I enjoyed the course, and I think the information will be definitely very usefull , however , I think this course (and the whole IT support program) will benefit with a.. lot more... pedagogic approach to it . It would be great if is explained before each topic, how this can be used in a real life scenario, why are we learning this specific skill. This will help to spark more interest in the topic and to remembering it a lot better.

During and/or at the end of topics , provide a couple of real life examples of problems that we can apply this skill to and how to do it. also there there is a need for many excersices along the way to practice so we can undestand and remember the information better. for example, just mentioning a command once or twice, its very difficult to remember it and even less to really understand it, mostly when its brand new information (someone who has never use anything similar).

I realize this would make the course a little longer, but it would be TOTALLY WOTH IT . ;) ... just my two cents.

like all the courses i had a lot of trouble just accessing the linux lab with my chromebook. The instructions are incomplete in the labs and led to countless hours spent with help desk staff just trying to enter or setup the lab.....ultimately the solution was very simple but after countless hours, trying six or seven times just trying to get either cloudshell or secureshell up and running to do a simple lab, a helpdesk person gave me a simple bit of information which had i known a month ago could have saved me hours of headaches.

The course was ok but i found the instructor would just breathe past command lines too quickly, moving on before i could really absorb what she was saying. A bit more explanation and a slower pace at times would have been helpful. Also a bit more explanation of the spacing in command lines would have been nice. She often typed commands without explaining why or how to place flags., the need to space everything correctly.

Too many things were glossed over very quickly. There were many topics where there were multiple solutions to an issue and one or two options were given but more were suggested by the instructor saying " there are other ways but we'll talk about them in a later course" only for them never to be brought up again. Very heavy preference was given to explaining topics in Windows PowerShell, and granted most companies do rely on them more than Linux or macOS machines but to spend 90% of the time on Windows and then get the "it works the same way on Linux" and macOS ignored I find dismissive. With more companies switching away from Windows based IT due to higher IT support costs, I find it a bit narrow minded to take this approach. I still do find the course informative and am glad to be apart of the program.

I really had a lot of difficulty with the labs especially the last linux lab in the course. I'm not sure if it's just that I am new to using command line or if they are actually not very instructional, although I have read about others in the forum having trouble with them. All in all even though I was having trouble with them it made me work in the CLI more so maybe it's good? I did end up passing. It however was not an enjoyable experience and made me dislike using linux CLI so I think that should be looked at because I do think the unpleasantness came from the labs and the instructions not from using linux. I get that the last lab was meant for us to figure it out on our own but I think it could use more guidance.

However helpful and interesting, there are many gaps here and there, but even more worrying is its structure, which in some point things seem to be all over the place, taking you from the obvious to rather complex things without any warning or even getting you off guard, specially if, like myself, you are totally new to many of the modern concepts of computing. The course should, on my humble opinion, keep this in mind, and try to take beginners "by the hand", at least for the most basic and important concepts, so that they get a strong basics foundation from where they can start building on and expand their new knowledge...

While I do like challenges and this course definitely presented one, I felt as though more detailed instructions and/or interactive labs instead of the usual quiz would help people gain a much better understanding. Supplemental readings on the various command lines in PowerShell and Linux can be overwhelming and I know many people struggled with the final tests. I am hopeful that the course administrators will someday utilize the virtual machines more so that you can effectively practice alongside what is being presented to you in the videos. Overall, I'm glad I was able to make it through with persistence!

Good course, very technical; almost a little too technical due to its overall lack of context. It was all quite interesting, but it was difficult finding the jumping off point at course two where the content picked up in course three...there seemed to be some kind of in-between course missing.

Also, the weekly qwiklabs would do better to build off each other while repeating more knowledge over again (i.e. week one = task A; week two = tasks A and B; week three = tasks A, B, and C, etc.) , than just jumping from topic to topic with a large wrap-up of everything at the end.

Best,

John Marshall

A pretty nice introductory course to the Linux OS, terminal and Windows PowerShell/other admin utilities!

Nothing is particularly difficult if you have been exposed to basic troubleshooting in either of these systems for some time.

Some of the labs are a little clunky and mostly just review what you just watched the instructor do, rather than explore deeper into the principles. That is to say, they don't really push the boundaries of your knowledge. They are still good learning exercises if you're not the type to usually "follow along" with learning videos.

I learned a lot in this course but it was very hard to see what the instructor was typing into the command line much of the time. Sometimes she read the command aloud and that helped a lot. Other times I had to pause, rewind, pause, and repeat several times to catch the command. This is especially true for Linux. I also found that most of the commands ended up being useless in regards to the tests and final. I ended up just googleling how to do what the tests asked me to do and then using those commands instead because the course ones didn't work.

Far too much for a beginner to remember well enough to finish in under one hour. I can't help but wonder if this might be a 'bottleneck' where a lot of students get hopelessly stuck and lost and are forced to give up. I appreciate y'all's efforts, it's just that repetition is the mother of all learning, and these tasks were only touched upon. Even if the course has to be made longer, it's vital to guide beginners through a lot of repetition and practice before expecting them to do a lab such as this. Thank you

It was OK. The Windows labs frankly made it a pretty miserable experience. From logging in frustrations to actual frustrations with the way the labs failed constantly. I realize that this is an entry level course but it seemed like most of the meat of the course was in the readings and not covered in the lectures. It really should be labelled Becoming a Basic Problem Solver not a power user. I enjoy these courses but this one, not so much.

Useful information that was taught fine, but the labs made the learning process seem frustrating. You'd learn a lot of useful information in the lectures, but when you reached the labs, it was normally something simple, like creating a folder or moving a file. It didn't help that the labs themselves were frustratingly broken at times. Starting a 60 minute lab and not being able to access it for ten minutes was very, very annoying.

Some of the labs were difficult to understand at first. Tried talking to my dad for clarification. Then I turned to the web and looking back at some of the labs to understand what to do. Still got lost and checked around again. Found what needed to be done. But in the end, got everything else done. Overall, I would say make the instructions in all the labs more clearer. Otherwise people will get lost and not know what to do next.

The Qwiklabs!!! they can be the worst. So much wasted time to try and get those things to get scores correct. They give you an hour or more to do the lab but it takes like 30 mins to get the lab setup. You have to sit and wait for the VM to load all the content and sometimes they are missing content.

so if you start this course look at the forums before each lab and see what others are doing to get the passing scores

all the command line stuff was glossed over...which is fine, you can do the same stuff probably faster than typing with gui anyway. but really, a lot of the flags and commands werent even mentioned except cut and paste for the exercises. fair introduction but definitely wont stick. ill still have to look up commands if i want to use command line, which i dont. and a basic IT support person probably wont either.

Enjoying this course, but it is badly let down by the graded assignments. None of the Qwiklabs work very well at all. You can see from the forums that so many people have the same issues over and over again but nothing appears to be done about it. It tells you you've failed, even though you know you had 100% and if you close Coursera down and log back in, it's changed to a pass. It causes untold grief.

The instructor goes way too fast. Tell us when you are including a space, a forward slash vs. a backslash. Too many times a command is typed in before we can even grasp it. Slow it down, because the only way for us to get this material is to continuously stop the video and take notes. The opinion from the instructor is "if you don't get it you can watch it again." That seems rather cavalier.

The entire course is great, except for the Lab in Week 6. The concept was a great one, allowing the user to figure out how to solve the problems, however, the testing method with the qwiklabs didn't seem to work like they should. The qwiklab support was great, they answered my emails immediately and I appreciated that. Overall, the course was above average, but the last lab was frustrating.

This one seemed to skip a bit of important details at times (like exactly what was being typed on the screen and why). Also, the resolution did not always allow one to see clearly the commands being typed and the transcript was not always accurate. Ms. Quach occasionally typed something that she didn't say aloud so you couldn't see it on the screen or read it in the transcript.

Though I did learn quite a bit about command lines in PowerShell and Bash. I wish the presentation of the videos was a lot better. I would recommend placing greater focus on the commamd line interface than the instructor, and to display it a greater resolution. I would also like to see a greater emphasis on explaining the details and functions of the command lines as well.

I've done a few Google courses and this one seemed to have the most problematic labs. Perhaps it's something to do with having so many subscribers, but --- rightly or wrongly --- the bad experiences tend to be the ones you remember the most. I also felt that this course was over-reliant on the message "we won't cover it, but take a look at the attached reading".

I only gave it 3 stars because the content was not that interesting to me (I preferred the networking course, and am looking forward to the security one). It was also 3 stars because of all the trouble and time wasted with Qwiklabs not working properly. They need to scrap that platform and start over. I would have been done with this course a long time ago.

Final exam on Windows need to be fixed. Because last task does not have enough information to perform it. Mean "Fix permissions" need to be done for specific file \ folder and there also lots of permissions to change. What exact task, I do not know?! Need to be magician to guess... (

Linux final exam has enough info. and I passed it on 100%.

Sometimes brushed over details for command line parameters and arguments. The Qwiklabs wasted a lot of time due to glitches and errors because they had to be completed yet sometimes lacked required content or wouldn't load. The lecture videos were sometimes awkward/unnatural but did get across the point and provided good content.

I'm not sure how much I actually learned in this course and the labs were INCREDIBLY buggy. I think other future users would appreciate more consideration being put into the labs and testing into them prior to distribution. Additionally, I think having the videos mask the true lab experience would be helpful.