Great course but the map assignment REALLY needs to be updated. I spent hours and hours trying to figure it out since the American Fact Finder site is no longer available/no longer providing the output needed for this course.

Take this class for free before you pay for it because I bet you'll finish it really fast.

This first course in a series, Course 1, can be completed in one day if you already have basic math skills and knowledge of graphs. It is a fast introduction of what epidemiology is. The professor teaches very quickly and her slides are perfectly organized. I recommended it if you want to get a glimpse in public health. The last part of the lecture, week 4, shows an extremely brief intro to GIS, which I have never seen before, so it was useful and inspiring to learn more.

It was refreshing to go through the course content. I could not go through the fact finder as the website is moved to https://data.census.gov and hence the options too. Thank you for the learning

This course was a simple and easy-to-follow introduction to some integral programs that are used by public health practitioners. I highly recommend spending a few hours learning from this course!

I enjoyed the course up until Week 4, the exercise was not user friendly. Once the QGIS software was downloaded, there was no direct guidance on navigating the software... the instructions for completing the assignment was not in sync with the instructor... I really wanted to do the activity, but to no avail.

The lessons are very helpful and the method of teaching is very straightforward. I just wish there would have been handouts for the exercises so that we can easily keep a file for future reference.

The last activity needs to be updated to latest versions

The instructor usually reads what is on the slides, which makes following the lecture very boring.

The questions in the exams are often unclear and some subjects are not mentioned in the videos.

The final exercise is impossible to complete without hours of study of a software (QGIS), because the instructions in the video are from 2017, and the software has changed in the meantime.

Also, the discussions forums are not monitored, which makes them not very useful.

The final project needs to be explained again with the newer version of the software.

The course content is a little too basic and the teaching pace is very slow.

I found the content of this courser to contain just the right amount of information to introduce the reader to the goals of public health as well as introducing the reader to the basic concepts of epidemiology without overwhelming the learner. Excellent introductory course. Highly recommended if you want to explore public health as a career path. Well done to the instructor.

Fairly simplistic, but a good overview of tools and methods. The last module on QGIS is definitely in need of an update, though, both in the sense of other, easier tools out there, and also just that more recent versions of QGIS have slightly different interfaces.

I don't think this course was the most useful for those already in the field of epidemiology, I think it's geared more towards those without experience in the field. Also, Week 4 was not structured correctly. Most people were not able to figure out how to use and download QGIS, which defeats the essential purpose of this course. I did not feel that the quizzes reflected the material in the lecture, although I do think the lectures were informative.

Outdated instructions, couldn't do the last activity

This course is a great introduction to epidemiology and public health. It will provide the knowledge necessary to level up skills and understand the principles of epidemiology and its uses within the healthcare system. The content is engaging and well developed. Highly recommend the course.

Excellent course. Information was concise and interesting. Will surely be able to apply this information in my future health practice. Thank you Dr. Chandran.

I completed this course as part of the Epidemiology in Public Health Practice specialization. Overall it was pretty good and straightforward, but in terms of module 4 (the geospatial mapping one) I don't feel confident in my ability to create an original map from scratch AT ALL.

The course didn’t consider others who were not resident in the USA.

Thank you! I enjoyed the course. You speak very clear and concise in a way that made everything very easy to understand. I am new to this field, and this was a great starting point for me.

The content for first 3 weeks is very good. But for GIS example in Week 4 the file structure downloaded from Census.gov is not even remotely similar to be able use it and produce the map. Let me with a feeling of being incomplete. There is no one to reach out to. The discussion forums are at least 2 years old.

Baseline: did I learn something useful and new? absolutely. But was it upto the standards of what is expected of John Hopkins? No. Mildly disappointed.

The course does not have a tutorial on how to use QGIS which is a software filled with icons and no intuitive means to utilize it. Please re-do this entire section with a step by step tutorial on how to import shapefiles and how to use the QGIS features. Otherwise the content isn't at all helpful.

week 4 was not a pleasant experience. the instruction to download ad use gis was not clear. I felt very frustrated in this week. I hope you change it to more detailed ad well explained method.

Lack of facilitator support. It was my first time to practice on the GIS. I followed the instructions, but I could not get it right. Questions were raised in the forum but nobody responded.

I just tried this course for 7-days free trial. I did not find this course interesting. However Coursera automatically renewed my subscription and charged me $65. I tried to contact Coursera customer services to dispute the charge. There are no customer service phone number or customer service email. I contacted my credit card company. My credit company gave me a number 1-800-952-5210 to contact Coursera. This number is not working. I don't know whether there are other students have been automatically renewed their subscriptions and charged without their knowing. And there is now way to dispute the charge.

I studied this course as part of the specialization "Epidemiology in Public Health Practice", which accumulates 5 courses like this one.

After final validation and many hours of study, the final certificate for the specialization states that I worked an estimated "4 weeks of study, 2-3 hours/week", which is the same amount of time stated for a single course, such as "Essential Epidemiologic Tools for Public Health Practice".

This is frustrating and people may not want to add this specialization to their Curriculum Vitae. Amount of time spent is not real.