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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Visualization for Data Journalism by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

4.5
stars
67 ratings

About the Course

While telling stories with data has been part of the news practice since its earliest days, it is in the midst of a renaissance. Graphics desks which used to be deemed as “the art department,” a subfield outside the work of newsrooms, are becoming a core part of newsrooms’ operation. Those people (they often have various titles: data journalists, news artists, graphic reporters, developers, etc.) who design news graphics are expected to be full-fledged journalists and work closely with reporters and editors. The purpose of this class is to learn how to think about the visual presentation of data, how and why it works, and how to doit the right way. We will learn how to make graphs like The New York Times, Vox, Pew, and FiveThirtyEight. In the end, you can share–embed your beautiful charts in publications, blog posts, and websites. This course assumes you understand basic coding skills, preferably Python. However, we also provide a brief review on Python in Module 1, in case you want to refresh yourself on the basics and perform simple data analysis....

Top reviews

CL

Oct 17, 2021

Took this class for my job which requires lots of data visualization. Enjoy the classes a lot and learn so so much from it! The slides are easy to follow and very attractive to learn.

WL

Dec 25, 2020

Dr. Ng is clear and concise in her explanations and did a great job creating an entry-level overview course on data visualization which she obviously has a great wealth of knowledge.

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1 - 25 of 28 Reviews for Visualization for Data Journalism

By Harold H

Sep 23, 2019

Thanks very much for great content and the instructor did a great job, and her materials were very use helpful and relevant! Great experience!

By Yonggang

Apr 24, 2020

Great course. Very informative and practical.

By Dr S B

Apr 26, 2020

It helped to learn a lot about Visualization and enabled with the desired skills of presenting data using python and Jupyter notebook.

By Amjad A

Jun 12, 2020

Comprehensive course to helping us how to use data for journalism as well as will help us in understanding data in newspapers.

By Miki G

Jul 13, 2020

Good for fundamental knowledge of data visualization in a journalistic perspective.

It is also inspiring for young people like me to get ready to step into the world of data visualization.

Great course!

By David C

Jul 13, 2020

Well organised and with a lot of commitment from the faculty. I would like to see deeper discussions on most of the topic in the future. Thank you

By Sarah J

Jun 29, 2020

The professor introduced the topic of data visualization in a very interesting and straightforward way. The class is very useful - especially data visualization is so important nowadays to convey findings and results to laypersons. I liked that the classes because they covered a wide range of topics which are all SO useful for my future presentations. The slides are so well-made and attractive for learning. They are great example for data visualization!

Worth the time taking and strongly recommended for all disciplines who aims to present their findings in an attractive and simple yet understandable way. It would be great if the classes have more modules! Happy learning.

By Emily E

Sep 23, 2020

I took this course with a graduate student friend of mine for leisure during the summer. We thought visualizing data will be an important tread in every subject. Without any regret, we were having fun time learning online and learn lots of useful skills for presenting data in this course. However, we'd recommend Coursera to provide students with more technical support (e.g., printable notes access) so that we can keep every copy of the lecture or jot down some detail for future use.

By Queenie Y

Sep 23, 2020

Love her way of teaching, very clear and in a very good pace. I hope she can have more classes on Data journalism.

By wai w l

Dec 25, 2020

Dr. Ng is clear and concise in her explanations and did a great job creating an entry-level overview course on data visualization which she obviously has a great wealth of knowledge.

By Jorge R

Nov 30, 2020

Very interesting, clear descriptions and a lot of very useful information.

By Jamie C

Jan 14, 2021

Very good professor! I would recommend taking her if you're not good at python. Her homework is scaffolding exercise that builds up your skills and confidence in using python to work on basic data visualization. I have been using R for a while but realized that python is a lot easier to plot graphs after paying to take this class.

Her lectures are pretty straightforward and good as other have mentioned. She basically will tell you what you need to know for visualizing various types of data. It may just be me, I'd appreciate if more exercise could be provided because I really enjoy exploring different dataset and build up that skills towards data visualizing. By far, this is one of the most interesting and useful course I paid to get certificates in Coursera so far.

By Alice B

Jan 4, 2021

I genuinely enjoyed learning in this class. It is hoped that more online classes from this professor or similar content could be found.

By Sam G

May 11, 2022

I truely enjoyed the contents and teaching in this online course. It's very helpful for my projects as an intern in journalism. Thanks so much, Dr. Ng. Amazing course.

By Cathy L

Oct 18, 2021

Took this class for my job which requires lots of data visualization. Enjoy the classes a lot and learn so so much from it! The slides are easy to follow and very attractive to learn.

By Vivek V

Jan 24, 2022

Good course to begin with data journalism

By Maha B

Jun 21, 2020

The content is good however it is very difficult to follow the Professor whose English is heavily accented. There is nothing wrong with having an accent but in this particular case it gets in the way of the student's comprehension of the content. One is more focused on deciphering what is being said rather than the content itself.

By Gigi G

Jun 9, 2022

I took this class for certification. The grading assignments are challenging but worth taking time to do so as it really help delveop a deeper understanding of the lecture materials. I was able to apply some of the skills into my real work on adveristing industries. I enjoyed the classes as I learnt them in my leisure time at my own pace. I want to thank Professor Ng again for the helpful and pracitcal knowledge. I wouldnt have learnt these anywhere or from anyone else.

By Sam B

Jan 4, 2021

Sadly, the worst course I've taken on Coursera, by a long shot.

The quiz questions are badly-worded, with at least one answer in every quiz completely wrong. The assignments refer to concepts that aren't covered until later weeks. The final assignment doesn't even have a working link to the data! And the choice of Plotly/Python for the final assignment is ridiculous, ensuring that students (even those familiar with Python) spend more time struggling with syntax than applying any of the principles the course teaches. It would be better to have a 'tech-agnostic' assignment so students can use what they're comfortable with.

The lectures themselves and course materials are good signposts to other resources, but that's about it. The lectures themselves are - I'm sorry to say but I have to be honest - difficult to follow without the use of subtitles.

I regret paying for this course and it's made me think twice about the quality on this platform.

By Ryan R

Jan 3, 2023

I took this class after finishing my fall semester in college. I went through all the course materials and the videos in a few weeks during my winter break. These are great resources for a new beginner as I was able to get exposed to concepts of data visualization and acquire some practical and useful skills in working on dataset and creates the graphics that illustrates/summarizes the general patterns. I'd recommend this class to my peers. So far, it was one of my favorite paid courses in Coursera.

By Luciana H Y d S

Feb 24, 2021

Lectures by professor Ng are excellent. But I found that the final project relies too heavily on Python coding, which wasn't as covered (there are ungraded exercises in the previous lessons).

By Mark R

Feb 1, 2023

Dr. Ng laid has laid out a comprehensive course that covers the fundamentals all data scientists should know, with a unique emphasis on journalism. I am excited to continue learning more on this key topic!

By Karla F

Feb 14, 2021

I learned a lot from this course. I love the theory parts of how we visualize the data in a journalism context. It would be even greater if I could learn more about data wrangling, e.g. how to deal with NaN values, etc.

By SANTOSH

Feb 10, 2021

The course can be bit more interesting with some suspense and current trending scenarios