The official guide to Coursera certificates & specializations

[spohara]

Provider: SAS
Certificate/specialization: SAS Programmer Professional Certificate
Content: Videos, quizzes, hands on coding
Final course format: Second to last course is a series of multiple choice quizzes, last course is an open ended coding project that can be competed any way where you get the answers to a final quiz.
Final course content vs. prior courses: Course content completely prepares you, no surprises here
Time taken: Took about a month, probably 50 hours total work
Familiarity with subject before certificate/specialization: No SAS experience, but a solid foundation in manipulating data with code.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This course is pretty straightforward, and I think does a solid job of preparing you to get started with SAS (if you'll use it). It is a proprietary language, so it is of limited use, but I took the course because I saw a number of job openings that wanted SAS knowledge. Personally not all that impressed with SAS, and wouldn't use it if given the choice of solutions to implement for manipulating and analyzing data.
1-10 Difficulty level: 5 It isn't hard, but it is involved. Which it needs to be, because really you need about 500 hours writing code in a language before you're truly comfortable, and this gets you to maybe 30hrs. It might be harder if you've never written any code, but should still be very approachable.

[jazzcat]

Provider: Coursera
Certificate/specialization: Google IT Support, Project Management, Data Analyst
Content: see previous comments
Final course format: see previous comments
Final course content vs. prior courses: see previous comments
Time taken: Hours? Weeks? Days? IT 2 days, PM 2 days, DA 1 days (12+ hour days)
Familiarity with subject before certificate/specialization: I do this every day. Also previous college and certificate studies.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Overall, for somebody who has familiarity with these topics at professional level, these certs are a breeze. You can get a ton of ACE transfer credits for free (if you can complete the courses within the 7 day Coursera trials), though most of the credits will probably only show up as electives. Very useful for the major online schools. PM was the most difficult with the peer reviewed assignments. If you're familiar with the content, you can just blast through the quizzes and skip most of the content and labs, though it's a great refresher to read through all the info, even if you watch the videos at double speed as I tend to do. Definitely worth it, even if just for a refresher. And if you're new to the content, it's a great place to start and get a cert, even if you cannot complete during one week (though I'd be willing to bet that if you dedicate 7 days straight at 12 hours, even a newb could get it done).
1-10 Difficulty level: 1-2

[GameSlinger]

Provider: Google
Certificate/specialization: Digital Marketing and E-Commerce Professional 
Content: 4 to 5 weeks of scheduled instruction per module. 7 modules. 1 10 question exam per week. Course only requires the completion of the exams so can be completed quickly.
Final course format: 4 weeks schedule. Final exam is in week 3. Week 4 is just a wrap up with no exams. Final course is much easier than the previous 6.
Final course content vs. prior courses: All 7 modules had unconnected material. Each specialized in a different area of material and could be taken out of order easily.
Time taken: Just under 4 hours doing strictly the exams. Failed several on 1st attempt and failed 1 exam twice but passed the third time by reviewing only the missed questions.
Familiarity with subject before certificate/specialization: Medium amount of knowledge relating specifically to entry level marketing CLEP, as well as tertiary knowledge from other business courses.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: There was a few software product specific questions that you need to actually know how to locate, such as setting up a Google Ad Network campaign. Easy to locate with a quick Google search though.
1-10 Difficulty level: 3 - It specializes in basic marketing info and most people would be able to deduce the right answer for about 25% of the questions if they have had any previous business or related experience.

[AllThose299s]

Provider: IBM
Certificate/specialization: Full Stack Software Developer Professional Certificate
Content: 12 total courses - 10 of them are presented mostly as videos, 1 of them is a "capstone" project and then the final course is an assessment exam. I completed the first 4 courses within a month, took a break for a few months due to life. Completed course #5 and then took about a month off due to life again. I then spent a month working on courses 6-9 (which is why I didn't study as much for the TECEP CMP-3540) then I completed course #10 about 2 weeks after taking the TECEP exam while I waited for the results. Since I passed the TECEP, I didn't need to complete the certificate, but I figured I might as well just get it done even though I didn't need the credits.

• 1 - Intro to cloud computing
  
• 2 - Intro to web development with html, css & javascript
  
• 3 - Getting started with git & github
  
• 4 - Developing Front-End Apps with React
  
• 5 - Developing Back-End Apps with Node.js and Express
  
• 6 - Python for Data Science, AI & Development
  
• 7 - Developing AI Applications with Python and Flask
  
• 8 - Django Application Development with SQL and Databases
  
• 9 - Introduction to Containers w/Docker, Kubernetes & OpenShift
  
• 10 - Application Development using Microservices and Serverless
  

Final course format: Course 11: Capstone Project & Course 12: 45 questions final assessment exam.
Final course content vs. prior courses: The "capstone" project is a hot mess and played a factor in changing my opinion of the certificate as a whole, I'll touch on this towards the pitfalls, high points & other things to know section.
Time taken: About 2-3 months, I was able to speed through the content that I was already familiar with & I didn't do all of the optional labs, however I did complete some to get a handle on the content I wasn't familiar with & some (but not all) of the assignments for the courses build upon the optional labs, so if you are lost while completing an required assignment, I recommend checking the courses optional assignments for hints. (Coursera estimates that it could take 4 months at 10 hours a week, I felt like this is more of a 4-5 months of material.)
Familiarity with subject before certificate/specialization: Medium. I've spent over 10 years jumping all over the place development-wise so for the content I was already familiar with was a breeze. For the content I wasn't familiar with, I have experience with either concepts or with other technologies/programming languages, so I could watch a course and be like "oh this is similar to XYZ." & at some point I found myself irrationally angry because while I could connect the dots—I was worried that they were never going to and how that would impact learners—thankfully they did at some point, I just disagree with the point they do so.

Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: The certificate covers a lot of ground, which is good - the first half of the course videos includes viewpoints from different professionals, which at the time some of those videos felt like a content filler especially the viewpoints that  echoed the previous professional, however there are some where the viewpoints either differs enough or someone goes into more details, that I didn't view it as a waste of time. The second half of the course videos (which covers mostly python material) I don't remember seeing any of the additional viewpoints from professionals, so you are stuck listening to same voice. It made me miss the viewpoint videos and appreciate some of the videos from SDC.

The skill networks labs environment is a web based development environment allow you to complete your assignments without having to set up your machine up, however they do time out / go offline and don't allow you to restore to your previous session... so they recommend you commit your changes into your git repo so you can continue where you left off. I found this to be annoying so some assignments I would complete in the skill networks lab environment, others I installed python on my machine to complete them—while it made debugging and developing easier, it is not a silver bullet. Some of the assignments used python3 and others used python2, I would have been better off just setting up a virtual machine because this caused more issues down the road.

The Capstone... well it uses Python3, however some of the packages aren't compatible with the recent release of python, I think I was able to get it to run locally by installing 3.6.8. The capstone requires you to use IBM Cloud Functions (which I don't remember being covered in the previous labs), so while they do have the hands-on labs to implement them as part of the capstone, it's purposely (at least I hope that is the case) incomplete so they provide you a sample Node.js function that they call out it does not work and give you some hints to figure it out, I would expect that. They include a sample python function that uses the python-cloudant SDK & state if you are developing locally you need to install the packages, but that the IBM Cloud functions provide the package, so you should not have to install anything. The problem is the sample python functions they provide does not work!

The sample python functions use "from cloudant.client import Cloudant" which you have to use "from ibmcloudant.cloudant_v1 import CloudantV1" & update the sample they provided to reflect the changes in the different packages. Needless to say, I spent more time trying to find which documentation I should be referring to and spinning in circles. I'm pretty sure the capstone just was never updated to reflect these changes, which is concerning and if you are currently working on any of courses within this certificate with the intention of completing this certificate, you might want to hold off, until they do update the capstone, because as I was working on the capstone dealing with the cloud functions, I noticed one day this banner that read as follows:

IBM Cloud Functions is deprecated. Existing Functions entities such as actions, triggers, or sequences will continue to run, but as of 28 December 2023, you can't create new Functions entities. Existing Functions entities are supported until October 2024. Any Functions entities that still exist on that date will be deleted.

So in about a month you won't be able to complete the capstone based off the instructions unless you have created the cloud functions before that deadline. The last part of the capstone is to containerize and deploy to Kubernetes, I couldn't get it to work at all and it's not used at all as part of what you are graded on.

The Assessment Exam... seemed to cover more questions from the Cloud Computing & Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift (which they have listed as Optional in the course material) but it's not too difficult.

Prior to them adding the deprecated warning to the capstone, I would have recommended that as you make a list of what each section of the capstone covers and as you learn that part of information from the courses you complete it as part of the capstone, so you can see how to combine everything you've learned rather than trying to remember how to do something you covered in one course that isn't even used at all.

Personally, I would save course 9 (Introduction to Containers w/Docker, Kubernetes & OpenShift) as the last course to cover and cover course 10 (Application Development using Microservices and Serverless) before course 8 (Django Application Development with SQL and Databases).

Difficulty level: 6/7. I don't think the material was hard, it's just a lot there so it's quite a time investment. If you plan to focus on development and if the job market around you focuses on Python - then I say it's worth the time. If you need the credits for your degree, personally I think it depends on the equivalency if it's still worth it. I know this was a wall of text (I'm sorry!) and I really really hope they update and fix the capstone project, because it was up to that point that I viewed it as a positive experience and considering the ACE endorsement goes until 2025, I feel it would be a shame for those trying to start this in 2024 or even next month just to discover what I did. I wouldn't spend money on the course for credits however, if you can get a deal with coursera with like black friday, then great but I personally I would rather pay full price to take the CMP-3540 TECEP twice (e.g. if you fail it the first time) because  I feel you could pass that exam quicker than it would take to get half-way of all the required courses.

[bjcheung77]

@AllThose299s, Awesome review, I am looking to take the IBM just for the professional cert and in that specific Full Stack subject, going to slowly go through my stack of items on my plate...