So far courses 1 and 2 have been great with excellent explanations. I have no idea why, but that all changes for this course. The explanations are lacking and I'm left super confused. I ended up passing this class, but I feel I didn't get a good grasp and would need to take another "access web data" like class to actually have a grasp, even a basic grasp at that. This course should be revisited with better explanations.

Unfortunately on the whole I was very disappointed with this class. I took the first two Python courses and found them manageable, but this third one was an unrealistic increase in difficulty from the previous two. I reached out for help on the discussion board a number of times and saw many others were struggling as well. Mentors who responded to some of the other students were clearly getting defensive when those students were getting nowhere on the assignments. I think this program should reevaluate itself so students such as me can keep up with the assignments. On average I was spending about 10 hours per week just on the syntax for building the programs.

A little about my background: I have 20 years of experience in the private sector and am currently an analyst in cyber security. I have an undergraduate degree in finance, an MBA, and another master’s degree in Data Analytics. This 5 course program has been described and sold as beginner level, and given my background I should have handily been able to complete it, but that was definitely not the case. Normally I don’t leave feedback unless I feel strongly about something, so I hope you take it seriously. Thanks.

As an experienced programmer, I am unimpressed. The assignments cover a good set of tools; web i/o. I would introduce classes before getting into web i/o; this would emphasize critical coding habits of productive programmers: modularity and reusability. Also, variables and files are poorly named. Comments are lacking. The exercises don't ask students to program; they ask students to tweak (at most) the example programs. Students are instructed to disable security features without sufficient discussion of the risks involved. Overall, the presentation looks rushed and unpolished. Code looks like it was hobbled together until it worked and never edited for clarity. If someone I cared about wanted examples of good programming, I would tell them to avoid this.

Great material, but it feels a bit rushed, covering as many topics as it does, in such a short amount of time.

Doing this course is not so much related to Python but to other computer engineering topics.

Network concepts are required, as well as knowing other programming languages such as HTML, XML or JSON, API or WebServices. Assignments require parsing webpages in HTML, XML or JSON, so knowledge of the same is needed. I would not pursue this course unless having strong knowledge about those topics

It is offered as part of a certification for people that know nothing about programming, so between course 2 and 3 there is a huge conceptual gap (going from loops, if-else and defining variables to HTTPS protocols, JSON and Service Layers). Keep your expectations right

The assignments often go way beyond what is taught in the lectures or book. There was not a single assignment that I did not have to rely on reading tons of extra info from Overstack or other coding sites. I don't mind if the course is challenging, but it's challenging not because it's extremely difficult, but rather because it is testing things that weren't taught.

One of the Great Course on web Data Accessing through Python.

Thank you for your friendly teaching method.

Getting a bit more challenging than the earlier courses in the specialization. The exercises require more struggle, but all the information is there. Another step along the way. Thank you, Dr. Chuck!

The course materials provided are very clear and useful.

Great course for introduction to parse Web Data. However, google map and twitter API seems to be changed a lot, so those examples won't work any more. It took me a few days to figure that out and felt a bit stressful. Hope re-recording take place soon so that many other students would not stuck there.

Great up until Week 5 & 6. Probably needs to be a 7 or 8 week class at least. Some assignments basically require you to have previous programming experience, or else you will likely find yourself browsing the web looking for guidance and help.

This course was horribly explained. The XML and JSON chapters just went over my head. I had to go to youtube for better and logical explanations. Feels like the instructor is in a hurry to finish the course content and do something else in his life

The course teaches the basics of how to interact with the internet using Python. The course is simple, well explained, has great interviews with people who were part of the creation of the internet.

well this was a good course though but I didn't feel very connected with web services i.e. I couldn't understand each line of code written for APIs. I didn't understand the concepts used in geojson api and twitter api completely. I would recommend to add basic explanation about these as I was not able to write codes myself that are illustrated in the course. So that's the place where I lost connection with the course as these concepts are not explained at beginner level programmers who are listening terms like API, SOA, JSON, XML, Web Scraping etc first time. So please elaborate these topics more simply and in detail so that we can understand each line of code.

I just finished Using Python to Access Web Data, which is the third (3rd) course in the Python for Everybody specialization. The course wasn't so easy as the previous courses in the specialization as I had to spend more time debugging and practicing, nevertheless, it was lot more fun.

Completing and learning the coursework in this course would definitely have been impossible without the Python for Everybody team which includes the good Dr.Chuck and the mentors. There are many things I liked in this course. The discussion forums were great, the videos and slides were really cool and the mentors did great stuff like checking your code for you and other good stuffs. Becoming a programmer is subject to many constraints and the chiefest of this is the need for mentor-ship and the Python for Everybody team understands this so well.

There is just one flaw. I recommend more sample projects, more course work , more content, and more work files but this would make the course boring, last much more longer and nobody wants to grow grey hair learning python. The best way to take care of this might be to introduce an additional course. Notwithstanding,I give this course a 5-star rating and recommend it to anyone who has a thing for python and who has a good understanding of its syntax and data structures covered in the previous courses of the specialization.

Excellent introduction into accessing and scraping web data with Python.

Professor Chuck is very good at explaining things and the code snippets provided were just enough to get you started on your own.

Previous experience in Python is required. If you are coming from the first four Python for Everyone courses, you will find this one a noticeable step up in difficulty. This course uses Python 2 but I personally did all the code in Python 3 – it's possible, but be prepared to make changes and look up differences in modules between 2 and 3.

My co-students were also really helpful on the forums, although the rule not to post your source code makes trouble shooting difficult and laborious.

The one thing I found missing was the professor instructing and engaging you more on how to read and make use of documentation. It's a core skill for a programmer! With all the Python modules used in this course (Beautiful Soup, ET, XML, JSON) you are bound to come across situations where reading the documentation will open up many new pathways and enhance your understanding.

All in all a fun learning experience. Would recommend. A big thank you to Dr. Chuck & all the visible and invisible staff members who made it possible.

Yet another excellent course... My prior reviews were so ravingly positive that I now feel compelled to offer a very minor area of potential improvement: Dr. Chuck might have considered going a bit deeper into Geojson API and perhaps even done a second API. Also there were some glitches in the Geojson assignment: My python Spyder was left frozen a couple times before I got things working.

I understand that some students would have complained due to the length of Week 6, but if you requested the simple first assignment completion after the first 10 minutes of video lecture, you could have snuck in two concrete API assignments later on. Also, you could have had a Week 7 with the second API and alternate Web Access assignments. In sum, I was left wishing I had a bit more API experience.

Nevertheless, I give this class 4.75 stars, which rounds up to the usual 5 stars. I've completed three of Dr. Chuck's classes and I'm on the fourth. Dr. Chuck is the incarnation of the super MOOC professor. Long live Dr. Chuck!

Dr. Charles Severance is by far the best Computer Science professor out there!!! I've done a significant amount of online Computer Science courses -as well as classroom courses back in college - and not one professor has been as fun and easy to understand as Chuck. He puts presents every topic in such a way that you're never scared off thinking "i'll never understand this stuff." He make computers and everything technical make sense. I've basically binge-watched almost every lecture/course he's headed up.

I've always been a little embarrassed to say I code in Python when talking with professional Developers. I just thought it was an entry level language with limited capabilities. Now i'm proud to say i code in Python. I can't believe i can develop my on web browsers now.

He makes learning fun and seems like he's be a really fun guy to get to hang with. Thanks Dr. Chuck for your love of teaching, you're the best!

Disclaimer: If you're taking the Python for Everybody Specialization, I HIGHLY suggest starting the Python 3 Programming Specialization (also University of Michigan) after completing the first two courses. Get to Week 2 of Course 1 in that specialization and then start Course 3 of Python for Everybody.

I really appreciate the University of Michigan and the staff involved in providing these courses.I completed the first two courses of Python for Everybody and started the Python 3 Programming Specialization (another University of Michigan specialization) before taking this course.Unlike the first two courses in this specialization, I do not feel like I've committed the code to memory. Especially when it comes to XML. I can comfortably talk someone through the steps of working with XML/JSON, but would likely need to look up the syntax to code it (which I hope was the intention of the course).

Professor Severance is awesome. I really like how each video is an in-depth look at a specific example and that he tells you what to ignore and when. I think his sense of what's important is spot on as I've already started to apply some of his lessons to personal work and find that as I work through personal projects, the next question I have is usually covered in the next lecture or soon thereafter. The videos build on one another in a very coherent manner and the assignments are applicable to what you learned. I think the assignments could be a little more challenging and that more references to the book should be included in the lectures as the book is also very helpful and a great primer for each week's material, especially when it comes to understanding parsing XML and JSON more. I think more chapters on this in the book could be very helpful though.

This has been an excellant designed course for everyone who is interested to become part of python programming course.

Dr. Chuck has been an expectional trainer throught out the course material and his method of explainning the slides while parallely informing that this particular content would help you resolve the 'Grade Exrecise' later down the course is simply awesome.

Once you finish the course,you would definately be in a position to understand from simple to medium complexity python programs.I would like to add one smart trick here "speciality of the course and explanation is the number of times you browse through the video material,more you will increase your understanding for that particular topic.

I can't thanks coursera and Dr. chuck enough to help people learning python so effectively and efficiently and making us build python community.

I began learning Python with this course. With absolutely no prior knowledge of or experience in Python (except lots of curiosity), I came across the first two courses on Coursera.org and loved Dr Charles' videos. It's a well structured course, especially if you have just started learning about Python and wish to build your skills more practically than by mere reading of numerous resources. There are plenty of resources that Dr Chuck (as he is fondly referred to by his students) offers in the duration of the course. I especially enjoy the bonus videos that accompany this course. They really help increase your knowledge base and urge you to know and be better and try your hand at various things. I'm glad I decided to pursue the entire specialization offered by University of Michigan, and it is all thanks to Dr. Chuck!

This is a wonderful course and a great tool to learn Python along with some obtaining some fundamental information about the Internet.The video lectures are very clear and accompanied by slides which elaborate the discussed topics. The course also presents a lot of bonus material including interviews. I love the lecturer who gives excellent explanations. My favourite moment was when after explaining the topic about the structure of the internet by a chart Dr. Charles Severance paused for a moment and breathed out heavily and said: "Actually it is easier (the topic) than it sounds". But, of course, his explanations were perfect, he is just passionate about transmitting the information to the students in the easiest to understand manner.And I have to say he succeeds admirably.Overall, I highly recommend this course

This course is a good introduction to various aspects of web data. It's a pretty broad overview, so no one topic gets too much focus, but I feel much more informed about working with data from various web sources—how you get it, how it's formatted, and how to work with it once you've retrieved it. Dr. Chuck is a great teacher, and the assignments help you understand the material covered in the lectures through some hands-on work. One downside to this course as compared to the previous courses in the series is that the assignments seemed to involve more direct copying of example code, and less problem solving, which means it was harder to feel that I'd really mastered the techniques. That said, the materials provided are good examples and I'm sure I'll return to them in the future.

First, thank you Dr. Chuck for the well-designed class.

Here are a few things that may help improve this class:

first, it might make more sense if you introduce python class or object first, then the package and method and return type will make more sense.

second, it could include more coding for scraping on the web, the examples are very limited(well, ok I understand this is a pretty introductory course....)

Last, for those who use python3, there are many thinks you should notice to make ur code work, such as from bs4 import BeautifulSoup, also notice the urllib has been split so you should import urllib.request and urllib.parse, also for those return value as byte, use decode('utf8') to convert it to strings, otherwise it will cause a lot of trouble in json