VERY GOOD. CONGRATS!

Novel knowledge and require some python base.More useful for leaners if printable handout with summarized information provided .

The Stepik textbook needs to be updated. The quantity of test cases and the quality leave a lot to be determined. The format of input on the quizzes needs to be specified more clearly. Otherwise a great course but I would not market it towards beginners.

The course was amazing!

Very interesting introduction to two topics at once- genomics and Python programming, resulting in a perfect storm for me! But I thoroughly enjoyed the way the concepts were presented, explained, and then examined in some detail. Perhaps the course stopped too early- just when I was able to build up some momentum. That said, some of the details (especially in the programming exercises) were of uneven difficulty: cleaning up the examples and smoothing the exercises would go a long way to make this course even better.

Very interesting course, but its estimated time is about 17 h 20min. I took about 53h and am an absolute beginner in this, so this took a lot longer than I thought it would. I think the estimated time should be revised up to take programming beginners into account.

It was a challenging course but the support was good for the most part. There were some that I struggled a lot with and had to ask external help, but as a whole, the community was super helpful.

Thank you.

This course was very effective for me.

It has a lot of details, and I need to review some issues agian

Excellent course to learn Python programming and great way to learn very interesting topics in biology and be introduced to bioinformatics.

Finally at the end of completing a really tough course.. especially for a non programmer and non statistician .But the point is if i can do so can you..!! At times the course really gets tough and at certain times you can breeze through .! it takes tremendous time and patience to get through it.. The staff especially Mr Neima Moshiri is really helpful. My suggestion for those who want to get through with the course should atleast have some knowledge of python and statistics . Data structures and algorithms.. i had to find my way around quite a lot..!! Just a note while trying to learn python i finished completing codeacademy and sololearn python certification just to finish this course...and stiff feel like a noob in python.. !!!

It's good, but I would prefer that the python was taught within the course.

The stepik interactive text was just amazing !! I think it is a great way to teach. Integrating with Code Academy to learn Python was really helpful. I spent quite a bit of time on a few challenges. However, arriving at the solution was very rewarding. As a biologist, it is a good start for first time exposure to bioinformatics and algorithms. There were some concepts I had to read multiple times to understand. Some detailed explanations by earlier students were helpful in a few cases.

This was an extremely challenging and time-consuming course for me, a non-programmer, non-biologist health care IT professional. My only negative criticism is that for absolute beginners, the estimated time for most exercises is very very very low. Exercises that were estimated at 39 minutes sometimes took me 8 hours of actual labor.

However! Our course instructor, Niema Moshiri was wonderful - very responsive, very patient, and excellent at coaching students without giving away the answers. I learned to read the assignment, then go directly to the comments, reading all of them, and taking especial note of the "instructor replied" answers. I had a good correspondence with a learner for a while - really helped morale and let me feel connected to the community.

And wow! did I learn a lot about the necessity for computational techniques in bioinformatics, and loads about Python programming!

Stepic issues with not syncing progress and assignment completion. All else was good. Well paced.

I really enjoyed this course, thanks to coursera

First time coding, so found some parts challenging, but worked it all out in the end!

It is a little bit basic, but a great introduction to bioinformatics

A good course that gives an introduction to bioinformatics by applying programming in python. Overall, some of the challenges became difficult towards the end, but I definitely learned something.

There was some really interesting information covered in this course. However, the programming assignments and explanations seemed unpolished, there were lots of typos or explanations that were simply unclear and confusing, and the randomized algorithm section made it unclear whether I was getting the coding exercises wrong due to a mistake in my coding or whether it was due to the random nature of the algorithm. Having us use a random seed for these algorithms would have cleared things up. Overall, OK introduction to the specialization, but I'm hoping the courses in the specialization will be better prepared.

I already have python background so it is good for me. Maybe not suitable for beginner who doesn't touch python before.

A lot to learn, but still not very east for sure

When it comes to the subject and the learning outcomes, I would rate 5/5. However the methods and the exercises would rate quite lower. Often it's really hard to understand what is wrong with your submissions and the hints given are minimal, so it's not uncommon to be stuck in an exercise for hours not knowing what you're doing wrong. It might be an entry level course but the material is quite demanding if you don't have a programming background. It was the second time I attempted it, the first one was a couple of years ago and I gave up after the first week. This is why I would say that the time required for the completion of this course is wildly understated. Other than that, as a biology graduate I found the skills learned during this course precious. I got hold of some basic Python commands, learned how to implement them to answer questions of biological nature and started thinking a little bit like a programmer. If you have the time and the patience, I would recommend this course.

It was a great course!

Fun!

The programming sections of the course are not great. The lack of conventions being followed makes programming become quickly confusing. More mnemonic naming would have prevented hours of going back and forth to check which code snippet exactly is being referenced. The course structure is good and delivers on its title of Bioinformatics for beginners. It is more structured like a case study on how you can use computer science to solve problems of biology.