Well developed course, everything leads you up to a final assignment that helps test what you've learned and gives you a great general idea of some of the cool things you can do with ArcGIS.

I learned a lot from this course. The emphasis is on learning how to use the software so you can start working quickly. I highly recommend doing all the optional assignments in the textbook.

It is a great course for both the beginner and the professionals in GIS . Very friendly and easy language for the people who don't understand English much ...Satisfied in doing this course.

the content is awesome. i would recommend it to those who need to have some basic knowledge of GIS. it's very easy to learn the ArcGIS because of the instructions and demos given by the instructor.

Great Course to brush up your skills on ArcGIS. Its a beginner course so even if you are not familiar with the software you can easily cope up. Explanation by Dr. Nicholas Santos was crisp and to the point. He made the course seems like a cake walk. Thank You to the coursera team for the noble initiative of opening barriers to education from top notch institutions to people across the world.

-SHREYA OJHA

This is my first exposure to ArcGIS. Mr. Nick Santo explained various concepts and skills very nicely, which was incredibly helpful when I was doing my final project. Since there were so many precedures that I needed to follow in order to conduct specific tasks, I sometimes had to go back to his videos and re-watched them to have better guidance, but that helped me finish the project on time. By getting involved in the project, I felt that I learned a lot. Before doing the project, it appeared that the information and procedures were all scattered here and there on my part, but with the project, I could finally put those together and synthesize them. It was a great learning experience for me. Thank you so much for offering this valuable course!!!

Very helpful course for an absolute GIS beginner. It provides some of the most important concept and information for me to get some sense of the operating of the system and getting used to the software. The assignments and final project definitely helped me gain some hands-on experiences of how GIS workd practically. Highly recommend for anyone who would like to learn GIS!

Nick Santos presented the information in a clear and methodical way. I do not have a geography/science/analytical background, so I was pleased to see that I could follow along. Whenever I felt a little overwhelmed by the complexity of ArcGIS or the vast number of ways to approach spatial data analysis, I would trust that the course would eventually cover what I needed to know. A love of cartography and an interest in a career change prompted me to take this course and I am glad I did. I am starting the next course in the specialization immediately.

Muy buen curso, me sirvió mucho, aprendí demasiado sobre las cosas básicas y el profesor es muy bueno !! Super recomendado si no saben nada de GIS y están empezando a comprender las herramientas

I gained experience in the basics of ArcMap. I learned how to import and export data, how to analyze them with geoprocessing tools to get results. I worked with feature class, attribute table and metadata. I learned symbology to produce a map and how to share my data with others.

This course is very helpful to learn about GIS from scratch. The course materials are easy to go through and the instructor is quite friendly and easygoing. the quizzes and assignments will help you to strengthen your depth of knowledge further.

Great course for fundamentals of GIS. Online format makes it easy to review lectures and go back to them and pause step by step if needed; assignments are clear and well designed to give you instruction and practice on skills. I last worked on ArcMap about 10 years ago and the good part here was that I was able to review and see that the basic skills and tools have not changed much, and it's a great refresher course, and I look forward to seeing the new advanced tools that are available!

This course taught me what I needed to know to start exploring my spatial data. This course starts at the very beginning and is great for fully developing a foundation for future courses but also provides enough content to get started with.

This course helps to understand the basics of ArcGIS desktop and a web GIS career. Though it does not discuss all these features, a peer can certainly kickstart a GIS career with this course.

I thought this course was really well organized! Being able to follow along in ArcGIS as I watched the videos was really great and Nick Santos gives very clear and descriptive explanations.

I finished the course, I do not know why it indicates to me as if I had not finished

I would like answer, please. My email: vic_vmrm@hotmail.com

Why don't answer me?

Regards

Victor Ramon

This course has provided a great introduction to GIS. It was easy to follow the lectures and the assignments were really fun. In this course, although being on the introduction level, we have been provided with good explanations of how GIS works and why we, for instance, press a certain button and not another. The course has given me a better understanding of different GIS functions but also the abilty to think more independently about the logic behind these functions. I'm looking forward the next course!

This was a great introduction to a program that I knew 0 about (other than basic computer skills). I was really interested in learning the basics to GIS but it seemed daunting. Nick's 4-week Fundamentals course is done in a logical manner, that introduces you to slow building concepts. His lectures/videos were outstanding at walking you through concepts, and the end of the week assignments were incredibly beneficial in practicing what he had just taught you!

I loved this course. The course is designed amazingly, and the instructor is one of the best. Coming from a traditional mode of learning, learning in virtual mode and that too from an instructor like Nick Santos; is a blessing. I took the course for my PhD. I had no experience with GIS and this course has now enabled me to solve a handful of problems very easily. Highly recommended for professional and students.

The assignments are very easy to cheat in. The peer review even makes it easier, upload something crappy, download a better one from someone else, edit the name and upload on your account. The man i reviewed actually forgot to change the author of the map, he uploaded it as downloaded.

The certificate is too plain, it doesn't talk of the skills gained through the course or the weight of the certificate according to the student's performance. It makes the whole thing seem like a joke. First anyone can cheat their way through and secondly even if you work hard and get straight 100%s you are no different from the the average student.

This review is for 4 of the 5 courses for the specialization, not for the final course. It is promoted as for beginners, but the projects that are required are incredibly complicated and far too advanced for beginners. Unless someone already has a strong grasp on Python, analytics and workflows, it's very easy to get overwhelmed. When the majority of the students who post are saying that they are completely lost when trying to even figure out how to start a project, there's a problem. And not being able to ask for explicit help just leads to frustration. The instructor is thorough but often goes through examples far too quickly and without enough explanation to make concepts clear. There aren't enough hands-on projects which could make confusing or complicated processes easier to understand. The content is over 6 years old and there are many website links that no longer work, or the data is outdated or inaccessible. If a student has a problem with the ArcMap software, as many posted about on the discussion forums, there is nobody to seek for help. Contacting UC Davis led nowhere because they don't administer the software. Contacting Coursera didn't help because they didn't issue or manage the software. The instructor is no longer associated with Coursera so he can't help. Reached out to ESRI and they tried to help but didn't have answers. If the software necessary for the class doesn't work or isn't accessible, there's little point in taking the class. Overall, this has the fundamentals for making a great beginner course, but it tries to cram too much information into a too small time frame and required projects for completion that are far above a beginner level. Unfortunately, these same concepts are expressed throughout all of the GIS offerings on Coursera so taking an alternate course likely would have the same results.

This course really opens up the field of GIS for newbies by introducing the most powerful, useful software out there - ArcGIS. Getting to know ArcGIS is the main thing in this course, but introducing ways of handling data is also covered. The lectures were short and easy to understand. It was nice to be able to go back and review things if needed.

Best GIS online course I've ever taken! Very well structured, the explanations and illustrations are well paced and very clear. I learned everything about the foundamentals of GIS and can now make an informative map independently. I highly recommend the course and can't wait to start the second one in this specialization.

The methodology applied is the greatest to start working on ArcGIS software. The course involves the main and basic knowledge you must know about GIS. The final project, which you can participate in scoring my peer's project is really cool because it gives you the opportunity to identify your own mistakes and others'.

This course is phenomenally put together. I've done GIS work and taken a college course before, and this was a great review. Nick lays out so many helpful concepts and ideas that took me much longer than 4 weeks to learn on the job. It is a very thorough introduction and I can't wait to finish the specialization!

Great and systematic introduction into GIS. For a beginner it still was a challenge, but not too much - just on the right level.

Thank you to Nick Santos for the clear structured lectures. It is a real advantage to get the student version of ARCGIS as well. See you in the next course & best regards!.