my friends for sure!

Thank you for providing this opportunity.

So far so good! I like the way the lectures and quizzes are presented. I am loving the instructor and his style. However, I have to go through the whole course before I could say how productive the course will be. Anyway, thanks a lot for the team!

Thanks a lot Nick Sanots, Coursera, UC Davis and all fellow learners. I was a week late and could not complete the final assignment in time. However, the course is great! The course is medium paced, and best even for newcomers and intermediates alike. The chapters presented in the course are very productive and vivid. I simply love the course. I don't feel there is any room for improvement. Its just perfect! I love this course. Looking forward for next session of this course and next course.

This was an excellent intro course. I took an in-person GIS for Natural Resource Managers course a year ago (also through UC Davis Extension), and I have been using ArcGIS occasionally since. This online course served as a great refresher and contained a lot of useful information that was new to me. I even felt like it was more helpful than the in-person course. And while this course is written to be useful to people from different professions all over the world, as a water quality professional in California I derived extra benefit from it being done by a watershed management lab in California that works with state and federal agencies. Thank you, I look forward to completing the Specialization and applying the new skills to my work!