Coursera Guided Projects (Review January 2021)
Should you go for a guided project with Coursera?
Introduction
With Guided Projects, you can learn a job-relevant skill in under two hours. Guided Projects offer an interactive experience that includes step-by-step instructions from a subject matter expert.
When you start a Guided Project, you’ll read an overview of the project structure, get introduced to your instructor, and see your learning objectives. You’ll then be prompted to open a tool called Rhyme to work on the project. Rhyme is a hands-on learning platform that provides a unique, side-by-side learning interface where you complete each step in a virtual workspace as you watch video instructions from your instructor on the other side of the screen. Your virtual workspace is a pre-configured cloud desktop, so all the software and data you need is available directly in your internet browser — you won’t need to install or download anything to start the project.
Projects cover everything from building basic business skills, machine learning for beginners, and software engineering, to learning techniques for transformational algorithms like neural networks and Markowitz models.
You can check the list of guided projects in this link.
My experience:
Sicne I’m doing a scholarship with coursera in Azure ML I found a guided project in coursera and I found it very intresting so I read the overview then I started the course, it was Machine Learning Pipelines with Azure ML Studio.
It said that the course takes 2 hours but I can tell that it took less than that, it gives you some informations about what you are going to see on this project and the outputs.
You are directed to the technical part where you can follow the instructor using a plateform calls www.rhyme.com.
What I liked:
- You give 2 hours and you have a complet projects.
- You have an instructor with you who explain every step.
- The projects are labeled with : “beginner”, “intermediate”….. so you can choose what is good for you.
- The projects are well organise and you undrestand where the instructor is going.
- If you are like me and you do a lot of theory then this is the right opportunity for you to get your hands dirty with some projects.
What I didn’t like:
- When you read the Q & A about the guided projects on coursera they tell you that you don’t need a background to do the projects which in my opinion wrong since there is no theory you need to have the background to undrestand what you are doing.
- Another thing I didn’t like is that all the projects are in a virtual machine so you can’t have a copy of your work then you need to repeat it on your own machine.
- The last thing : When you click on the project you get the certification directly without finishing the project which is bad specially for somone like me ( a master in procrastination :D ) you can stop the project and you will get the certification anyway (don’t do that :D, I’m serious).
Conclusion
Ok if you are reading this article to know if you need to go for it or no? My short answer will be yes and my long answer will be yes BUT read the overview first, read the comments, please read the comments before and then give 2 hours to the work and try to undrestand the steps.
At the end I wich you good luck and don’t forget to share with me your own experience.
