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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Introduction to Spreadsheets and Models by University of Pennsylvania

4.2
stars
3,752 ratings

About the Course

The simple spreadsheet is one of the most powerful data analysis tools that exists, and it’s available to almost anyone. Major corporations and small businesses alike use spreadsheet models to determine where key measures of their success are now, and where they are likely to be in the future. But in order to get the most out of a spreadsheet, you have the know-how to use it. This course is designed to give you an introduction to basic spreadsheet tools and formulas so that you can begin harness the power of spreadsheets to map the data you have now and to predict the data you may have in the future. Through short, easy-to-follow demonstrations, you’ll learn how to use Excel or Sheets so that you can begin to build models and decision trees in future courses in this Specialization. Basic familiarity with, and access to, Excel or Sheets is required....

Top reviews

MM

Jun 21, 2017

This course has made me understand cost accounting, has provided a fresh perspective on how to solve some of the challenges i had with management accounting and as a bonus, made me love maths again :)

RJ

Jun 11, 2020

The course is worth the time , the faculty teaches you about some complicated advance formulae with so much clarity and ease that even beginners can be pro in excel related to business and finance.

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651 - 675 of 703 Reviews for Introduction to Spreadsheets and Models

By Colin E

Apr 5, 2016

This course needs a total overhaul; in its current state it is a detriment to both Coursera and the Wharton Online brand. First, there was relatively little content; there was less than an hour of lectures each week and no actual programming involved. Second, the material was pitched at a very basic level, but not in a good way. Third, the tests didn't manage to even test the material being covered. For example, when given a mean and stdev, when asked to find a value, often the lecture would use an approximation ( i.e., a 2-tailed 95% distributed = 2.00 std devs. ) This is a class on excel: there is NO excuse for not introducing norm.s.inv and norm.s.dist when asking that question. When the test required the "approximation" rather than the exact calculation? Everything about this course was wrong, it needs to be scrapped and thrown away.

By Wang Y

Apr 27, 2016

Frankly speaking, it should be the most disappointing MOOC I have ever enrolled so far. The Professor's teaching is clear and comprehensible but the depth of the course content cannot meet the university level, especially from a worldwide renowned school like Wharton. Quiz is the most terrible part which seems like nobody could get it because of the ambiguous questions and paranoid answer area. Personally, I, like many other mates, am really grateful to Coursera for offering everyone this equal opportunity. But courses with that kind of quality but staggering price will destroy the company's brand. We all want Coursera to go further and better, but few people prefer monopoly businessman rather than prestigious professors and diligent intellectuals.

By Marcio S

Apr 30, 2021

The course material is incompatible with the quizzes (the quiz in the second week is more of a guessing game than a learning experience). The lectures are too thin and do not cover all the information necessary for you to have a better understanding of the material. This is a case of a simple subject (Excel Spreadsheets) turned into something difficult. There are better options to learn about this online. If you here for the certificate, I understand, but if if you really want to learn this is not your best option. The course staff is not helpful, even though they try. Poor course from a major institution like Wharton. Makes you wonder if the in-person experience is also like this since the instructors are also professors at the University.

By James M

Mar 15, 2016

This was very disappointing, especially considering it's a Wharton product. The "course" was little more than an afternoon's worth of seminars. Since I am not a paying participant, I could not take the quizzes, so I finished watching the videos in less than a day.

In addition, there are NO collateral or supporting materials provided. None of the spreadsheets or workbooks illustrated in the videos are available anywhere on the course site, despite their being advertised in the videos. All in all, it was consistent with the first course in this "specialization".

Again, very disappointing. I'm glad I didn't spend any money on this.

By Maria C

Jul 24, 2019

Content is badly presented with a little attention given to difficult topics of modeling. You would get more information from simple Google search than this course. In addition, some solutions, proposed by professor are not optimal in terms of time consumption.

Some quiz questions are based on personal view of the professor on model structure which, however, is never clarified in lectures. Furthermore, a lot of topics are the same for this course and "Fundamentals of quantitative modeling", but this course quality and clarity of explanations is way below.

Do not recommend if it is not a part of specialization for you.

By Jack R

May 13, 2020

No detail, terrible professor, overly focused on the history and reasons for using spreadsheets rather than actually teaching you how to use them. This is probably helpful for people who've literally never opened Excel before, but given this is a course designed to teach complex financial modeling, a basic understanding of Excel should be expected when designing the course material. Quizzes, too, aren't based on reality and don't test knowledge of the useful material in the course. A waste of time.

By Kwadwo A

Jul 20, 2017

I felt the Quizzes were poorly written and the instructor skipped around a lot or just did not explain concepts in detail compared to course 1. For the quizzes, fill in the blank does not work in this format especially given how imprecise the instructor was during this course. A lot of jumping from one idea to another without explaining the connections. Instructor in course 1 was very good at this. Instructor at 2 was not as good.

By Sunil V

Jun 12, 2017

This course has been an extremely disappointing experience considering a course from wharton faculty. I am sorry to say that a staff guy is trying to become a faculty to teach people and that sucks. The course contents are choppy and the lectures and quizzes were a guess game as a result of such siconnect. Please review this course and get someone more qualified an experienced in real world scenarios to teach this course.

By Jose G

Feb 10, 2020

Dropping this cert on account of this course. The quizzes are horrendous. They include concepts not yet covered. Some of the answers that require a formula keep getting marked wrong if the formula is not entered exactly as those who created the question want it. The presentation of the information is one sided. There is not an option to follow along with the instructor, just a series of small video and then the quiz.

By Mike

Jun 8, 2020

The recommended add-on for google sheets does not work (as of June 8, 2020), rendering most of the information in this course useless. The instructor seems to presume a lot of technical knowledge in that he skims over objectively dense subject matter that could use better explaining. Last annoying thing: speaks too close to the microphone in a way that it sounds like there is a piece of gum in the mouth while talking.

By Blerina M

May 11, 2018

This course felt like a waste of time. The presentations are very rushed, no attention to detail and the explanation lacks purpose. It took more time to solve the quiz then go over the module material. Very challenging to answer the quiz questions with such limited material. Very disappointed! Please review the content to enhance the quality and hopefully make it a better experience for other learners. Thank you!

By Patrick

Apr 26, 2018

This course was not good. It was not taught or presented in a structured manner; the videos were seemingly meandering, haphazard monologues. To compound the poor teaching and poor structure, the images were so grainy it was impossible to make out cell references in the text bar. I will definitely not recommend this course to others and would actively discourage others from taking it (especially if paying).

By Rainier M

Apr 27, 2020

This is one of the worst courses I have ever completed on the coursera. Although it has a good content, it is passed in a rush, without good explanations. Not to mention the extremely confusing questionnaires with information that is not in the material.

To learn during this course, I studied more in other videos and materials than through the instructor and course content.

By Mehul C P

Jul 13, 2018

Modules are taught nicely, however does not aline with tests at the end of each module, wasting humongous amount of productive time. No direct help available. Most question are very vague and expected answers are from wide range of choices. Very poorly designed. This doesn't look like Wharton teaching. Very sad

By Reese A S

May 12, 2020

With all due respect, this course was definitely not easy to finish - not because the course material was hard but because it was very confusing. It really needs modifications, especially because of the lack of course material and the confusing way questions were phrased.

By Munjal

Jun 22, 2016

This course does not belong to this specialization. Poor content, poor assessment quiz, and felt quite disappointed. It is way below par. I never thought I would have to rate it this bad. If not for specialization that I am aiming for, I would never take it. Period.

By Vinnie V

May 13, 2017

One of the poorest courses that i have taken. The instructor was unable to motivate or even teach the fundamentals of the course. As a matter of fact, You Tube tutorials (free) can do a much better job of training in spreadsheets and models. Very disappointed !

By Nelson H

Nov 28, 2016

This course was a extremely introductory course in excel. I would not recommend it to anyone, especially at the cost of $95. Aside from getting yourself thinking about using Excel and some minor lessons learned, I found it to be a complete waste of time.

By Pratik M

Sep 24, 2020

Content was good. Teaching was excellent. Video length was extremely poor. The quizzes were maddening because quite a number of them included answers that had multiple correct ones. Overall, 1 star!! Worst experience on Coursera till date.

By 李瑞

Apr 10, 2016

The qiuz are managed terribly, full of error and I seriously doubt the professor ever seen these quiz before. The Course suit for a beginner but a bit fragile, I expect more about building a usable model. This course need serious review.

By Parth B

May 28, 2020

Quiz were pathetic. Got over 90% in each of the modules. But cant pass this even after several attempts. Questions are open ended. Say in question 1, there can be multiple ways to answer correctly and it would accept only one of them.

By Kaiquan M

Aug 15, 2020

Buggy questions - especially for formula based questions which are correct in Excel, yet not working in quizzes. No/ambiguous instructions in quizzes. Really unbecoming of Wharton to present this level of standard.

By Ian L

Apr 3, 2021

Too basic. Very little content. Provides a broad overview, but barely goes into any depth nor does it provide any practice examples which I think would be essential. Quiz questions are generally quite terrible.

By Lukáš K

May 29, 2016

I had great expectations, but the course focuses on really basic stuff. If you have worked with spreadsheets before, it won't help much. If you haven't, it will not teach you how to use it.

By Oliver G C

Jul 16, 2017

after we pass the quiz, we should be able to see what was the mistakes where were them, and how to correct them;

provide assistance on how to build formulas shown on the lecture;

L