This course is laid out poorly. It skips around too much. I would prefer a more concise approach: e.g. present Angela Duckworth's work in week one, then present research methods in weeks 2, how to read research reports in week 3, then offer the applications to research in Positive Psychology in week 4. The course loses the thread of Positive Psychology that is common to all the other courses in this specialization because of this scatter-shot approach to presenting the concepts. The order of course content and the readings (which are often too technical for the course objectives and redundant to the lectures) bog the student down. This course does have irony: It certainly takes grit to complete it.

My husband is a statistician as well as a scientist. This was not the best way to approach this course for those not in a classroom. I am in sales and get material fairly quickly. This was all over the map. The other courses were much more rythmic.

I've never given a poor review to a Coursera class before, but I feel compelled to do so now. This class is confusing and needs to decide exactly what it's trying to teach. Grit or research? If I had realized this certification required me to learn so much about research methodology and practice, I would not have paid money to take it. I'm learning about Positive Psychology for my own personal benefit, not because I want to do it for a living. A precursory overview of research (one day or week of class) would have been more than sufficient and wouldn't have left me wishing I hadn't registered for this class/certification. As for the videos about grit... this is really what I'd like to learn about, but the audio is terrible and the presentation aren't organized at all - it seems more like a randomly selected set of video segments pulled from the middle of unrelated lectures. They don't improve my understanding of grit or research at all. I won't be recommending this class or certification to anyone.

This course specifically was not very enjoyable. The subject is boring, and the videos, mainly from one of the professors is hard to follow as she does not says the words as they are on the slides. I suggest that when showing a slide if possible to read it as it is. I think it helps the learning process. Also the quality of the audio from the Angela Duckworth videos are not very good.

Angela's videos was difficult to hear. Information was broken because it was just a lecture in pieces. I think Angela should make more appropriate videos as the other participants. on the other hand, Claire's videos are very clear and well explained the content.

This course is less on Grit and more on research methods making it less applicable to the average person and geared more towards academics. While I found Angela interesting, I found the overall class to be tedious.

It says that the course is for beginners, but the content is useful only for those doing research work in this field. It should not be mandatory for someone interested in learning practical skills in well being and the basics of positive psychology. While the technical content is of no use to me, the non-technical portions on grit and self-control didn’t teach me anything new; I didn’t learn any new methods of approaching them, and the classroom videos do not really qualify as course content, at least not in this course. After James Pawelski’s delightful course on positive emotions and interventions, this was quite a damp squib. It took away all the joy of learning I was experiencing since the beginning of this five-course specialization. As someone has rightly mentioned here, it certainly took a whole lot of grit to complete this course.

Have always been a fan and supporter for the research on Grit and I highly enjoyed the modules with snippets of lectures from Duckworth herself! I think this course deepened my understanding of Grit and also the weaknesses and limitations to utilizing the Grit scale (which I have never thought of before).

Also, for the other half of the course (Research Methods), I enjoyed the lectures on how to approach and understand research articles by Robertson-Kraft. I have taken many research methods and design courses in my undergraduate career, and this course was a great refresher! I also feel like an even more educated and critical consumer of research papers and especially of media representation (or misrepresentation) of research studies.

I cannot overstate how good this course is. Not only does it weave in explorations of grit, but carefully and successfully guides you through how to be an informed consumer of research, especially when interpreted by the mainstream media. I am enrolled on a doctoral program and was feeling a little nervous about the research methods, but this course has given me a great start and helped me to read my university-prescribed texts with more understanding. The practitioners are helpful in showing how the ideas apply in the real world and Dr Duckworth and Dr Robertson-Kraft have an amazing capacity for breaking down complex topics to digestible and (often) entertaining chunks. Thank you so much to the whole team!

This challenging course taught me about my fear and perseverance and that I received my highest grade through pushing myself in something I knew nothing about before taking it. I procrastinated and did mental gymnastics to discover my strengths and overcome my fear of not being smart enough to finish this module; but I DID IT! Thank you Dr. Angela Duckworth and Dr.Claire Robertson for introducing me to the concepts of statistics and research methods.

The foundations of this course required me to reach beyond my fear and complete this class and gain more confidence than I ever expected of myself!

Thank You~

I have to admit that I had been slightly puzzled in the beginning - I am not a full-time student, in fact I haven't been for almost 30 years, and research methodology appeared a bit too far away from my own reality. But the more I learned the more I understood how relevant the thorough and critical glance at what we sometimes believe to be impacts and results of interventions can be. That this is exactly what differentiates successful from fruitless change initiatives. The course wasn't easy, quite the contrary. But it was worth the effort and really has helped me a lot in my HR endeavors.

Wonderful course. Very well done. The only suggestion I have, from an instructional design standpoint, Dr. Duckworth should do her videos in the studio and not in the classroom. When done in the classroom, the virtual student feels left out, we can not see the slides, and we can not hear the questions students are asking. Therefore, the students in the class become a distraction to the virtual student.

Thank you very much for the course I learned a great deal and will be working on ways to bring that knowledge to the instructional design process for online learning in higher education.

I've just finished this course and I have to say that as a third year psychology student I didn't expect to learn much from it. As it turned out, it was a great way to suplement and structure my methodology knowledge. The course was demanding, but not too difficult. Angela Duckworth's lectures were excellent and provided some theory to keep things interesting. I've also learned about different proffessions which can benefit from the usage of positive psychology. Definitely recommend!

Interlacing Grit and Research Methods was a very clever idea and resulted in much more palatable experience of the research methods content. Usually this aspect of science is very dry and this approach made it the best implementation of a Research Methods program I have seen to date. Angela is also very entertaining, practical and I could sit and listen to her wisdom for days at a time without getting bored.

Very useful course and excellent preparation for my 2nd year of the MAPP. As I do not have a background in research methods this was exactly what I needed and covered lots of new terminology and what it all actually means. I feel a lot more confident about reading and understanding journal articles and have a much better idea of how to begin planning my dissertation. Thank you.

This course has helped me clarify a lot of things regarding how to be gritty and how to persevere through obstacles.I highly recommend this course to anyone who wants to learn the same.The teachers are tremendous and explain the workings behind the topics in a simple and an easily understandable manner.The reference material is deep and diverse.

Provides an easy to understand introduction to research methods in the social sciences. Knowing that this is a rather dry topic, the module includes a variety of teaching media to closely tie in the theory with real world practices. Possibly an underestimated module because of the subject matter, but highly valuable to any serious practitioner.

Claire is truly amazing, she could explain the research design and all related to research in a friendly way so I am able to get a better understanding of research. In addition, she had taught me how to read the research article. I really enjoy taking courses organized by Coursera and for sure this makes me want to visit UPenn as well soon!!

This course really pushed me to develop something concrete that i could research into within the domain of positive psychology. I feel more confident going forward as a student of positive psychology, specifically reading and researching into my area of interest because of the tools and skill-sets introduced in this course. Thank you!

This was one of the best courses I have attended. The theory is very well organised and there is a focus on applied positive psychology with many real-life examples to illustrate the theory. This could have been a very dry statistics course, but Claire, Angela & colleague researchers made the course material very engaging.

Love all the courses in positive psychology. They are so practical and fun to learn. I really like this particular course to combine research methods and design with Grits, which give a flavor of sciences yet we are not just learning methods. Grits is an interesting concept. I have learned so much.

Very challenging! I love this course because research, applying research methods, and understanding (and creating) formulas is not my strength. However,this course was able to break down the topics of grit, character, and research methods in a very user friendly way. Would definitely recommend.

Loved all the information on Grit in this course. I am using the Grit research findings already as I prepare to disseminate it to teachers and parents in the community. Thank you for all your hard work and expertise in conducting the research and in teaching it to us.

Excellent course, the training in research methods was particularly interesting and useful not only for those who might want to do research themselves, but for those who want to evaluate the quality of research and the media's reporting of research.

A comprehensive introduction to research methods. I learned a lot about how to create a research plan and how to read scientific articles. I also learned a lot about character strengths, especially grit, and how many factors contribute to it.